"To your very limited intellectual capacity, to your embryonic spirituality, it is not granted to know the mystery of the nature of God. But to the spiritual ones among the mass of the so-called spiritual, the mystery is made more knowable. To the lovers of the Son, to those who are truly marked with My Blood, the mystery is unveiled with a greater clarity, because My Blood is Knowledge, and My predilection, a school.

Today is a great feast in Heaven, because all Heaven sings today the 'Sanctus' to the Lamb whose Blood was poured out for human Redemption. You [Maria] are one of the few – too few – creatures who venerate My Blood as It should be venerated. But to those who do venerate It, that Blood, from the time when It was shed, speaks with words of eternal Life and suprasensible knowledge. If My Blood were more loved and venerated, more invoked and believed in, many of the evils which bring you all to the abyss would be exorcised.

It spoke, this Blood, when It was still beneath the figure of the mosaic lamb, under the figure of the prophetic words in the sign of the preserving Tau. It spoke, after It was shed, in the mouth of the apostles; It shouts Its power in the Apocalypse; It invites with Its call by the mouths of the mystics. But It is not loved. It is not remembered. It is not invoked. My Church has so many feasts. But a most solemn feast for My Blood is lacking. And in My Blood is salvation!

Today, the feast of My Blood, I illumine a mystery for you. Say: 'Glory to the Father, to the Son, to the Holy Spirit,' because it is of Us that I want to speak to you. Because of your human heaviness, figures are needed in order to think of the Father and the Holy Spirit, incorporeal Beings of infinite beauty, but Whom none of you can conceive with your human senses. So much so, that only with difficulty do you turn with all your thought to Them to invoke Them, as you invoke Me Whom you think of as a Man-God. You do not understand even remotely, therefore, the mystery of Our Trinity.

In order to think of God there is no need to bring up comparisons with other beings. He is. In being, there is all. But being has no body, and the eternal Being has no body."

[Following is a commentary by Maria Valtorta on the above Vision and Dictation, written to her spiritual director probably in response to his request for more details of her Vision. ––Trans.]

"To describe what I have seen cannot be done. Words fail. While Jesus spoke, I was seeing, but I cannot retell all my mind saw in a way that another might see it. I could make an image of it, even though I am an ass as regards drawing.

It would suffice to make three concentric circles with a point in the middle. But that would say nothing. There would be lacking the Light, and the intuition of the relations between the three circles and the point that centres them. Hence it would be a dead sign, while this is so Living, working, blissful.

Certainly I will not forget anymore the beauty of this intellectual vision, should I live even a thousand years. It will be my help, my comfort, strength, defense — all — in all circumstances. And it is an ultra-powerful Magnet which draws me to Itself and gives me an indescribable anxiety to reach It. I seem to live under the sun. But what should I say of the sun? The sun is a spent and cold star with respect to the Divine Fire fixed in the depth of the Empyreal Heavens, so distant and so near....

Yes, I have an impression of Its immeasurable distance, across which It flows through the whole Universe which is bathed in and lives by Its Light. And at the same time I feel that each being, my own especially through the goodness of God who has permitted me to have this incomparable joy — each is near this Point of Life which is God, and is under Its beam which holds each gathered in, sheltered, living, like a bell-jar over a very delicate plant. (And with this banal comparison I spoil it all, but I find nothing better.)

In brief, I feel myself under the Eye of God. And it is a sensation of joy, of warmth, of strength, of an infinite, indescribable, gladdening peace. To live thus, under the incomprehensible Gem (as my Master has justly named It!) of the Divine Beauty, a Gem which unites again in a single, intolerable Splendour the Three Divine Persons and makes of Them a Unity of Divine Light — to live thus is such a bliss that it annuls all that I have suffered and will have to suffer....

Now I truly understand what it means to say: 'Paradise.' It means to live seeing always that Sun, One and Threefold."

1. This story is related here solely from memory. Attempts to document it from available sources have proved unsuccessful. If any reader knows of any source or publication where this story can be found, kindly inform the Webmaster of this Site. A less dramatic but undocumented version of this story can be found also at: http://webhome.net/calvary/bios/augustn.txt .

2. Maria Valtorta, The Poem of the Man-God, trans., Nicandro Picozzi and Patrick McLaughlin (Centro Editoriale Valtortiano srl, 1986-1990), 5 Volumes, hardbound, $35.00 U.S. Distributed (among others) by Saint Raphael's Publications Inc., 31 King St. W., Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, J1H 1N5, and in select bookstores in the U.S. See also links to other Valtorta Sites given on this Web Site.

3. From Maria Valtorta's, I Quaderni del 1943 (Edizioni Pisani / Centro Editoriale Valtortiano srl, Via Po 95, 03036 Isola del Liri [FR], Italia, 1985): 112-115, 116-117. The Vision occurred on the feast of the Most Precious Blood, 1943.

4. Fr. Romuald Migliorini, O.S.V.

"How beautiful!  How beautiful!  How beautiful what I see!

I seek to be very exact and clear in describing to you what Communion brought me.

You know how happy I was. But not what bliss and what a joyous Vision was granted to me from the moment of my Eucharistic union on. It was like a picture which revealed itself to me by degrees. But a picture it was not; it was a contemplation. I was recollected from it for a good hour without any other prayer than this contemplation which rapt me beyond the earth.

It started right after receiving the sacred Particle, and I don't think it escaped you how slow I was with the responses and the greeting; I was already wrapped up in it. Despite that, I said all my thanksgiving in a loud voice while the Vision came to me always more vividly. And then I quieted myself, with my eyes closed as if I were sleeping. But I had never been so awake with my whole self as in this hour.

The Vision lasts, in its final phase, even while I write. I write under the gaze of so many Heavenly beings who see how I say only what I see, without adding details or making modifications. And here is the Vision:

Having just received Jesus, I felt my Mama near me, Mary, at the left side of the bed. She embraced me with Her right arm, drawing me to Herself. She was [clothed] with Her black garment and veil, as in the Visions of the Grotto in December [1943]. At the same time I felt myself enfolded by a golden light of a sweet, an indescribably soft colour, and the eyes of my spirit sought for the source of that golden light, which I felt raining down on me from above. It seemed to me that my room, even while remaining a room as it is with its floor and four walls and furniture, had no more roof, and I saw the boundless azure [heavens] of God.

Suspended in these azure [heavens], the Divine Dove of fire was hovering perpendicularly above Mary's head and, naturally, above my head, because I had leaned my cheek on Mary's cheek. The Holy Spirit had His wings open and in an upright, vertical position. He did not move, and yet He vibrated, and at every vibration there were waves, flashes, sparks of brilliance which were burst forth. From Him gushed a cone of golden light. Its peak started from the breast of the Dove and its base enfolded Mary and me. We were gathered together in this cone, in this mantel, in this embrace of joyous light. A light very vivid, and yet not dazzling, because it communicated to the eyes a new strength which grew with every beam burst forth from the Dove, increasing always more the already existing beam of light with every vibration of the Dove. I felt as if my eye were dilated with a superhuman power, as if it were no longer the eye of a creature but of a spirit already glorified.

When I attained the capacity of seeing further, thanks to the Love enkindled and suspended above me, my spirit was called to look still higher. And against the clearer azure of Paradise, I saw the Father — distinctly, in as much as His figure was in lines of immaterial light. [He had] a beauty which I do not try to describe because it is beyond human capacity. He appeared to me as on a throne. I say this because He seemed to me to be seated with infinite majesty. But I did not see a throne, or armchair or canopy. Nothing of any earthly form of seat. He seemed to be at my left side (toward the direction of my crucified Jesus — just to give you an indication — and therefore to the right of His Son), but at an incalculable height. And yet I saw Him in the tiniest of His most luminous features. He was looking toward the window (still to give you an indication of the various positions). He was looking with a look of infinite love.

I followed His gaze and saw Jesus. Not the Jesus-Master Whom I usually see. But the Jesus-King: clothed in black but with a luminous and extremely black garment, as is that of Mary. A garment which seems to be made of light. [He was] very beautiful. Robust. Imposing. Perfect. Dazzling. With His right hand (He was standing) He held His sceptre which is also His banner. A long staff, like a shepherd's, but still taller than my very tall Jesus, and which did not end with the shepherd's crook but in a transverse rod, which forms therefore a cross..., from which hung, supported from the shorter rod, a small banner of very luminous, black silk ..., and marked on both sides with a purple cross. Upon the small banner is written — in words of light as if written with liquid diamonds — the title: 'Jesus Christ.'

