VISIO QUARTA, cap. LXVI
Tears of Repentance
True repentance, like the tears of Mary Magdalene, washes away sin and removes our shame.
So whoever wipes away their sins through the tears of true repentance — as Mary Magdalene, who wept over the Lord's feet, did — will no longer blush on their account.
Adorning the Soul through Discipline
Fasting, prayer, and mortification clothe the soul in virtue, while repentance and good works crown it with golden ornaments.
But when, after weeping, a person fasts and prays and mortifies their flesh, they adorn their soul as though with a purple robe, through which the scars of wounds are so covered over that they never show on the soul itself. The soul, too, always seeks repentance from a person, since the person has the taste of sinners; and the soul itself demands to work through repentance, just as a woman covers her husband through the detailed knowledge of her work; but the person who has turned away from the sins by which they were ensnared through bodily taste, doing good works with all devotion, adorns their own soul with golden crowns and every ornament.
Joy over the Restored Sinner
The angels and the restored sinner alike rejoice at the recovery of what was lost.
That is why even the angels rejoice over her who was the lost sheep, and she herself rejoices with them.
The Fruitfulness of Virtue and Divine Zeal
Virtue and vice propagate after their kind, and just as the body's organs nourish the belly, God's fiery zeal consumes perverse customs to restore what was fallen.
For vices and virtues are like a fertile woman, because vice breeds vices and virtue bears virtues; and the person who is strong and powerful according to God brings all their works — both good and evil — to completion with the woman, who first gave the fall, and through whom those same evils were afterward restored to what is better. Because just as air leads the fruits of the earth to maturity through heat and moisture, so the heart, liver, and lung nourish the belly to prepare and digest foods, and God consumes the perverse customs of sinners with the fire of his zeal.
Read the original Latin
Quapropter quicunque per lacrymas verae poenitentiae peccata sua sicut Maria Magdalena, quae super pedes Domini flevit, absterserit, de ipsis amplius non erubescet. Sed cum post lacrymas jejuniis et orationibus carnem suam macerat, animam suam quasi purpurea veste exornat, per quam cicatrices vulnerum ita obteguntur, ut in ipsa nunquam appareant. Anima etiam poenitentiam ab homine semper quaerit, quoniam ipse gustum peccatorum habet; ipsaque per poenitentiam operari postulat, ut etiam mulier per subtilem scientiam operis sui virum operit, Homo autem qui a peccatis, quibus per gustum carnis occupatus est, declinaverit, bona opera omni studio operans, animam suam aureis, coronis et omnibus ornamentis ornat. Unde etiam angeli super eam, quae perdita ovis erat, gaudium habent, et ipsa cum illis laetatur. Vitia namque et virtutes ut mulier fertiles sunt, quia vitium vitia, et virtus virtutes parit; virque qui secundum Deum fortis et potens est, omnia opera sua, scilicet bona et mala, cum muliere perficit, quae prima casum dedit, et per quam eadem mala in melius postmodum reparata sunt.
Quia sicut aer per calorem et humiditatem fructus terrae ad maturitatem perducit, sic cor, jecur et pulmo ventrem ad conficiendos et digerendos cibos confovent, et quod perversas peccatorum consuetudines igne zeli sui consumat Deus.
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