Jesus says: "This is the Voice of the Teacher. It roars and caresses. It roars when it is addressed to those who do not want to be converted. It caresses when it speaks to those who, though imperfect, have the "good will" to find God and His Word and, having found Them, to sanctify themselves. For these it becomes the caress of a Friend and the blessing of Jesus." Oct. 23, 1944.
Excerpts from the Last Chapter of Volume 5, pages 946-952. Seven Reasons for the Work. Farewell to the Work.
28th April 1947
Jesus says:
"The reasons that have induced Me to enlighten and dictate episodes and words of Mine to Little John (Maria Valtorta) are, in addition to the joy of communicating an exact knowledge of Me to this loving victim-soul, manifold. But the moving spirit of all of them is My love for the Church, both teaching and militant, and My desire to help souls in their ascent towards perfection. The knowledge of Me helps to ascend. My Word is Life.
I mention the main ones:
1. The reasons mentioned in dictation dated 18th January 1947 and which Little John will put here integrally. This is the most important reason because you are perishing and I want to save you. The most profound reason for the gift of this work is that in the present time, when modernism, (the denial of the supernatual) condemned by My holy Vicar Pius X, becomes corrupted in more and more harmful doctrines, the Church, represented by My Vicar, may have further material to fight against those who deny:
the supernaturalness of dogmas;
the divinity of the Christ; the truth of the Chirst God and Man, real and perfect both in the faith and in the history that has been handed down on Him (Gospel, Acts of the Apostles, Apostolic Letters, tradition);
the doctrine of Paul and John and of the councils of Nicea, Ephesus and Chalcedon, as My true doctrine verbally taught by Me;
My unlimited science, as it is divine and perfect;
the divine origin of the dogmas of the Sacraments of the Church One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic;
the universality and continuity, until the end of time, of the Gospel given by Me for all men;
the perfect nature, from the beginning, of My doctrine that has not been formed, as it is, through successive transformations, but was given as it is: the Doctrine of the Christ, of the time of Grace, of the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of God in you, divine, perfect, immutable. The Gospel for all those thirsting for God.
Against the red dragon with seven heads, ten horns and seven diadems on its head (Rev. 12:3), which with its tail drags a third of the stars from the sky and drops them---and I solemnly tell you that they drop even lower than the earth---and persecutes the Woman; to the beasts of the sea and of the earth that many, too many worship, allured as they are by their appearance and prodigies, I ask you to oppose My Angel flying in the middle of the sky (Rev. 14:6), holding the Eternal Gospel well open, also with the Pages so far closed (THE POEM OF THE MAN-GOD), so that men, through its light, may be saved from the coils of the huge serpent with seven jaws, that wants to drown them in its darkness, and upon My return I may find again faith (Lk.18:8) and charity in the hearts of those who persevere (Mt.24:12), and they may be more numerous than the work of Satan and of men allow one to hope they may be.
2. To rouse a keen love for the Gospel and for everything pertaining to the Christ in priests and in laymen. First of all, renewed love for My Mother, in Whose prayers lies the secret of the salvation of the world. She, My Mother, is the Conqueress of the cursed Dragon. Assist her power by means of your renewed love for Her and of your renewed faith and knowledge of what pertains to Her. Mary has given the Savior to the world. The world will receive salvation again from Her.
3. To give spiritual masters and directors assistance in their ministry, by studying the different souls of the world in which I lived and the different methods used by Me to save them. Because it would be foolish to have only one method with all the souls. The way to attract to perfection a just person who spontaneously tends to it, is different from that to be used with a believer in sin, and from that to be used with a Gentile. You have many of them also among you, if you succeed in judging, as your Master did, as Gentiles the poor people who have replaced the true God with the idols of power and arrogance, or of gold, or of lust, or with the idol of the pride of their knowledge. And different is the method to be used to save modern proselytes, that is those who have accepted the Christian idea, but not the Christian citizenship, as they belong to separated Churches. No one is to be despised, and these lost sheep less than everyone. Love them and try to lead them back to the Only Fold, so that the desire of the Shepherd Jesus may be fulfilled.
Some people, when reading this Work, will object: "It does not appear from the Gospel that Jesus was in touch with Romans and Greeks, and consequently we reject these pages". How many things do not appear from the Gospel, or can just be detected behind thick curtains of silence, drawn by the Evangelists on episodes, of which they did not approve, because of their unbreakable Jewish frame of mind! Do you think that you know everything I did?
I solemnly tell you that not even after reading and accepting this illustration of My public life will you know everything about Me. I would have killed My little John, in the fatigue of reporting all the days of My ministry and all the actions performed on each day, if I had made him acquainted with everything so that he might transmit everything to you! "Then there were other things done by Jesus, which if written one by one, I think that the world would not be able to contain the books that should be written" says John. (Jn. 21:25). Apart from the hyperbole, I solemnly tell you that if all My single actions had to be written, all My particular lessons, My penances and prayers to save a soul, it would have taken the halls of one of your libraries, and one of the largest, to contain the books speaking of Me. And I also solemnly tell you that it would be much more advantageous for you to burn so much useless dusty poisonous science, to make room for My books, than to know so little of Me and worship so much that press that is almost always soiled with lust and heresy.
4. To reinstate in their truth the figures of the Son of Man and of Mary, true children of Adam by flesh and blood , but of an innocent Adam. The children of the Man were to be like Us, if our First Parents had not depreciated their perfect humanity--in the sense of man, that is of a creature in which there is the double nature, spiritual, in the image and likeness of God, and the material nature--as you know they did. Perfect senses, that is, subject to reason even in their great efficiency. In the senses I include both the moral and the corporal ones. Therefor total and perfect love both for Her spouse, to whom She is not attached by sensuality, but only by a tie of spiritual love, and for Her Son. Most loved. Loved with all the perfection of a perfect woman for the child born of Her. That is how Eve should have loved: like Mary: that is, not for what physical enjoyment her son was, but because that son was the son of the Creator and out of obedience accomplished His order to multiply the human race.