I see very well the wounds of His hands since His right hand holds the staff up high, toward the banner, and His left points to the wound of His side which, however, I do not see other than as a very luminous point from which beams of light radiate that descend toward earth. The wound on the right [hand] is just toward the wrist and seems like a very bright ruby, as large as a piece of our money .... The wound of the left hand is more in the centre and wider, but then elongated toward the thumb. They shine like living coals. I see no other wounds. Rather the Body of my Lord is very beautiful and whole in all Its parts.

The Father looks at the Son on His left. The Son looks at His Mother and me. But I assure you if He did not look with love I could not bear the brilliance of His Look and of His Countenance. He is truly the King of dreadful majesty, as it is said.

The longer the Vision lasts, the more my faculty of perceiving the tiniest details increases, and of seeing always more in that vast ray [of light].

In fact, after some time I see St. Joseph (near the corner where the Manger is). He is not so tall, more or less like Mary. Robust. With grey hair which is curly and short, and with a square-cut beard. A long, thin, aquiline nose. Two wrinkles incise his cheeks starting from the corners of his nose and descending to lose themselves at the sides of his mouth, in his beard. Dark and very good eyes. I find in them the loving good gaze of my own father. All his face is good, pensive without being sad, dignified, but so, so good. He is clothed in a tunic of violet-blue like the petals of certain periwinkles, and he has a mantle the colour of camel's hair. Jesus points him out to me, saying to me: 'Behold the patron of all the just.'

Then the Light summons my spirit to the other side of the room, that is toward Martha's bed, and I see my angel. He is kneeling, turned toward Mary whom he appears to venerate. Clothed in black, his arms placed in a cross on his breast with his hands touching his shoulders. His head is bowed very low, therefore I see little of his face. He is in an attitude of profound homage. I see his beautiful long wings, very black, pointed, true wings made to fly swiftly and surely from earth to Heaven, now gathered behind his shoulders. He teaches me with his attitude, as if he says: 'Hail, Mary.'

While I am still looking at him, I feel that someone is near me at my right side who places a hand on my right shoulder. It is my St. John with his shining countenance of cheerful love.

I feel blissful. I recollect myself in the midst of such bliss believing I have touched the summit. But a still livelier sparkling of the Spirit of God and of the wounds of Jesus, my Lord, increases my capacity for seeing. And I see the Heavenly Church, the Church Triumphant! I [will] try to describe it for you.

On high, always, the Father, the Son, and now also the Spirit high above the Two, between the Two, Whom He unites with His brilliance.

Lower down, as between two azure slopes of an unearthly azure, gathered in a blessed Valley, the multitude of the Blessed in Christ, the Army of those marked with the Name of the Lamb, a multitude which is light, a light that is song, a song that is adoration, adoration that is bliss.

On the left, the ranks of Confessors. On the right, those of the Virgins. I do not see the ranks of Martyrs, and the Spirit makes me understand that the Martyrs are joined to the Virgins, since martyrdom 're-virginizes' the soul as if it were just created. Whether Confessors or Virgins, they all seem clothed in black: that luminous black of the garments of Jesus and Mary.

Light radiates from the azure ground and from the azure walls of the Holy Valley as if they were kindled sapphire. Lights radiate from their garments of woven diamonds. Above all, the spiritualized bodies and faces are light. And here I endeavour to describe to you what I have noticed in the different bodies.

A Body of flesh and a Spirit that is alive, throbbing, perfect, sensitive to touch and contact — only the Body of Jesus and of Mary are that: two glorious Bodies, but truly 'bodies.' Then, Light with the form of a body (just so that it can be perceptible to this poor handmaid of God): the Eternal Father, the Holy Spirit and my angel. Next, Light already more solid: St. Joseph and St. John, certainly because I must hear their presence and word. Finally, White Flames, which are spiritualized bodies: all the Blessed who form the multitude of Heaven.

Among the Confessors no one turns. They all look at the Most Holy Trinity. Among the Virgins someone does turn. I distinguish the Apostles Peter and Paul because, although luminous and black-garbed as all [the rest], they have a face already more distinctive than the others: a typically Hebrew face. They look at me with kindness (thank Heavens!).

Then three blessed spirits (whom I understand to be the spirits of women) who look at me, nod and smile. You could say they invite me. They are young. But previously it appeared to me that all the Blessed have the same age: youthful, perfect, and of a similar beauty. They are lesser copies of Jesus and Mary. Who these three celestial creatures are I cannot say, but since two carry palms and only one some flowers — the palms are the only sign which distinguishes the Martyrs from the Virgins — I believe I do not err in saying that they are Agnes, Cecilia and Therese of Lisieux.

What that 'Alleluia' of this multitude is I cannot say, despite my good will. An 'Alleluia' which is powerful, but also soft as a caress. And all laugh and shine more vividly at every 'Hosanna' of the multitude to its God.

The Vision ceases and, in its intensity, is crystallized in this form. Mary leaves me and, with Her, John and Joseph: the first taking his place before the Son and the others their place in the rank of the virgins.

Praise be to Jesus Christ!"

"I will try to describe the inexpressible, unutterable, beatific vision of late yesterday evening which, from a dream of my soul, led me into a dream of my body in order to appear still more clear and beautiful to me when I returned to my senses. And before setting about this description, which will always be farther from the truth than we are from the sun, I asked myself: 'Should I write first, or first do my penances?'. I was burning to describe what caused my joy, and I know that after my penance I am slower from material fatigue with my writing.

But the voice of the Holy Spirit's light — I call it thus because it is immaterial like light and yet it is bright as the most brilliant light, and writes for my spirit His words which are sound and sparkle and joy, joy, joy — the Spirit, enfolding my soul in His lightning-flash of love, says to me:

First your penance and then the writing of that which is your joy. Penance should always precede all, in you, since that is what merits for you your joy. Every vision is born from a preceding penance, and each penance opens to you the way to each higher contemplation. You live for this. You are loved for this. You will be blessed for this. Sacrifice, sacrifice. Your life, your mission, your strength, your glory. Only when you will have slept in Us will you cease to be a host-victim, to become glory.

So I first did all my daily penances. But I didn't even feel them. The eyes of my spirit 'saw' the sublime Vision, and that annulled my bodily sensibilities. I understand therefore the reason why the martyrs were able to endure those horrible tortures smiling. If for me, so inferior to the martyrs in virtue, a contemplation can, by pouring itself from my spirit into my bodily senses, annul in them their sensitivity to pain: for the martyrs – as perfect in love as a human creature can be, and through their perfection seeing the Perfection of God without veils – there must take place in them a true annulling of their material weakness. The joy of the vision annuls the misery of the flesh's sensibility to every suffering.

And now I seek to describe it:

I saw Paradise again. And I understood what makes up Its Beauty, Its Nature, Its Light, Its Song — all, in short. Even Its Works, which are those that, from such a height, inform, regulate, provide for the whole created universe. As already [I understood] the other time, in the first part of the current year, I believe, [when] I saw the Most Holy Trinity. But let's take it in order.

Even the eyes of the spirit, however much more fit to endure that Light than the poor eyes of the body which cannot stare at the sun — a star which is like the little flame of a smoking wick compared to the Light that is God — even the eyes of the spirit need to habituate themselves by degrees to the contemplation of this lofty Beauty. God is so good that , even while wanting to unveil Himself in all His brilliance, He does not forget that we are poor spirits still prisoners in the flesh, and therefore weakened by this imprisonment.

Oh! How beautiful, shining, dancing, the spirits which God creates at every moment to be souls for his new creatures! I have seen them, and I know. But we...until we return to Him, we cannot endure that Splendour all at once. And He in His goodness brings it near to us only by degrees.

First of all, then, yesterday evening I saw [something] like an immense rose. I say 'rose' to give some concept of these circles of joyous light which centred themselves always more around a point of intolerable brilliance.

A rose without boundaries! Its light was that which it received from the Holy Spirit: the most resplendent light of Eternal Love. Topaz and liquid gold turned into flame...Oh! I don't know how to explain it! That Eternal Love radiated, high, high and alone, fixed in the immaculate and most resplendent sapphire of the Empyrean, and from that Love descended inexhaustible waves of Light. The Light which penetrated the rose of the Blessed and of the Angelic choirs and made it luminous with that Light — which is nothing but the result of the Light of Love that penetrates it. But I did not distinguish Saints from Angels. I saw only the immeasurable garlands of those circles of Paradisal Flowers.

I was already completely blissful from this [Vision] and had blessed God for His goodness, when, instead of crystallizing thus, the Vision opened itself into a more ample brilliance, as if it had brought itself ever nearer to me, permitting me to observe it with my spiritual eye now accustomed to the previous brilliance and capable of tolerating a stronger one.

