Page 10 - APPENDIX

1
“How shall this be done, because I know not man? ”. And in his
inability to explain such a sublime Mystery, the Archangel
replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the
2
Most High will overshadow you ”: As if he meant to say: “You
must know, Mary, that my intelligence does not reach so high,
nor can it penetrate a Mystery so lofty and so profound. The
Holy Spirit will set your soul on fire with his most high power
and overshadow it, ‘knowing’ you as His delightful Bride”. In
these words that the Angel said to Mary it can be seen that he
did not understand such a profound Mystery. It was an
unfathomable Mystery. But it is all the same an abyss of love
where every soul must submerge itself totally until, swallowed
up and absorbed in this furnace of love, it will no longer live in
itself but wholly in God and, made one with him it is enabled in
some way to respond to such an infinite love, returning love for
love, pain for pain, that is: bearing with gladness and
acceptance all the afflictions of this life for his sake; returning

poverty for poverty, that is: rejoicing in being deprived of all
things, even of the most necessary, imitating our beloved
Jesus who was born and died in extreme poverty; returning life
for life, that is: offering God our life in a ceaseless self-
sacrifice, mortification and perpetual death of all things that
could give delight to our human misery; and lastly everything
for everything, offering to God a whole-burnt offering both
internal and external, so that he himself may do of her, in time

1 Original in Latin “Quomodo fiet istud, quoniam virum non cognosco?”.
2 Original in Latin “Spiritus Sanctus superveniet in te et virtus Altissimi
obumbrabit tibi”.

- 752 -