Flower of Devotion

The Most Holy Virgin Love said to the venerable Mary of Jesus:
“My soul, in order that your heart may be kindled with an even more ardent desire for God’s grace and His friendship, I wish you to know the sublime dignity and great happiness of the soul which has received the beauty of grace. And this beauty is so wonderful and of such high value that even if I were to reveal it to you, you would not be able to comprehend it, much less describe it in your own words. Look to the Lord and look at Him in His divine light as you receive from Him; in this light you will know that to God the justification of one soul is a work far more glorious than that He created all the expanses of Heaven and earth, with all their splendor and perfection, and all that is in them. If, therefore, creatures, by the miracles which they perceive with their bodily senses, know in a great part the greatness and power of God, what would they say if they saw with the eyes of the spirit how precious and valuable is the beauty of grace, and that in as many creatures as are capable of receiving it? There are no words that can adequately express the essence of grace as a participation in the nature and perfections of God, since this is included in sanctifying grace. It is still too little to say: it is purer and whiter than snow, brighter than the sun, more precious than gold and precious stones, more lovely, more pleasant and sweeter than all pleasures and amusements, more beautiful than anything that the heart of creatures can desire.
Consider, too, the abomination of sin, that by resisting it you may know grace better; Neither darkness, nor decay, nor the most horrible, the most horrible, and the ugliest thing can be compared with sin and its unpleasant stench. The martyrs and saints have recognized this well. They, in order to retain the beauty of grace and to avoid falling into the miserable state of sin, feared nothing: neither fire, nor wild beasts, nor the knife, nor torture, nor prisons, nor shame, nor torment and pain, nor even death itself, nor long unceasing suffering. However, people know nothing about all this; They value only the ephemeral and sensual beauty of creatures, and they desire it. Anything that bothers this beauty, they consider marginal and contemptible.
From this you know how much a man ought to do, and even to suffer, in order to keep this happiness for himself, and not to lose this ornament of the soul, nor to defile it with even the slightest sin.