And loved with all the ardour of a perfect believer who knows that that Son of Hers, is not figuratively but really the Son of God. To those who consider Mary's love for Jesus too affectionate, I say that they should consider who Mary was: the Woman without sin and therefor without fault in Her love towards God, towards Her relatives, towards Her spouse, towards Her Son, towards Her neighbor; they should consider what the Mother saw in Me beside seeing the Son of Her womb, and finally that they should consider the nationality of Mary. Hebrew race, eastern race, and times very remote from the present ones. So the explanation of certain verbal amplifications, that may seem exaggerated to you, ensues from these elements. The eastern and Hebrew styles are flowery and pompous also when commonly spoken. All the writings of that time and of that race prove it, and in the course of ages the eastern style has not changed very much.
As twenty centuries later you have to examine these pages, when the wickedness of life has killed so much love, would you expect Me to give you a Mary of Nazareth similar to the arid superficial woman of your days? Mary is what She is, and the sweet, pure, loving Girl of Israel, the Spouse of God. The Virgin Mother of God cannot be changed into an excessively morbidly exalted woman, or into a glacially selfish one of your days.
And I tell those, who consider Jesus' love for Mary too affectionate, to consider that in Jesus there was God, and that God One and Trine received His consolation by loving Mary, Who requited Him for the sorrow of the whole human race, and was the means by which God could glory again in His Creation that gives citizens to His Heavens. And finally, let them consider that every love becomes guilty when, and only when it causes disorder, that is, when it goes against the Will of God and the duty to be fulfilled.
Now consider: did Mary's love do that? Did My love do that? Did She keep Me, through selfish love, from doing all the Will of God? Through a disorderly love for My Mother, did I perhaps repudiate My mission? No. Both loves had but one desire: to accomplish the Will of God for the salvation of the world. And the Mother said all the farewells to Her Son, and the Son said all the farewells to His Mother, handing the Son to the cross of His public teaching and to the Cross of Calvary, handing the Mother to solitude and torture, so that She might be the Co-Redeemer, without taking into account our humanity that felt lacerated and our hearts that were broken with grief. Is that weakness? Is it sentimentalism? It is perfect love, o men, who do not know how to love and who no longer understand love and its voices!
And the purpose of this Work is also to clarify certain points that a number of circumstances has covered with darkness and they thus form dark zones in the brightness of the evangelic picture and points that seem a rupture and are only obscure points, between one episode and another, indecipherable points, and the ability to decipher them is the key to correctly understand certain situations that had arisen and certain strong manners that I had to have, so contrasting with My continous exhortations to forgive, to be meek and humble, a certain rigidity towards obstinate, incovertible opponents. You all ought to remember that God, after using all His mercy, for the sake of His own honor, can say also "Enough" to those who, as He is good, think it is right to take advantage of His forbearance and tempt Him. It is an old wise saying.
5. To have an exact knowledge of the complexity and duration of My long passion, that culminates in the sanguinary Passion accomplished in few hours, that had consumed Me in a daily torture that lasted for years and years, and that had increased more and more, and with the passion of My Mother, Whose heart was pierced by the sword of sorrow for the same length of time. And urge you, through this knowledge, to love us more.
6. To show the power of My Word and its different effects according to whether the person receiving it belonged to the group of men of good will, or to that of those who had a sensual will, which is never righteous. The Apostles and Judas. Here are the two opposed examples. The former, very imperfect, rough, ignorant, violent, but with good will. Judas, learned more than most of them, refined by living in the capital and in the Temple, but with evil will. Watch the evolution of the former in Good, their ascent. Watch the evolution of the latter in Evil, and his descent.
This evolution in perfection of the Eleven good ones should be watched above all by those who, through a visual mental fault, are accustomed to perverting the nature of the reality of saints, making of the man who reaches holiness by means of a hard, very hard struggle against heavy obscure powers, an unnatrual being without incentives and emotions, and therefor without merits. Because merit is really consequent on the victory over disorderly passions and temptations, a victory achieved through love for God and to attain the final aim: to enjoy God forever. It should be watched by those who claim that a conversion should come only from God. God gives the means to be converted, but He does not do violence to the will of man, and if man does not want to be converted, in vain he has what serves other people to be converted.
Let those who examine the situation consider the manifold effects of My Word not only on the human man, but also on the spiritual man. Not only on the spiritual man, but also on the human man. My Word, when it is received with good will, transforms both, leading to external and internal perfection.
The apostles who through their ignorance and My humility treated the Son of Man with excessive familiarity--a good master among them, nothing more, a humble and patient master with whom it was permissible to take liberties at times excessive; but it was not irreverence on their part: it was ignorance, and it is to be excused--the apostles quarrelsome with one another, selfish, jealous of their love and of Mine, impatient with the people, somewhat proud of being "the Apostles", eager for stupendous capacities, which point them out to the crowds as gifted with an extraordinary power, slowly but continously change into new men, bridling their passions first to imitate Me and make Me happy, then as they become more and more acquainted with My true Ego, changing manners and love so much as to see Me, love Me and treat Me as the divine Lord. At the end of My life on earth, are they still perhaps the superficial merry companions of the early times? Are they, above all after the Resurrection, the friends who treat the Son of Man as a Friend? No, they are not. They are the ministers of the King first. They are the priests of God, later. They are completely different and completely transformed. |