And I saw God the Father: Splendour in the splendour of Paradise. Lines of light: of the most resplendent, blackest, incandescent light. Think, Father: if I was able to distinguish Him in that flow of light, what must be His Light which, even when surrounded by so much other [light], annulled it all, making it like a reflected shadow compared to His splendour. Spirit... Oh! how one sees what spirit is! It is All. All: so perfect is it. [Yet] it is nothing, because even the touch of any other spirit of Paradise cannot touch God, the most perfect Spirit, even with His immateriality: Light, Light, nothing else than Light.

Facing God the Father was God the Son. In the garment of His glorified Body upon which shone His royal raiment that covered His most holy Members, without hiding their utterly indescribable beauty. Majesty and Goodness were merged in this His Beauty. The burning coals of His five Wounds shoot out five swords of light over all of Paradise and increase Its splendour and that of His glorified Person.

He had no halo or crown of any kind. But His whole Body emitted light, that special light of spiritualized bodies which in Him and in His Mother is most intense and bursts forth from that Flesh — which is indeed flesh, but not opaque like ours. Flesh which is light. This light is condensed still more around His Head. [Coming] not from a halo, I repeat, but from all His Head. His smile was light, and light [was] His gaze; light pierced out of His most beautiful Brow, minus Its wounds. But it seemed that just where the thorns at one time had drawn blood and given Him pain, there now exuded a more vivid luminosity.

Jesus was standing up with His royal Standard in hand, as in the Vision I had in January, I believe.

A little lower than Him, but very little, as much as the usual step of a stairs, was the most holy Virgin. Beautiful as Jesus is in Heaven, that is, with Her perfect human beauty glorified with a Heavenly beauty.

She was standing between the Father and the Son Who had some meters between Them. (So much for applying sensible comparisons.) She was in the middle and, with Her hands crossed on Her breast — Her soft, very black, small, and very beautiful hands — and with Her face slightly raised — Her smooth, perfect, loving, and very lovely face — She was looking at, adoring, the Father and the Son.

Full of veneration, She was looking at the Father. She did not say a word. But all Her gaze was a voice of adoration, prayer and song. She was not kneeling. But Her look made Her [seem] more prostrate than in the deepest genuflection, so adoring was She. She said: 'Holy!'. She said: 'I adore You!' just by Her gaze.

Full of love, She looked at Her Jesus. She did not say a word. But all Her look was a caress. And every caress of that lovely eye of Hers said: 'I love You!' She was not seated. She did not touch Her Son. But Her gaze received Him as if He were in Her lap surrounded by those maternal arms of Hers as, and more than, in His Infancy and Death. She said: 'My Son!', 'My Joy!', 'My Love!', just by Her look.

She was delighted to look at the Father and the Son. And every so often She raised Her face and Her gaze still more to seek the Love which shone down, perpendicularly upon Her. And then Her own dazzling light, of a pearl become light, was kindled as if a flame had clothed it to make it burn and make it more beautiful. She received Love's kiss and strained with all Her humility and purity, with Her charity, to return a caress to [that] Caress and to say: 'Behold. I am Your Spouse and I love You and I am Yours. Yours for eternity.' And the Spirit blazed more strongly when Mary's gaze linked itself to His brilliance.

And Mary brought Her eye back upon the Father and upon the Son. It seemed that, Love having made [in Her] a deposit, She distributed it. My poor imagination! I will say it better. It seemed that the Spirit chose Her to be that One who, gathering in Herself all Love, might then bring It to the Father and to the Son so that the Three might be united and kiss each Other, becoming One. Oh! Joy to understand this poem of love! And to see the mission of Mary, Seat of Love!

But the Spirit did not concentrate His brilliance only upon Mary, our Great Mother, second only to God. For could a basin, even if very large, contain the ocean? No. It fills up with it and overflows with it. But the ocean has waters for all the earth. Thus the Light of Love. It descends in a perpetual caress upon the Father and the Son, It clasps them in a Ring of splendor. And then It enlarges Itself still more after becoming blissful from Its contact with the Father and the Son, Who respond with love to Love, and spread Themselves over all of Paradise.

Here is how this was revealed in its details...:

First, there are the Angels: higher than the Blessed [Saints], Circles around the Pivot of Heaven which is God, One and Triune, with the virginal Gem of Mary for the heart. They have a more vivid likeness to God the Father. Spirits, perfect and eternal, they are drawn from light, inferior only to that of God the Father, with a form of unspeakable beauty. They adore... They burst forth harmonies. With what? I don't know. Perhaps with the throbbing of their love. Since there are no words; and the lines of their mouths do not displace their luminosity. They shine like still water struck by living sun. But their love is a song. And it is harmony so sublime that only a grace, a special favour of God could allow one to hear it without dying of joy from it.

Lower down, [are] the Blessed [Saints]. These, in their spiritualized appearances, have a greater likeness to the Son and to Mary. They are more solid, I would say more accessible to the eye and (I have the impression) to the touch, than are the Angels. Hence in them their physical features are more marked and differ one from the other — thus I can understand whether one is an adult or a baby, a man or a woman. I did not see any aged, in the sense of feebleness. It seems that even when spiritualized bodies belong to those who died in old age, Up There the ruin of our flesh ceases. There is a greater nobility in an elderly person than in a youth. But not that squalor of wrinkles, baldness, toothless mouths and bent spines proper to humans. It seems that their maximum age is 40 or 45. That is, they have a flourishing virility even if their gaze and appearance are of patriarchal dignity.

Among the many... — Oh! how many throngs of the Saints!... and how many throngs of Angels! The Circles are lost, becoming trails of light through the deep-blue splendours of a vastness without bounds! And far, far off from this celestial horizon there still comes the sound of a sublime 'Alleluia,' and the light — which is the love of this army of Angels and Saints — trembles...

This time I see, among the many throngs, an imposing spirit. Tall, severe, and also good. With a long beard which descends to the middle of his breast, and with tablets of stone in hand. The tablets seem to be those wax ones that the ancients used to write on. He rests his left hand on them and holds them, in their turn, resting on his knee. Who he is I do not know. I think of Moses or of Isaiah. I do not know why. I just think so. He looks at me and smiles with great dignity. Nothing else. But what eyes! Just made to dominate the crowds and penetrate the secrets of God.

My spirit becomes always more adapted to seeing in the Light. And I see that at each fusion of the Three Persons — a fusion which is repeated with an urgent and ceaseless rhythm, as if spurred by an insatiable hunger of love — at each fusion are produced the unceasing Miracles which are the Works of God.

I see that the Father, out of love for the Son to Whom He wants to give an ever greater number of followers, creates souls. Oh! How beautiful! They come forth from the Father as sparks, as petals of light, as spherical gems — I am incapable of describing how. It is an endless stream of new souls...Beautiful [these souls], joyous to descend and merge with a body in obedience to their Author. How beautiful they are when they come out of God! I do not see, I cannot see while I am in Paradise, when the Original Spot soils them.

The Son, out of zeal for His Father, receives and judges without stopping those who, their life now ended, return to their Origin to be judged. I do not see these spirits. I understand if they are judged with joy, with mercy, or with inexorability, from the changes in Jesus' expression. What brilliance in His smile when there is presented to Him a saint! What a light of sad mercy when He must separate Himself from one who must be cleansed before entering into the Kingdom! What a flash of offended and sorrowful anger when He must reject for eternity a rebel!

It is here that I understand what Paradise is, and of what Its Beauty, Nature, Light and Song are made. It is made of Love. Paradise is Love. It is Love which creates all in It. It is Love that is the foundation upon which all rests. It is Love that is the summit from which all comes.

The Father works through Love. The Son judges through Love. Mary lives through Love. The angels sing through Love. The blessed shout 'Hosanna!' through love. Souls are formed through Love. The Light exists because it is Love. The Song exists because It is Love. Life exists because It is Love. Oh! Love! Love! Love!... I annul myself in You. I rise again in You. I die, a human creature, because You consume me. I am born, a spiritual creature, because You create me.

Be blessed, blessed, blessed, O Love, Third Person! Be blessed, blessed, blessed, Love, Who are the love of the First Two! Be blessed, blessed, blessed, O Love, Who love the Two Who precede You! Be blessed, You who love me. Be blessed by me who love You because you permit me to love You and to know You, O my Light..."

["After having written all this, I have sought in the fascicles for my preceding contemplation of Paradise. Why? Because I always distrust myself and I wanted to see if one of the two [Visions] was in contradiction with the other. That would have persuaded me that I am the victim of a deception.

No. There is no contradiction. The present one is still more clear but has essentially the same lines. The preceding [Vision] is on the date of January 10, 1944. And after [writing it] I had not looked at it anymore. I affirm it as by an oath."]

"In the Paradise which Love has made you contemplate, Maria, there are only the 'living' of whom Isaiah speaks in Chapter 4, one of the prophesies which will be read the day after tomorrow. And how this 'living' existence is obtained is told in the following words. With the spirit of justice and with the spirit of charity those stains that already exist are annulled and one is preserved from new corruptions.

