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Chapter 67

The Son speaks to the bride: ”I am one God together with the Father and the Holy Spirit. All things were foreseen and established by my divine providence from the beginning and before the ages. All things, bodily as well as spiritual, have a certain plan and order, and they exist and move along according as my foreknowledge has ordained and foreknown. Three examples will help you to understand this. First, you can understand it from living things as well as from the fact that the woman and not the man gives birth.

Second, it can be seen from the fact that sweet trees bear sweet fruit, while bitter trees bear bitter fruit. Third, it can be seen from the stars, that is, that the sun and moon and all the heavenly bodies complete their course as predetermined in my divinity. Rational souls are also foreknown in my divinity. I know beforehand what they will become, but my foreknowledge is in no way an obstacle or hindrance to them, for I have given them free voluntary motion, that is, free will and the power to choose whatever they like.
Consequently, as the woman and not the man gives birth, so too the good soul, God's wife, should give birth with God's help, for the soul was created in order to advance in virtue and grow fruitful through the seed of the virtues, so that she may be clasped in the arms of divine love. The soul that falls away from her original excellence and from her Creator acts contrary to God's plans and is therefore unworthy of God's sweetness.
Second, God's unchanging plan appears in trees, because sweet trees bear sweet fruit and bitter trees the opposite. A date has both a sweet pulp and a hard stone. Similarly, it has been foreseen from all eternity that wherever the Holy Spirit dwells, there all worldly delight turns vile, and all worldly honor becomes burdensome. In such a heart, however, there is so much strength and hardiness from the Holy Spirit that it is not cast down by any adversity nor overly elated by any success. It has been similarly foreseen from all eternity that wherever the devil's briar is, the fruit will be red on the outside but all unclean and full of prickles on the inside. Thus, while there is momentary and apparent sweetness in the devil's delight, it is full of thorns and tribulations, because the more someone gets entangled in the world, the more heavily that person is weighed down by the burden of the account to be rendered. And so, just as every tree produces its fruit according to the kind of roots and trunk it has, so too every person is judged according to the intention behind his or her deeds.
In the third place, all the elements keep to their own order and motion, as foreseen from eternity, and move according to the will of their Maker. Likewise, every rational creature should move and prepare itself according to the order established by the Creator. When a rational creature does the opposite, it is obvious that it is abusing its freedom of choice. So, while irrational creatures keep to their limits, rational human beings debase their original excellence and render their sentence heavier by not making use of their reason.
Thus, the human will must be guarded. I do no more injury to the devil than to my angels. As God requires that chaste, indescribable sweetness from his bride, so the devil looks for thorns and prickles from his bride. Yet, the devil can in no way prevail, unless the power of the will has been corrupted.”

The Mother's words to her daughter about a fox, and about how the devil is like a fox, and about how the devil, like a clever fox, deceives people with many and varied temptations, and tries all he can to deceive all those whom he sees making progress in virtue.

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