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Chapter 29

Blessed be God forever for all his bounties! Amen. My Lord, most reverend Father, first of all I humbly recommend myself to you. You have written to me with humility that I, a woman unknown to you, should humbly pray to God for you. To this I reply and tell you truthfully, according to my conscience, that I am inadequate for such a task: being a sinner, alas, and unworthy. You have also written to me that I should write to you some spiritual advice for the salvation of your soul. And therefore God, attending to your faith and humility, willed with devoted fatherly love to satisfy your desires and faith and was attentive, not to my sins, but to the heartfelt affection of his humble petitioner.

For when I, a sinner unworthy of doing so, was praying for you on the preceding day to my Lord Jesus Christ, he then appeared to me in spirit and spoke with me, using a similitude and saying this: ”O you, to whom it has been given to hear spiritually and to see, be attentive now and know for very certain that all bishops and abbots and also all the other ecclesiastical prelates and benefice-holders who have the care of souls and who leave their churches and my sheep, which have been entrusted to them, and who receive and hold other offices and positions of rulership with the intention and purpose that in these offices they may be more honored by human beings and may be exalted and raised to a higher status in the world, then, even though in those offices these rulers neither steal nor plunder anything nor commit any other injustice, nevertheless, because they glory and delight in those offices and honors and, for this reason, leave my sheep and their churches, they are, in doing such things, to my eyes like pigs dressed in pontifical or sacerdotal ornaments.
This situation might be expressed by means of the following similitude: There was a great lord who had invited his friends to supper. And at the hour of the supper, those pigs - dressed as above - entered into the palace in the sight of that lord and in the sight of the banqueters who sat at the table. The lord, however, wished to give to them some of those precious foods on his table; but then the aforesaid pigs cried out with a loud sound, grunting their opposition with their pig voices and refusing to eat those precious foods, although they were avidly eager to eat, in their usual way, the cheap husks meant for pigs.
Then, however, when that lord saw and understood this, he loathed their vileness and filth; and at once he said to his servants with great wrath and indignation: 'Expel them from my palace and cast them forth to be refreshed and sordidly sated with the pigs' husks of which they are worthy! For they are neither willing nor worthy to eat of my foods, which have been prepared for my friends.' ”
By these things, my most reverend Father and Lord, I then understood in spirit that this is what you must do: namely, that you must decide in your own conscience whether or not those sheep of Christ, namely, those entrusted to you in your bishopric, are being well and spiritually ruled in your absence. If in your absence they are being well ruled in accord with what is spiritually appropriate to their souls' advantage and benefit, and if furthermore you see that by ruling the March you can do God greater honor and be more useful to souls than in your own bishopric, then indeed I say that you can quite lawfully stay in your office as ruler of the March in accord with the will of God, provided that it is neither desire for honor nor empty glorying in that office that seduces you into staying there.
If, in fact, your conscience dictates to you the contrary, then I advise you to leave that office of the marquisate and go back to reside personally in your own church and in the bishopric entrusted to you: namely, in order to rule those sheep of yours, or rather, of Christ, specially entrusted to you and to feed them by word, example, and work, not negligently and faultily like a wicked hireling, but carefully and virtuously like a true and good shepherd.
Be forbearing with me, my Lord, in that I, although an ignorant woman and an unworthy sinner, write such things to you. I ask of him, our true and good Shepherd, who deigned to die for his sheep, that he may bestow on you the Holy Spirit's grace, by which you may worthily rule his sheep and always do his glorious and most holy will, even till death.

The Judge complains to the bride about the universal number of sinners of all states and conditions, narrating the good deeds that he did for them and their ingratitude. He also threatens them with the terrible sentence of his wrath. Nevertheless, he admonishes them to be converted to him; and he will receive them with mercy, like a father.

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