THE HOLY SPIRIT BE ALWAYS with Your Reverence, amen.
It wouldn’t be wrong for me to recommend earnestly the following service to Your Reverence:1 that you feel the obligation of taking great care to pray to our Lord for me. For I certainly must have the right to ask this of you from what I have undergone in writing about myself and calling to mind so many of my miseries; although I can truthfully say it was more difficult for me to write about the favors His Majesty granted me than about my offenses against Him.
2. I did what Your Reverence commanded me and enlarged upon the material.2 I did this on the condition that you do what you promised by tearing up what appears to you to be bad. I hadn’t finished reading it after the writing was done when you sent for it. It could be that some of the things are poorly explained and others put down twice, for I had so little time I couldn’t read over what I wrote. I ask Your Reverence to correct it and have it transcribed if it is to be brought to the Father Master Ávila,3 for it could happen that someone might recognize my handwriting. I urgently desire that he be asked for his opinion about it since this was my intention in beginning to write. If it seems to him I am walking on a good path, I shall be very consoled; then nothing else would remain for me than to do what lies within my power. Nevertheless, do what you think best and remember you are obliged to one who has so entrusted her soul to you.
3. I shall recommend Your Reverence’s soul to our Lord for the rest of my life. So do me the favor of hurrying to serve His Majesty; for you will see, from what is written here, how well one is occupied when one gives oneself entirely—as Your Reverence has begun to do—to Him who so immeasurably gives Himself to us.
4. May He be blessed forever! I hope in His mercy that Your Reverence and I will see each other there where we shall behold more clearly the great things He has done for us, and praise Him forever and ever, amen.
This book was finished in June 1562.