So, this hard trial, though I don’t remember too well, lasted for three years; however, there were days or weeks of interval. It is not that they would cease completely, but they began to mitigate.
I remember that after one Communion, the Lord taught me what to do in order to put them to flight – that is, despising them and not bothering about them at all, considering as if they were as many ants. I felt so much strength being infused in me, that I no longer felt that fear of before. So I would act in this way: when they made clamors and noise, I would say to them: ‘It shows that you have nothing to do, and that in order to spend time you are doing so many silly things. Go ahead, do them, for when you get tired, you will stop it.’ Sometimes they would stop; other times they would get so angry as to make greater noise. I felt them near me, making themselves stronger and doing violence to themselves in order to take me away; I felt the horrible stench, and the heat of the fire. It is true that I felt a certain shiver in my interior, but I would pluck up courage, and say to them: ‘Liars that you are - if this were true, you would have done it from the first day; but since it is false, and you have no power over me but that which comes to you from above - go ahead, keep singing; and then, when you are tired, you will croak.’ If then they emitted laments and shouts, I would say to them: ‘What is this – you could not add to the accounts today?’, that is: ‘Have some souls been taken away from you, that you lament so much? Poor ones, they don’t feel well; but I too want to make you lament a little bit.’ And I would begin to pray for sinners, or to do acts of reparation. Sometimes I would laugh when they started to do the usual things; and I would say to them: ‘How can I fear you, cowardly species? If you were serious beings, you would not have done so many silly things. Don’t you yourselves feel ashamed? Don’t you make fun of yourselves?’ If then they tempted me with blasphemies or hatred against God, I would offer Him that most bitter pain, that violence I made to myself in seeing that, while the Lord deserved all the love, all the praises, I was forced to do the opposite - in reparation for many who blaspheme against Him freely, and who do not even remember that a God exists, whom they are obliged to love in return. If they incited me to desperation, in my interior I would say: ‘I don’t care either about hell or about paradise; what I care about is to love my God. This is not the time to think about anything else; rather, it is the time to love my good God as much as I can. Paradise and hell I place in His hands – He, who is so good, will give me what is best for me, and will give me a place in which I can glorify Him more.’
Jesus Christ taught me that the most effective means for the soul to be freed of every vain apprehension, of every doubt, of every fear, was to protest before Heaven, earth and the very demons, that she does not want to offend God, even at the cost of her life, and that she does not want to consent to any temptation of the devil. And this, as soon as the soul feels the coming of the temptation, in the act of the battle, if she can, and as soon as she begins to feel free; and also during the course of the day. By doing this, the soul will not waste time in thinking about whether she has consented or not, because the mere memory of her promise will already give her peace; and if the devil tries to disturb her, she will be able to answer that if she had the intention of offending God, she would not have protested the opposite. In this way, she will remain free of any concern.
Now, who can tell the rage of the devil because, by acting in this way, all of his tricks resolved into confusion for himself, and where he thought he would gain, he would lose, and his very temptations and tricks were used by the soul in order to make acts of reparation and love for her God.
The other way He taught me to cast away temptations, was the following: if they tempted me to suicide, I was to answer: ‘You have no permission from God; on the contrary, to your annoyance, I want to live so as to be able to love my God more.’ If then they beat me and hit me, I was to humiliate myself, kneel and thank my God, because this was happening as a penance for my sins; not only this, but to offer everything as acts of reparation for all the offenses against God, which were made in the world.
Lastly, an ugly temptation that lasted for a short time was that, after being in contact with demons so ugly for about one and a half years, I would become pregnant and deliver a little demon with horns. My imagination would breed itself in such a way, that I saw myself in a horrible confusion in the face of what people would say about me, because of such an awful event.