This justice and this charity which God gives each of you and which you must give Him, will lead you and keep you in the shadow of the eternal Tabernacle. There the heat of the passions and the darkness of the Enemy will become something harmless, since they will be neutralized by your Most Holy Protector Who, more loving than a hen for her new-born [chicks], will draw you into the shelter of His wings and defend you against every supernatural assault. But do not ever leave Him Who loves you.

Think, My soul, of the Jerusalem that was shown to you. Does it not merit every care in order to possess It? Conquer. I await you. We await you. Oh! this word that We want to say to all that are created, at least to all Christians, at least to all Catholics, which We can say to so few!

Enough, because you are weary, Maria.  Rest, thinking of Paradise."

[To Valtorta]: "You see, My soul, that I was quite right to say: 'The intimate knowledge of My torment in Gethsemani would not be understood and would become a scandal?'  People do not acknowledge the Demon. Those who do acknowledge him do not admit that the Demon had been able to harass the soul of Christ to the point of making Him sweat blood. But you, who have had a little bit of this temptation: you can understand. Let us then talk together."

"You asked Me: 'How many of the agonies that You give me are those of Gethsemane?'

Oh! So many! Not for the pleasure of tormenting you. Only through the goodness of your Master and Spouse. I could not bring down upon you all at once, little spouse, the whole mass of desolation which discouraged Me that evening, and which no one guessed, no one understood, apart from My Mother and My Angel. You would die, insane, from it. And so I give you a little bit now, tomorrow another bit, in such a way as to make you taste all My food and to obtain from your suffering the maximum of love and compassion for your sorrowful Spouse, and of redemption for your brethren.

Here is why I give you so many hours of Gethsemane. Join them together and, as the artist of a mosaic, by joining the pieces together, sees the complete picture being formed little by little ; so you, by joining together in your thought the remembrance of the different hours, will see the true Agony of your Lord.

Reflect on how I love you. The first time I gave you only the sight of My physical frenzy. And just seeing Me with My Face contorted, pacing to and fro, raising My arms, wringing My hands, weeping and depressed, you had such pain from it yourself that, just a little more, and you would have died on Me.

I presented that visible torture to you more and more often until you knew it intimately and were able to endure it. Then, every so often I revealed to you My sadness. My sadness: those of a man. All of man's passions had risen up like maddened serpents, hissing their right to exist, and I had to strangle them one by one in order to be free to climb My Calvary.

Not all the passions are evil. I already explained that to you. I give this word [passion] its philosophical meaning, not the one you all give it by changing its meaning to 'feelings'. Even the good passions can become enemies at certain times, when with their voice they forge a chain: and a chain of the hardest, strongest and most twisted steel, in order to prevent us from accomplishing the Will of God.

To love life, a gift of God, is a duty: so much so that whoever kills himself is as guilty and even more so than one who kills [another]; since he who kills [another] fails in charity towards his neighbour. But he can have the attenuating circumstance of a provocation which deranged him. While whoever kills himself fails against himself and against God Who gave him life that he might live it until his summons. To kill oneself is to snatch back the gift of God and, yelling a curse, to throw it into the Face of God. Whoever kills himself despairs of having a Father, a Friend, a [Supreme] Good. Whoever kills himself denies every dogma of faith and every assertion of faith. Whoever kills himself denies God. Therefore life must be held dear.

But how to hold it dear? By making ourselves its slaves? No. Life is a good friend. A friend of that other Life. Of the True Life. For this latter is the great Life. The former is the little life. But as a handmaid serves and procures food for her Lady, so does the little life serve and nourish the great Life, which reaches its perfect age through the care which the little life gives it.

It is precisely this little life which procures for you the beautiful garments you will don when you become Ladies of the Kingdom of Life. It is precisely this little life which fortifies you with that bitter bread, soaked in strong vinegar, of everyday things, and which makes you adults and perfect in order to possess that Life which does not end. Here is why we must call 'dear' this sad existence of exile and sorrow. It is the 'bank' wherein mature the fruits of eternal riches.

Is it passably good? Praise the Lord for it. Is it sprinkled with pains? Give 'thanks' to the Lord. Is it sad beyond measure? Never say: 'Its too much.' Never say, 'God is wicked.'

I said it a thousand times: Evil does not come from God. And what is sadness but the fruit of evil? It is villainous man who causes suffering.

I said it a thousand times: God knows how long you can suffer, and if He sees that what your neighbour is doing you is too much, He intervenes: not only by increasing your strength to endure it, but with heavenly comforts; and when the hour comes: by breaking the wicked.  For it is not permitted to torture beyond measure the one who is the better neighbour.

Life is dear for the honest satisfactions which it procures us. God does not censure them. Work: It is He Who put it there.  As a punishment, yes, but also as a diversion for guilty man. Woe, if you had had to live in idleness. For ages past the Earth would have become an enormous insane-asylum of the enraged who would be tearing each other apart. You already do that, because you are still too idle. Honest toil clears and calms the mind, and gives us joy and serene rest.

Life is more dear still for the holy affections with which it blossoms. God does not censure them. Could God Who is Love censure an honest love? O joy of being sons! and joy of being fathers! O joy of finding a feminine companion who will beget sons for one's own name, and children for God! O joy of having a sweet sister, a good brother, and sincere friends! No: these sweet, honest affections God does not censure.

He Himself put love on Earth, and not like work: as a punishment and diversion for the guilty but, in the earthly Paradise, as a basis for the great joy of being sons of God, children of God. 'It is not good that man should be alone,' He said.  King of creation, Man would have been in a desert without a feminine companion. Good were all the animals with their king, but too inferior, always too inferior to a son of God. Good, infinitely good, was God with His son, but always too superior to him. Man would have suffered the solitude of being equally distant from the divine and from the animal. And so God gave him a feminine companion.

Not only that. But for his chaste love with this same companion God would have granted him sweet sons, so that the man and the woman could have said that next sweetest word after the Name of God: 'My son!' And their children could have said that next holiest word after the Name of God: 'Mama!'

Mama! Whoever says 'Mama,' already prays.

To say 'Mama,' means to thank God for His Providence which gives a mother to the children of man and even to the little 'children' of the wild animals, of the domestic animals, of the flying birds and even of the mute fish, so that man would not know the horror of growing up alone, and would not fall from lack of support when he is still too feeble to know the Good and the Evil. To say 'Mama,' means to bless the God Who makes us know what love is through the kiss of a mother and the words of her lips. To say 'Mama,' means to know the God Who gives us a reflection of His principal attribute, Goodness, through the indulgence of a mother. And to know God means to hope, to believe, to love. It means to be saved.

And to have a brother: --is it not like a tree having its twin tree to support it in hours of storm, intertwining its branches in it; and which in hours of joy increases its blossoms with the pollen of its own love?

This is why I wanted Christians to call each other 'brothers,' since it is just, given that all of you come from one God and from one man's blood; and because it is holy, since it is a comfort for those who have no brothers of the flesh to be able to say to their neighbour: 'Brother, I love you. Love me.'

And to have a sincere friend: is it not like having a companion on our journey? Going alone is too sad. When God chooses a soul for the solitude of a victim, then He makes Himself its companion, since alone it could not stand without bending.

Life is a steep road, stony, often interrupted by crevices and swirling currents. Vipers and briars tear and bite on its bristling path. To be alone would be to perish. God created friendship for this. With two, strength and courage grow. Even a hero has moments of weakness. If he is alone, on what will he support himself? On the briars? What will he grasp? The vipers? Where will he lie down? In the swirling torrent or in the horrible darkness? Everywhere he would find a new wound and a new peril. But here is the friend: his breast is a support, his arm a prop, his affection a rest. And the hero recovers his strength. The traveller once again journeys secure.

To give value to friendship, I wanted to call My apostles 'friends,' and so much did I appreciate this affection that in the hour of My sorrow I wanted the three dearest apostles with Me in Gethsemane. I entreated them to watch and pray with Me, for Me...; and at seeing them incapable of doing it I suffered so much from it that I went forth weakened, and hence more susceptible to the Satanic seductions. One word! --had I been able to exchange one word with My friends, awake and understanding the state I was in, I would not have reached the point of bleeding profusely, before My torture, in My struggle to repel Satan.

But life and affections should not become our enemies. Never. If such they become, they must be broken.

I broke them. One by one.

I had already broken the human turmoil of outrage toward My Traitor. And a sinew of My Heart was torn in the effort.

