it too much.

In acts of charity I was very assiduous. So great was my tenderness for
the poor, that I wished to have supplied all their wants. I could not
see their necessity without reproaching myself for the plenty I
enjoyed. I deprived myself of all I could to help them. The very best
at my table was distributed. There were few of the poor where I lived,
who did not partake of my liberality. It seemed as if Thou hadst made
me thy only almoner there, for being refused by others, they came to
me. I cried, "it is Thy substance; I am only the steward. I ought to
distribute it according to Thy will." I found means to relieve them
without letting myself be known, because I had one who dispensed my
alms privately. When there were families who were ashamed to take it in
this way, I sent it to them as if I owed them a debt. I clothed such as
were naked, and caused young girls to be taught how to earn their
livelihood, especially those who were handsome; to the end that being
employed, and having whereon to live, they might not be under a
temptation to throw themselves away. God made use of me to reclaim
several from their disorderly lives. I went to visit the sick, to
comfort them, to make their beds. I made ointments, dressed their
wounds, buried their dead. I privately furnished tradesmen and
mechanics wherewith to keep up their shops. My heart was much opened
toward my fellow creatures in distress. Few indeed could carry charity
much farther than our Lord enabled me to do, according to my state,
both while married and since.

To purify me the more from the mixture I might make of His gifts with
my own self-love, He gave me interior probations, which were very
heavy. I began to experience an insupportable weight, in that very
piety which had formerly been so easy and delightful to me; not that I
did not love it extremely, but I found myself defective in that noble
practice of it. The more I loved it, the more I labored to acquire what
I saw failed in. But, alas! I seemed continually to be overcome by that
which was the contrary to it. My heart, indeed, was detached from all
sensual pleasures. For these several years past, it has seemed to me
that my mind is so detached and absent from the body, that I do things
as if I did them not. If I eat, or refresh myself, it is done with such
an absence, or separation, as I wonder at, with an entire mortification
of the keenness of sensation in all the natural functions.

CH