The Autobiography of Saint Margaret Mary

It is for the love of Thee, O my God, and through obedience, that I submit to write this account, asking Thy pardon for the resistance I have made. Thou alone knowest how great my repugnance thereto is; Thou alone therefore canst give me strength to overcome it, for this obedience was given me by Thee, in order to punish the exceeding pleasure which I have ever felt and the precaution I had taken to bury myself in entire oblivion on the part of creatures. It was after having obtained a promise from persons who I thought would be able to help me in this, and after I had committed to the flames what remained to me of the former account I had written through obedience, that this present order was given me. Grant, O my Sovereign Good, that I may write nothing but what may be for Thy greater glory and my own confusion. 


O my only Love! how much I am indebted to Thee! From my tenderest years Thou didst prevent me with Thy grace and didst constitute Thyself the Master and possessor of my heart, although Thou knewest full well the resistance it would make Thee. As soon as I was able to know myself, Thou didst manifest to my soul the hideousness of sin, the sight of which imprinted in my heart so intense a horror thereof, that the least stain was an insupportable torment to me. In order to check my childish vivacity, it sufficed to say that God would be offended; this would make me stop at once and turn away from what I wanted to do.