Our good Lord gave me this consolation, but once again He came knocking on my door to ask yet another sacrifice, and not a small one either. My father was a healthy man, and robust; he said he had never known what it was to have a headache. But in less than twenty four hours, an attack of double pneumonia carried him off to eternity. My sorrow was so great that I thought I would die as well.
He was the only one who never failed to show himself to be my friend, and the only one who defended me when disputes arose at home on account of me. “My God! My God!” I exclaimed in the privacy of my own room: “I never thought Thou had so much suffering in store for me! But I suffer for love of Thee, in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary, for the Holy Father and for the conversion of sinners.”