sight nor understanding, I reply that
she does not see it then, but that she sees it clearly later, after she
has returned to herself, not by any vision, but by a certitude which
abides with her and which God alone can give her.

I knew a person who was ignorant of the truth that God's mode of being
in everything must be either by presence, by power, or by essence, but
who, after having received the grace of which I am speaking, believed
this truth in the most unshakable manner. So much so that, having
consulted a half-learned man who was as ignorant on this point as she
had been before she was enlightened, when he replied that God is in us
only by 'grace,' she disbelieved his reply, so sure she was of the true
answer; and when she came to ask wiser doctors, they confirmed her in
her belief, which much consoled her....

"But how, you will repeat, CAN one have such certainty in respect to
what one does not see? This question, I am powerless to answer. These
are secrets of God's omnipotence which it does not appertain to me to
penetrate. All that I know is that I tell the truth; and I shall never
believe that any soul who does not possess this certainty has ever been
really united to God."[254]

[254] The Interior Castle, Fifth Abode, Ch. i., in Oeuvres, translated
by BOUIX, iii. 421-424.

The kinds of truth communicable in mystical ways, whether these be
sensible or supersensible, are various. Some of them relate to this
world--visions of the future, the reading of hearts, the sudden
understanding of texts, the knowledge of distant events, for example;
but the most important revelations are theological or metaphysical.

"Saint Ignatius confessed one day to Father Laynez that a single hour
of meditation at Manresa had taught him more truths about heavenly
things than all the teachings of all the doctors put together could
have taught him.... One day in orison, on the steps of the choir of
the Dominican church, he saw in a distinct manner the plan of divine
wisdom in the creation of the world. On another occasion, during a
procession, his spirit was ravished in God, and it was given him to
contemplate, in a form and images fitted to the weak understanding of a
dweller on the earth, the deep mystery of the holy Trinity. This last
vision flooded his heart with such sweetness, that the mere memory of
it in after times made him shed abundant tears."[255]

[255] Bartoli-Michel: vie de Saint Ignace de Loyola, i