Today I would like you to hear from Dina’s Mistress
of Novices in whom Dina confided the rich graces that God was offering her. We
are treading on holy ground, where the main protagonist is God Himself and we
feel overwhelmed by the path along which God led Dina. Her life as a religious
was very brief, only eight years, but long enough to reach to the depths and
navigate the deep waters of the mystery of God, something which Dina,
obediently has described for us in her autobiography.
Dina hid nothing
from her Mistress of Novices. She told her everything about her spiritual
experiences because, receiving such an abundance of divine graces, she was
afraid of falling into illusion.
When Dina spoke
to me about her communications, I was worried and showed it; I knew that, as
she was so sensitive this was a problem for her. On seeing my concern she wept: “Why am I not
like the others?” Something that, at one moment when she heard the voice of
Jesus, filled her with joy, subsequently became a real torture. She found peace
only when I told her that it was God’s will.
She was very simple and while her intimacy with Jesus developed, she participated fully in
every aspect of the life of the noviciate.
One day in which
she had confided to me that she was in deep communication with God, the novices
had an outing; she laughed, enjoyed herself with and like the others but
nothing revealed her secret.
The Mistress says throughout Dina’s religious life sources of suffering can be perceived:
Community life - given her gentle and sensitive personality. Her
illness during which, on the orders of the doctor, she had to lie motionless in
bed, in order that her lungs might heal. The greatest was when Our Lord offered
her His chalice so that, in her agony, she would participate with all the
suffering that He underwent: downcast, fearful, sorrowful, revulsion,
loneliness etc.
Another profound suffering that we can grasp only with difficulty,
was the sense of longing for heaven
that is felt by those to whom Our Lord especially reveals Himself. Then faith
becomes a journey, like Abraham, like Mary …
An
important moment in Dina’s life was when Jesus told her that she would die on the 15th August
1924. The Mistress says that when ,
some days earlier, she went to visit her in the infirmary and seeing that her state of health had
not declined she said to her “ You don’t
seem to be dying”. Dina accepted this humbly and said nothing.
The Mistress
tells us that after the 15th August has come and gone, she made Dina
understand that she was perhaps living with an illusion. She replied simply and
quite naturally that she had been mistaken.
Dina was not depressed and profited humbly from the situation. She
continued as before, without concern and even with greater fervour. After this
I realised that she had received no further communications for quite a long
time, but that her faith and love for Our Lord were even more intense. The
death that Our Lord had predicted and that she had not understood, was a
mystical death and now silence came over her. This silence of God, both
disconcerting and overwhelming, can lead to a vague impression of insecurity,
of asking oneself if all this was true and might have been the product of the
imagination and not really the action of God.
The greater God’s self- manifestation, the harder it is to bear the
silence that follows, Dina did not doubt, she continued to abandon herself,
after which God offered her much greater graces.
Dina remained
completely open with her novice mistress and the latter tells us that when Dina
confided in her she was certain that it was true, even though she was aware of
the possibility of illusion, she had nothing on which to base such fears.
More testimonies
could follow, but there is a silence that speaks more than words, I leave you with Dina…
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