in the persons of the poor and needy; blessed your feet, which so faithfully travelled along the rude, narrow way of the cross in the observance of My commandments; blessed your flesh, which you so often mortified by fasting and other austerities for My sake; blessed your lives, which you formed after the example of humility I gave you; blessed your death, which you willingly accepted in My grace; blessed are you now for all eternity! Come, ye blessed of My Father, who has adopted you as His children in My name, because during your lives you have honored and loved Him as a Father, and have heroically preferred doing His will to all the seeming happiness promised you by the vain world. Blessed are you by Me, because you have readily and willingly taken upon you the cross I laid on you, and borne it after Me daily; blessed are you by the Holy Ghost with whose grace you have worked; blessed are you by My Mother Mary, who is yours also, because you have truly honored and loved her as a mother, from whose hand so many benefits have been showered down on you; blessed are you by My angels, whose good inspirations you have always obeyed; blessed .are you by all creatures that you have made use of in My honor, love, and service.
Possess you the kingdom.”
“Possess you the kingdom;” take possession of the crown that you have earned as your lawful inheritance by your good will and My grace; possess that same kingdom in which I with the Father and the Holy Ghost reign forever on a throne of glory; possess the kingdom that has no end, and that, safe from all danger, can never be lost; possess the kingdom that is free from all evil and filled with all imaginable goods that your hearts can desire, in which you shall rule and govern with me for all eternity! “Possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;” the kingdom prepared for you, which the reprobate through their perverse will did not wish to enjoy, and which is prepared for you in preference to them from the beginning of the world, to which My Father has predestined and chosen you from eternity, because He foresaw that you would spend your lives doing good, and would die in sanctifying grace! Come, My faithful servants, My best friends, My dearest brothers and sisters, My beloved children, the companions of My cross! Come, enter with Me into the joy of your Lord! Far too small are your hearts to contain the vastness of this joy; enter into it then, as into an inexhaustible ocean,