It was now that the fear arose of losing My life. --Life! I was thirty-three years old. I was man in that hour. I was the Man. I had therefore a virginal love of life as had Adam in the earthly Paradise: a joy of being alive, of being healthy, strong, handsome, intelligent, loved, respected. A joy of seeing, of understanding, of being able to be expressive. A joy of breathing the pure and fragrant air, of listening to the harp of the wind among the olive trees and the brook among the stones, and the flute-like voice of the nightingale in love ; of seeing the stars shining in the heavens: so many eyes of fire that looked on Me with love ; the joy of seeing the earth made silver by the moon, so black and shining, which each evening made the world once more virginal; and it seemed impossible that under its waves of black peace someone could commit the Crime.

And all this I had to lose. Never again to see, never again to hear, never more to move, never more to be healthy, never again respected. To become a putrid abortion that one avoids with his feet, his head turned in disgust: an abortion expelled from the society which condemned Me, so as to be free to give itself to its filthy loves.

Those friends!... One had betrayed Me. And while I was waiting for death, he hastened to bring it to Me. He thought to give himself joy with My death... The others were sleeping. And yet, I loved them. I would have been able to wake them, to flee with them, elsewhere, far away, and to save both life and friendship. And instead I had to be silent and remain. To remain meant losing both friends and life. It meant being an outcast.

My Mama! O love of My Mama! Your love: invoked, it bent over My sorrow! Your love: repelled, in order not to cause you to die from My sorrow! Love of My Mama! Yes, I know: My every sob reached you, O Holy One. My every call to you crossed that space and penetrated like a spirit into the closed room where you, as always, passed your night praying, and praying in that night, not with ecstasy, but with torture of soul. I know. And I forbade Myself from calling you so as not to cause the moans of your Son to reach you, O martyr Mother who began your Passion, solitary as I was solitary, on that paschal Thursday night!

The son who dies in the arms of his mother does not die: he falls asleep cradled by a lullaby of kisses, which the angels continue till the moment when the vision of God makes the son forget his desire for his mother. But I had to die in the arms of executioners and a cross, and to close My sight and hearing on a bedlam of curses and menacing gestures.

How I loved you, Mother, in that hour of Gethsemane!

All the love that I had given you and which you had given Me in thirty-three years of life were before Me and pleaded their cause and begged Me to have pity on them, recalling your every kiss, your every care, the drops of milk you had given Me, the warm cup of your hands for My cold little feet as a poor infant, the songs from your mouth, the nimbleness of your fingers on the thick locks of My hair, and your smile and your look, your words and your silences, and your step of a dove: placing its rosy feet on the ground but keeping its wings already half-open for flight, and not even bending a stem, so lightly does it go; since you were on Earth for My joy, O Mother, but you had your wings always anxious for Heaven, O holy, holy, holy and beloved!

All the tears that I had already cost you, and all those that now fell from your eyelids and those that would have fallen in the three days to come, I heard them in the Garden, falling like moaning rain. O tears of My Mama!

But who can see his mama weeping, who can hear her weeping and, while life lasts, not have the torture of that weeping present from then on to him? I had to lose, to strangle My human love for you, Mama, and to trample both your love and Mine, in order to walk on the way of the Will of God.

And I was alone. Alone! ALONE! Earth and Heaven had no inhabitants for Me anymore. I was the Man loaded with the sins of the world. Hated therefore by God. I had to pay in order to redeem Myself and be loved again. I was the Man loaded with the Goodness of Heaven. Hated therefore by men to whom Goodness is repugnant. I had to be killed as punishment for being good.

And you too: you honest joys of work, accomplished to give daily bread to Myself first, so as then to give spiritual bread to men --you had come before Me [in the Garden] to say to Me: 'Why do you leave us?'

Then nostalgia for that quiet house made holy by so many prayers of the just; made a Temple from having welcomed the espousals of God; made Heaven by giving hospitality within its walls to the Trinity enclosed in the soul of the Christ of God!

And nostalgia for the humble, candid crowds to which I gave lights and graces, and from whom came love for Me! Voices of little children who called Me with a smile, voices of mothers who called Me with a sob, voices of the sick who called Me with a groan, voices of sinners who called Me with trembling! I heard them all in the Garden, and they said to Me:

'Why do You abandon us? You do not want to caress us anymore? Who will give us caresses like Yours on our blond or brown curls?' [said the children].

'You do not want to restore our dead children to us, to heal the dying for us? Who will have pity on mothers like You do, Holy Son?' [said the mothers].

'You do not want to restore our health anymore? Who will heal us if You disappear?' [said the sick]. 'You do not want to redeem us anymore? For us there is only You Who are Redemption. Your every word is strength which breaks a cord of sin in our dark heart. We are more ill than lepers, since for them the illness ceases with death, but for us it increases. And You? --You are going away? Who will understand us? Who be just and pitying? Who will raise us up again? Stay, Lord!' [said the sinners].

'Stay! Stay! Remain!' wails the good crowd.

'Son!' wails My Mother.

'Save Yourself!' wails life.

I had to break these throats that wailed: to strangle them in order to stop them from wailing anymore -- in order to have the strength to break My Heart, snatching out Its sinews one by one, so as to accomplish the Will of God.

And I was alone. That is: I was with Satan.

The first part of My prayer had been painful, but I could still feel the Gaze of God and hope in the love of My friends.

The second [part] was more painful, because God was withdrawing Himself and My friends were sleeping. They were reaffirming that hiss of Satan and the voice of life: 'You sacrifice Yourself for nothing. Men are not going to love You for Your sacrifice. Men do not understand.'

The third... The third [part] was madness, desperation, agony; it was death. The death of My Soul. Not only did My Body rise again. My Soul too had to rise again. Since It knew Death.

Let this not seem heresy to you. What is the death of the spirit? Eternal separation from God. Well then: I was separated from God. My Spirit was dead. This is the true hour of eternity which I grant to My favourites. That hour which you Maria, little spouse, asked to be yours from when they told you that your lot is similar to Veronica Juiliani who, at the end of her existence, knew intimately this torture surpassing all superhuman tortures.

Without having merited it, we ourselves know this death of the spirit intimately, in order to comprehend the horror of that damnation which is the torment of unrepentant sinners. We know it in order to obtain their salvation.

I know: the heart is broken. I know: reason wavers. I know all, beloved soul. I experienced it before you. It is an infernal horror. We are at the mercy of the Demon since we are separated from God.

Do you think that Martha, who defeated the dragon, had trembled more than we? No. In us the suffering is greater. The beast defeated by Martha was a frightful beast, but always a beast of Earth. We defeat the Lucifer-Beast. Oh! there is no comparison! And the Lucifer-Beast comes always nearer, as all both in Heaven and on Earth, becomes more distant.

I was already tempted in the desert. A crowd of temptations, since at that time I had only weakness from lack of material food. Now I was famished for spiritual food, and for moral food, and there was no bread for My Spirit nor bread for My Heart. No God anymore for My Spirit. No affections anymore for My Heart.

And then: slight as a breeze, piercing as a bee's sting, irritating as a viper's venom: the voice of Lucifer. A flute that sounds muted: so soft, so soft, which does not awaken our vigilant attention. Piercing with the seduction of its magic harmony, it makes us doze, it seems a comfort, it has the appearance of supernatural comfort.

Oh! eternal Deceiver, how subtle you are! The I [ ego], asks only to be helped. And that sound seems to help. Words of compassion and understanding, sweet as caresses on a fevered brow, calming as ointment on a burn, stupefying as a heady wine poured out for one who is fasting.

The weary soul sleeps. If it were no longer vigilant in its subconscious -- which is itself vigilant only in those who nourish themselves by constant union with Love -- it would end by falling into a lethargy that would put it totally at Satan's mercy: into a hypnotic sleep during which Lucifer would make it accomplish any action whatsoever. But the soul which has constantly nourished itself from Love does not lose the integrity of its subconscious, not even in the hours when men and God seem to join together in making it insane. And the subconscious awakes the soul. It shouts to it: 'Act! Get up! Satan is at your back!

The terrible struggle has begun. The venom is already in us. We must therefore struggle with its effects and against the quickening waves, always faster and more vehement, of the new venom of the satanic word which pours over us.

The uproar grows louder: no longer the sound of a muted flute, no longer a caress and ointment. It is the din of blaring instruments, it is a blow, a sword-wound, a flame that suffocates and burns us.

And there, in the flame: life which passes before our spiritual gaze. It had already passed with its resigned aspect of a sacrificed thing. Now it returns with the garments of a haughty queen and says:

'Adore me! It is I who reign! These are my gifts. The gifts I have given you; and still more beautiful gifts will I give you if you will be faithful to me.'

And in the sound of the instruments: the voices of things and of persons return. They no longer plead. They command, they call down evil on us, they insult, they curse us, because we abandon them. They all return to torment us. All. And the soul, dazed, struggles always more feebly.

