I was thinking of when my sweet Jesus went back to Heaven in His glorious Ascension, and therefore of the sorrow of the Apostles in remaining without such a great good; and my sweet Jesus, moving in my interior, told me: “My daughter, the greatest sorrow for all of the Apostles, in their entire lives, was to remain without their Master. As they saw Me ascend to Heaven, their hearts were consumed with the pain of My privation; and much more was this pain sharp and penetrating, since it was not a human pain, something material that they were losing—but a divine pain: it was a God that they were losing. And even though I had My Humanity, as It resurrected, It was spiritualized and glorified, therefore all the pain was in their souls; and penetrating their whole beings, it caused them to feel all consumed with grief, to the point of forming in them the most harrowing and painful martyrdom. But all this was necessary for them. It can be said that until that moment, they were nothing but tender babies in virtues and in the knowledge of divine things, and of My very person. I could say that I was in their midst but they did not really know Me, nor love Me. But when they saw Me ascend into Heaven, the pain of losing Me tore the veil, and they recognized Me with such certainty as the true Son of God, that the intense sorrow of no longer seeing Me in their midst gave birth to firmness in good and strength to suffer anything for love of the One whom they had lost. It gave birth to the light of divine science; it removed from them the swaddling clothes of their infancy, and it formed them as intrepid men—no longer fearful, but courageous. The pain transformed them and formed in them the true character of Apostles. What they could not obtain with My presence, they obtained with the pain of My privation. …”