Flower of Devotion

The Most Holy Virgin Love said to the venerable Mary of Jesus:

“It is very regrettable that people too often indulge in when they say: ‘Let us only see to it that we secure our salvation, and whether we are glorified more or less, we do not care much for that. We’ll all meet up there!” It is a blindness by which man does not secure the salvation of his soul, but runs the risk of losing it. Such an understanding is due on the one hand to great unreasonableness, and on the other hand to a slight love for God. Whoever wishes to deal with the Divine Majesty in this way offends God. God leaves such a man in danger of losing everything. The weakness of man is already less accomplished in good works than man’s desire desires. If, therefore, this desire is small in itself, then a man runs the risk of losing everything.
He who is content with the middle or even the lowest degree of virtue leaves for his will and inclinations a vacant place in which he desires to cultivate earthly inclinations and to cultivate a love of transitory things. And yet it is not possible to keep a love for earthly things in one’s heart without it immediately beginning a struggle with the love of God. Therefore it cannot be otherwise that when one of them dwells in the heart, there is no room for the other. When a man decides to love God with all his heart and with all his strength, as the Most High requires, God already considers the debt is paid as it were, even if the soul and the rest of the soul have not reached the highest degree of reward through individual defects. Despising or disregarding this reward is not a sign of childish or friendly love, but of the love of a slave who is content to live and exist.
If the saints were permitted to return to earth in order to merit even one more degree of the higher glory of heaven, and if they were to endure all the sufferings of the world even to the last day, they would submit to it without the slightest hesitation. For they have a true and full consciousness of the value of eternal bliss, and they love God with a perfect love. Therefore the most blameworthy unreasonableness of those who, in order not to suffer and not to bear the Cross of Christ, wish to attain a lower degree of heavenly happiness. Such a wish is wholly contrary to the wish of the infinite goodness of God, who desires that all souls should accumulate so much merit that they may receive an excessively generous reward in heavenly happiness.