When the soul, like a badly bleeding warrior, staggers and seeks some support in Heaven or on Earth so as not to fall down, then lo: Lucifer gives it his shoulder. There is none but him... The soul calls for help. No one answers but him... The soul seeks a look of pity... It finds none but his...

Woe to the soul that deludes itself about his sincerity! With the remains of its surviving energy it must get away from that support, re-enter into solitude, close its eyes and contemplate the horror of our destiny rather than his deceptive appearance, raise its trembling hands and clamp them on its ears to block out that deceiving voice.

But in doing so, every weapon falls. One is nothing more than a poor dying thing --and alone. We no longer succeed in praying with words, because the acrid breath of Satan chokes our jaws. Only our subconscious prays. It prays and it prays. Like the convulsive beating of a stabbed butterfly, it flutters its wings in agony, and every blow of its wing says: 'I believe, I hope, I love. I believe You all the same, I hope in You all the same, I love You all the same.'

It does not say: 'God.' It no longer dares to pronounce His Name. It feels itself too dirtied by Satan's nearness. But the tears of blood from its heart traces that Name on the angelic wings of its spirit which men call the subconscious, while in reality it is the super conscious. And at every blow of its wing that Name sparkles like a ruby struck by the sun, and God sees it. And the Tears of God's Pity surround with pearls the ruby of your blood that drips in heroic weeping...

Oh! souls who go up to God with that Name thus written in rubies and pearls!... Flowers of My Paradise!

Satan said to Me -- since that voice entered despite My every defence:

[August 7, 1943]
The Three Abodes of the Beyond
 

[July 20, 1943]

 Valtorta :

". . . It is since the evening of the 18th that the good Jesus shows me a horrifying, ugly beast, so horrifying that it disgusts me and I want to scream. And the good Jesus makes me understand that its appearance is always less than the reality, because no human reality could reach an exact imitation of supreme Beauty and supreme Ugliness.

Now I describe the ugly beast.

I seem to see a great hole: black, black, and very deep. I understand that it is very deep, but I do not see anything but its opening, completely occupied by a horrible monster. It's not a serpent, it's not a crocodile, it's not a dragon, it's not a bat, but it has something of all four [of these].

A long and pointed head without ears and with two sly and savage eyes which are always hunting for prey; a very wide mouth and armed with quite sharp teeth, always intent on catching in flight anything careless that arrives within range of its jaws. To sum up, its head has much the form of a serpent, and its teeth are like a crocodile's. A long and flexible neck allows much agility to the dreadful head.

An ugly, slippery body covered with skin like that of an eel, that is, without scales (to help you understand), with a color between rust, violet, dark grey. . . I really don't know. It even has the colour of leeches.

At its shoulders and at its haunches (I say 'haunches' because there its throbbing belly swollen with prey ends, and its long tail begins which terminates in a point), are attached four short and webbed paws like those of a crocodile. At its shoulders, two ugly bat-wings.

The ugly beast does not move its great, loathsome body. It only moves its tail, which writhes back and forth like an 'S,' and it moves its horrible head with its fascinating eyes and murdering jaws.

O Divine Mercy! What an ugly, awful beast! From its black den spurts darkness and horror. I assure you that yesterday, as I saw it with a very vivid accuracy -- and didn't understand what it was about to do -- the desire came to me to scream with disgust. A good thing that I saw it was never looking toward me as if from revulsion. A mutual revulsion if ever there was one. If this is a pale representation of Satan, what ever will he [really] be? It's to die twice over just to see him.

A good thing too that if, in one corner, was the awful beast, very near [also] was my Jesus: "black", beautiful, blond . . . Light in light! Comparing the luminous, comforting figure of Christ with that of the other, His most sweet, clear gaze with that wicked one of the other, is truly to weep with unhappy sinners destined for the second, [the beast], because they have rejected Jesus.

Well then, now that I have seen . . . I don't want to see him anymore because he is too ugly. I will pray that the least possible [number] of such unfortunate [sinners] end up in his clutches, but I pray the good God to take away from me this sight.

Today it is less vivid and I am most grateful to the Lord for that. And I am still more grateful that the dear Voice makes me understand the reason for that Vision which yesterday terrorized me, believing that it was destined for me as a warning.

JESUS :

"Consider [Maria] My Radiance and My Beauty with respect to the black monstrosity of the Beast.

Have no fear of looking even if it is a repulsive spectacle. You are within My arms. He cannot draw near and harm you. You see him? He does not even look at you. He already has so much prey to follow.

Now does it seem to you that it is worth your leaving Me to follow him? And yet the world follows him and leaves Me for him.

Look how glutted and throbbing he is. It is his hour for feasting. But look also at how he seeks out the shadow to act. He hates the Light, and he calls himself Lucifer! You see him, how he hypnotizes those who are not marked with My Blood? He heaps up his efforts because he knows that it is his hour and that My hour draws near in which he will be conquered eternally.

To increase his prey, his infernal cunning and Satanic intelligence are a constant working of Evil, in opposition to Our One and Triune working of Good. But cunning and intelligence would not prevail if My Blood and their honest will were in men. Man lacks too many things to have the weapons to oppose the Beast, and It knows that and acts openly, without even veiling Itself with a deceptive appearance.

Let Its loathsome ugliness push you to an always greater diligence and an always greater penitence. For you and for your unfortunate brothers who have a soul bereaved or seduced and do not see, or, seeing him, run to meet the Fiend, even to have his help for an hour, and to pay with an eternity of damnation."

[January 20, 1946]

[Note: Besides Dictations given her by Christ and the Virgin Mary, Valtorta also received Dictations from her personal Guardian Angel whose name, he told her, was "Azariah." Thus the following Dictation is from Valtorta's angel, Azariah, preceded by the short explanatory note below from Valtorta.  --Trans.]

Valtorta :

"While I work with the needle, I mentally contemplate the moral figure of Jesus Christ. I think that if I could have a picture painted of Him according to my own indications, and therefore the nearest possible to what His most holy Face as a Man was, I would want to have written beneath it a phrase which would be 'all' that Jesus of Nazareth was. I think of: 'Come to Me;' of: 'I am the Way - the Truth, the Life;' of: 'I am, do not fear.' But I feel that it is still not what my soul wants in order to indicate 'the Christ.' Azariah speaks to me:"

Azariah :

"Jesus is the Epitome of the love of the Three. Jesus is the Epitome of that which is the Most Holy Trinity and Unity of God. The Perfection of the Three is epitomized in only One. The infinite, multiform Perfection is epitomized in Jesus. An abyss of Perfection before which the Heavenly armies and blessed multitudes of Paradise prostrate themselves. An abyss of Love which could be and can be grasped and accepted only by those who possess love.

Whence here is the explanation of how that archangel [Lucifer] could become the Spirit of Evil, who was [formerly] a kind and holy spirit. --But not holy to the point of being all love. It is the measure of love which one has in oneself, that gives the measure of one's perfection and resistance to any corruption. When love is complete, nothing more can enter to corrupt one. That particle [of oneself] that does not love is an easy breach through which to be infiltrated with the first elements that are not love. And they force, widen, flood and submerge the good elements, until they kill them.

Lucifer had an incomplete measure of love. His self-complacency occupied a space in him, a space in which there could be no love. And it was the breach through which entered -- ruinously -- his depravity. Because of it, he could not grasp and accept the Christ-Love, the Epitome of the infinite, unique, Triune Love. And the fact that today the heresy is more widespread which denies the Divine Humanity of the Second Person and makes of Him [but] a simple good and wise man, is easily explained with this key: the lack of love in the human heart, the incapacity to love, the poverty of the possession of love.

Observe, my soul, that whether in the time of Christ or later in His era, for the man who could not believe if he were not humble and loving, there were always two points on which such a man's arrogant intellect halts: 1) that the Christ was God and Man and was performing only spiritual acts --and for these He was hated even by His own most intimate [followers], and therefore betrayed; and also: 2) that He created the Sacrament of Love. Then, now, always, those 'without love' said and will say, heretically, that God could not be in Jesus, and that Jesus could not be in the Most Holy and adorable Eucharist. Therefore, my soul, if you had to have one word written under the image of the Man-God, you should have this written: 'I am the Epitome of Love.'"

Valtorta :

"And holy Azariah is silent, adoring. What peace! What peace in me, what light, what sensation of mental well-being, of a thought that is calmed by an answer that totally persuades it. And after the angelic lesson these [feelings] continue! I close my notebook with my treasure, and turn to manual work while my mind, gratified, contemplates the lesson it has had.

