9. So I told my confessor of it, and gave up everything, according to his advice. It did a great deal of good to those with whom I used to converse, to see my determination. God be blessed for ever! Who in one moment set me free, while I had been for many years making many efforts, and had never succeeded, very often also doing such violence to myself as injured my health; but, as it was done by Him Who is almighty, and the true Lord of all, it gave me no pain whatever. 1. The Saint now treated her body with extreme severity, disciplining herself even unto blood (Reforma, vol. i. lib. i. c. xx. § 4). 2. St. Francis de Borja came to Avila, where St. Teresa lived, in 1557 (De la Fuente). This passage must have been written after the foundation of St. Joseph, for it was not in the first Life, as the Saint says, ch. x. § 11, that he kept secret the names of herself and all others. 3. Ch. xxiii. § 6. 4. See Relation, viii. § 6. 5. Who he was is not certainly known. The Bollandists decline to give an opinion: but F. Bouix thinks it was F. Ferdinand Alvarez, who became her confessor on the removal of F. Juan de Padranos, and that it was to him she confessed till she placed herself under the direction of F. Baltasar Alvarez, the confessor of Doña Guiomar, as it is stated in the next paragraph,--unless the confessor there mentioned was F. Ferdinand. 6. Doña Guiomar de Ulloa. See below, ch. xxxii. § 13. 7. If this confessor was F. Baltasar Alvarez, the Saint, F. Bouix observes, passes rapidly over the history of the year 1557, and the greater part, perhaps, of 1558; for F. Baltasar was ordained priest only in the latter year. 8. See Relation, i. § 6. Chapter XXV. Divine Locutions. Discussions on That Subject. 1. It will be as well, I think, to explain these locutions of God, and to describe what the soul feels when it receives them, in order that you, my father, may understand the matter; for ever since that time of which I am speaking, when our Lord granted me that grace, it has been an ordinary occurrence until now, as will appear by what I have yet to say. [1]