I re-read it later, meditate and stop short at the phrase: 'Lucifer [was] not holy to the point of being all love.' In the sublime concept that I have of the angels I do not succeed in grasping how a spirit such as an angel is, would have been able to have anything lacking. My amazement before the sin of the angels has always been invincible! And no one has ever given me an explanation that persuaded me as to how some of these spiritual beings had been able to sin [when they were] created by the perfect Will of God in a creation in which the element of 'Evil,' not yet formed, was lacking, and who were contemplating the eternal Perfection, and That alone. And now the phrase: 'not holy [to the point] of being all love,' stops me, stirring up anew my: 'How can that be.' Holy Azariah says to me:"

Azariah :

"The angels are superior to men. I say 'men' in speaking of beings called thus, composed of matter and of spirit. We [angels], then, are superior, we [who are] all spirit. But recall that when Grace lives in man and [in him] circulates the Blood of the Mystical Body whose Head is Christ, and while the seven Sacraments strengthen him from birth to death for every state and for every phase of life, then in all of you -- 'living temples of the Lord,' -- we [angels] see the Lord and adore Him in you, and then you yourselves are superior to us: you are 'other Christs,' and you have what is called the 'Bread of angels' but is solely the Bread of men. What mystical, insatiable hunger for the Eucharist is in us, and how it makes us cleave to you when you nourish yourselves with It, so that we may smell the Divine fragrance of this perfect Food!

But to return to the initial point, I tell you that in the angels -- different in nature and perfection from all of you -- there is in the angels, as in you, free will. God has created no one a slave. In the beginning there was in creation only Order. But that Order does not exclude freedom. Rather in that Order is perfect freedom. To be exact, in such order there is not even the fear of an invasion, an intrusion, of the anarchy of other wills which could produce collusion and ruin that penetrate into the orbit and trajectory of other beings or created things. Thus it was for the whole Universe, before Lucifer abused his own freedom and with his own will put into himself the disorder of passions, so as to create disorder in that perfect Order. Had he been all love, he would have had no place in himself for anything that was not love. Instead he had a place for arrogant pride which could be called: the disorder of the intellect. Would God have been able to hinder this deed? Yes.  But why violate the free will of the most beautiful, most intelligent archangel? Would not He Himself, the Most Just, then have put disorder into His own ordered Thought? by no longer wanting what He had previously wanted: that is, the freedom of the archangel? God does not oppress a troubled spirit in order violently to place it in the impossibility of sinning. Lucifer's not sinning would then have had no merit. Even for us [angels] it was necessary 'to know how to want the Good' in order to continue to merit enjoying the vision of God, infinite Bliss!

As God had wanted this sublime archangel at His side in His first creative works, and wanted him to know about the future of His creation of love, so God wanted him to know the adorable and sorrowful necessity that his sin would have imposed on God: the Incarnation and Death of a God to counterbalance the ruin from the Sin that would have been created should Lucifer not have conquered pride in himself. Love could not but speak this language. God's first annihilation is in this act of wanting to bend sweetly, gently, this proud [archangel]; and with the vision of what his pride would have imposed on God, almost imploring him not to sin, and thus bring others to sin. It was an act of love. Lucifer, already become a Satan, took this act as fear, weakness and an insult, as a declaration of war. And he stirred up war against the Most Perfect, saying:

'You are? I also am. Whatever You made, it was for me You made it. There is no God. And if there is a God, I am [he]. I adore myself. I detest You. I refuse to recognize as my Lord One Who does not know how to conquer me. You should not have created me so perfect if You wanted no rivals. Now I am and I am against You. Conquer me, if You can. But I do not fear You.  I, too, will create; and because of me Your Creation will tremble, for I will shake it like a shred of cloud caught by the winds. For I hate You and I want to destroy whatever is Yours, to create upon its ruins that which will be mine. I neither know nor recognize any other power outside of myself. And I no longer adore, no longer adore, NO LONGER ADORE any other than myself.'

Truly then in Creation, in all Creation, from the lowest [form] to the very depths, there was a horrendous convulsion from the horror of these sacrilegious words. A convulsion such as will not [again] be until the end of Creation. And from it was born Hell: the kingdom of Hate.My soul, do you understand how Evil was born? From a free will, and, being respected as such by God, from one who was not 'all love.' And believe it: upon every fault which is committed from then on is this judgment: 'Here there is not all love.' Complete love forbids one to sin; and without any effort. He who loves does not toil to reach justice! Love carries him above all the mire and dangers, and from moment to moment purifies him from barely apparent imperfections that are still there in the last step of consummate holiness: in that state in which the spirit is so [far] developed as to be truly a king, already united by spiritual marriage to its Lord, enjoying but one step less than that which is the life of the blessed in Heaven: so much does God give Himself and reveal Himself to His blessed child.

Glory to the Father, to the Son, to the Holy Spirit."

 

[March 4, 1944 - 2:00 a.m.]

[Valtorta]:

[To her spiritual director]: "...The torment began again, until toward 2:00 a.m., after the contemplation of the Passion of the Lord ended and my terrible headache had calmed down a little bit (a little, you know?), there sounded within me a name: 'Saint Fenicola.' Who is she? Unknown. Did she truly exist? Bah! Who ever heard of her! And I was trying to sleep. Useless! 'Saint Fenicola.' 'Saint Fenicola.' 'Here there is no sleeping,' I told myself, 'until I know who she is.' And thanks to the diminished pain which allowed me now to move myself -- while from 3:00 p.m. till midnight and beyond as my body, which suffered intermittently, yet I could not even open my eyes -- had disheartened me and made me inert..., I took an Index of the saints and found that, along with St. Petronilla (virgin), it carries St. Felicola (virgin-martyr). I heard it said as "Fenicola", but perhaps I misunderstood. Simultaneous with this discovery, I saw a young naked woman bound to a pillar in an atrocious manner. More later..."]

[March 4, 1944 - evening]

Valtorta:

"I see two young women in prayer. A very ardent prayer which must truly penetrate into the heavens. One is more mature; she seems about 30 years old. The other must be just passed 20. Both of them seem in perfect health. Then they rise and prepare a little altar upon which they lay precious linens and flowers.

A man enters, clothed like the Romans of that era, whom the two young women greet with greatest veneration. He removes from his breast a pouch from which he draws out all that is necessary to celebrate a Mass. Then he vests himself with priestly vestments and begins the Sacrifice. I do not understand the Gospel very well, but it seems to me it is that of Mark: 'And they presented to Him some babies... who will not receive the Kingdom of God as a child will not enter there.' The two young women, kneeling near the altar, pray ever more fervently. The Priest consecrates the Species and then turns to give Communion to the two faithful women, beginning with the eldest, whose face is seraphic with ardour. Then he gives Communion to the other one. She, after receiving the Species, prostrates on the ground in deep prayer, and they seem to remain thus from pure devotion.

But after the celebration of the rite --which is the same as that of Paul in the Tullianum, only here the celebrant speaks very softly, given that there are only these two faithful [present]; this is why I understand the Gospel less -- when the Priest turns, blesses and descends from the altar placed on a wooden platform, after he descends from the altar only one of the two young women move. The other remains prostrate as before. Her companion calls her and shakes her. Even the Priest bends down. They lift her. Already the pallor of death is on her face, her half-lifeless eye sinks beneath her eyelid, her mouth breathes with difficulty. But what bliss on that face!

They lay her down on a kind of long seat that is near a window opened onto a courtyard in which a fountain sings, and they seek to help her. But, gathering up her strength, she raises one hand and points toward the sky and says but two words: 'Thank you...Jesus,' and without an agony, she expires. All that does not explain to me how it pertains to the young woman tied to the pillar whom I saw tonight and who, however much more pale and emaciated, dishevelled and tortured, seems to me so much like the survivor who now weeps near the dead woman. And I remain thus, in my uncertainty, for some hours. Only now that it is evening do I again find the weeping young woman of earlier, now standing near the fountain of the stern courtyard in which only some small flowerbeds of lilies are cultivated, and upon the walls rise some rosebushes all in bloom.

The young woman speaks with a young Roman:

'It is useless for you to insist, O Flaccus. I am grateful to you for your respect and remembrance that you have for my dead friend. But I cannot console your heart. If Petronilla is dead, it was a sign that she should not be your bride. But neither should I. There are so many young girls of Rome who would be happy to become the ladies of your house. Not I. Not on your account. But because I have decided not to contract marriage. ''Have you too caught the foolish craze of so many followers of a handful of Hebrews?' 'I have decided -- and I believe I am not a fool -- not to contract marriage.' 'And if I wanted you?' 'If it is true that you love and respect me, I do not believe that you would force my liberty as a Roman citizen. But you would leave me follow my desire, [continuing] to have for me the good friendship that I have for you.' 'Oh no! Already one [of you] has escaped me. You will not escape me.' 'She died, Flaccus. Death is a force superior to us, not a flight of someone from their destiny. She did not kill herself. She died.... ' 'Through your sorceries! I know you are Christians and I should have denounced you to the Tribunal of Rome. But I preferred to think of you as my brides. Now for the last time I ask you: Do you want to be the wife of the noble Flaccus? I swear to you that it is better for you to enter as the lady of my house and leave the demonic worship of your poor god, rather than to know the severity of Rome which does not permit its gods to be insulted. Be my bride and you will be happy. Otherwise....'

'I cannot be your bride. I am consecrated to God. To my God. I cannot adore idols: I who adore the true God. Do with me what you will. You can do everything to my body. But my soul is God's and I do not sell it for the joys of your house. ''This is your last word?' 'My last.' 'You know that my love can be changed into hate?' 'God forgive you for that. On my part I will love you always as a brother and pray for your good.' 'And as for me, I will hurt you. I will denounce you. You will be tortured. Then you will call on me. Then you will understand that the house of Flaccus is better than the foolish teachings with which you nourish yourself.' 'I will understand that the world has need of these teachings, so as not to have any more Flaccuses. And I will do you good by praying for you from the Kingdom of my God.' 'Accursed Christian! To the prisons! To starvation! Let your Christ satisfy you if he can.'

I have the impression that the prisons are near enough to the house of the virgin because the road is short; and also that the noble Flaccus is more or less a detective for the Supervisor of Rome because, when the vision (changing its appearance) brings me back to the room already seen above, with the young woman tied to a pillar, I see that it is a tribunal like that in which Agnes was judged. There are very few differences, and even here there is an ugly mug who judges and condemns, and for whom Flaccus acts as a helper and goad.

Fenicola, taken out of the cage where she was, is brought into the middle of the room. Her strength seems exhausted, but she is still so dignified. As much as the light dazzles her, and weak as she is and habituated now to the dark prison, she holds herself erect and smiles. The usual questions and the usual offerings followed by the usual responses: 'I am a Christian. I do not sacrifice to another god who is not my Lord Jesus Christ.'

She is condemned to the pillar. They snatch off her garments and, naked in the presence of the people, they tie her hands and feet behind one of the pillars of the Tribunal. To do this they dislocate her hips and also dislocate her arms. The torture must be atrocious. And even that is not enough: but they twist the cords at her wrists and at her ankles, they strike her on her breast and on her naked belly with rods and whips, they twist her flesh with pincers, and other tortures so atrocious I cannot stand to repeat them. Every so often they ask her if she wants to sacrifice to the gods. Fenicola, with an always weaker voice, responds:

'No. To Christ. To Him only. Now that I begin to see Him, and every torture brings Him nearer, you want me to lose Him? Complete your work. That I may have my complete love. Sweet nuptials in which Christ is the Bridegroom and I His bride! The dream of all my life!'

When they untie her from the pillar, she falls as if dead on the ground. Her limbs dislocated, perhaps even broken, do not support her anymore, do not respond to any command of her mind. Her poor hands, sawed at the wrists by the cords which have made two little bracelets of living blood, hang down as if dead. Her feet, also torn at the ankles, even to showing the nerves and tendons, seem clearly to be broken from the way they are bent back in an unnatural manner. But her face is full of an angelic happiness. Tears descend on her bloodless cheeks, but her eye laughs, absorbed in a vision which enraptures her. Her jailers, or better her executioners, kick her with their feet, and as if she were a sack so unclean it cannot be touched, they push her with their feet toward the predella of the Supervisor.

'Are you still alive?' 'Yes, by the Will of my Lord.'''You still insist? You truly want death?' 'I want Life. Oh! my Jesus, open Heaven to me! Come, eternal Love!' 'Throw her in the Tiber! The water will calm her ardors.'

The executioners pick her up rudely. The torture of her broken limbs must be atrocious. But she smiles. They wrap her in her garments, not out of modesty but to prevent her from controlling herself in the water. A useless concern! With one's limbs in that state, one does not swim! Only her head emerges from the tangle of the garments. Her poor body, thrown over the shoulder of an executioner, hangs as if already dead. But the light of the torches (since it is now evening), she smiles. Having reached the Tiber river, they seize her like an animal to be killed and, from the height of the bridge, hurl her into the dark water, in which she re-surfaces twice, and then sinks without a shout."

COMMENTARY ON THE VISION

JESUS:

"I wanted to make My martyr Fenicola known to you in order to give to you and to all some instruction.

You saw the power of prayer in the death of Petronilla -- who was the much older companion and teacher of Fenicola -- and the fruit of their holy friendship. Petronilla, spiritual daughter of Peter, had absorbed from the living word of My Apostle the spirit of Faith. Petronilla: the joy, the Roman pearl of Peter. His first Roman conquest: she who, through her respectful and loving devotion to the Apostle, consoled him for all the sorrows of his Roman evangelization.

Peter, out of love for Me, had left house and family. But He who does not lie had caused him to find in this young woman and in a manner that was superabundant, heaped up, pressed down, according to My promises: comfort, care, feminine sweetness. As I did at Bethany, he in the house of Petronilla found help, hospitality and, above all, love. Under all the heavens and in all epochs, woman is the same in her good and in her evil. Petronilla was the Mary of Peter, with the addition of her purity of a young girl whom Baptism, received while her innocence had not yet known any abuse, had brought to angelic perfection.

Maria, listen: Petronilla, wanting to love her Master with all of herself without her beauty and the world being able to disturb this love, had prayed her God to crucify her. And God heard her. Paralysis crucified her angelic limbs. In her long infirmity in a land bathed with sorrow her virtues blossomed, and especially her love for My Mother. Listen again, Maria: When it was necessary, her sickness knew a pause. To show that God is Master of the miracle. And afterward, when that moment was ended, it returned to crucify her. Do you know no other, Maria, to whom her Master, like Peter to Petronilla, does not say when He needs her: 'Rise, write, be strong,' and when the Master's need has ceased, she turns back into a poor infirm woman in perpetual agony?

After the Apostle had died and Petronilla was healed, she found that her life was no longer her own. But Christ's. She was not of those who, after obtaining the miracle, use it to offend God. But she used her health for the interests of God. Your lives are always Mine. I give them to you. You should all remember that. I give them to you as animal life, causing you to be born and keeping you alive. I give them to you as spiritual life with Grace and the Sacraments. You should remember that always, and make good use of them. When later I restore your health, when I cause you to be reborn as after a fatal sickness, you should remember still more that that life, blossoming again when the flesh already knew the tomb, is Mine. And through this grateful recognition use it in the Good.

Petronilla knew how to do that. It was not uselessly that she absorbed My Doctrine. It is like salt that preserves from harm, from corruption; It is a flame that warms and illumines, It is food that nourishes and fortifies, It is faith that gives security. There comes a trial, the assault of temptation, the threat of the world. Petronilla prays. She calls God. She wants to be God's. The world wants her? God defends her from the world.

The Christ has said: 'If you have as much faith as a grain of mustard seed, you can say to this mountain: "Arise and go further over".' Peter said it to her so many times. She does not ask for the mountain to be moved. She asks God to take her from the world before a trial beyond her strength crush her. And God listens to her. He makes her die in an ecstasy. In an ecstasy, Maria, before the trial crushes her. Remember this fact, My little disciple. Fenicola was a friend. More than a friend: a daughter or sister, given the little difference of about 10 years in age. Nor did she live with the holy Petronilla without being sanctified herself. As one may not [necessarily] be spoiled by living with one who is spoiled. If the world would only remember this truth! But the world instead disregards the saints or brutalizes them, and follows the Satans, becoming always more itself a Satan.

You saw the firmness and sweetness of Fenicola. What is hunger for one who has Christ as his food. What is torture for one who loves the Martyr of Calvary? What is death for one who knows that death opens the gate to Life? My martyr Fenicola is unknown to Christians of today. But she is well known to the angels of God who see her joyous in Heaven behind the Divine Lamb. I wanted to make her known to you [Maria], so as to be able to talk to you also of her spiritual teacher [Petronilla], and to encourage you to suffer. Repeat with her: 'Now indeed amid these sorrows I begin to see my Spouse Jesus, in Whom I have placed all my love,' --and think that for you also I raised up another Nicomedes to save from the waters of your passions your I [i.e., ego, self], which I wanted for Myself, and to gather up as much of you as merits to be preserved: that which is Mine, that which can work for the good of the souls of your brethren."

[June 12, 1944]

JESUS :

"In order, Maria, to make you forget men who are always wild beasts ready to wound the least of men among them -- always wild beasts, even if not wicked in the true sense of the word, always biting the souls if not the flesh of those who, in order to be 'Mine,' are less apt to return bite for bite and claw for claw -- come, for I want to make you contemplate the stars.

I wanted to make you contemplate them yesterday evening. But you were so wounded that you could only weep and suffer upon My Heart, and I had held you there without imposing any other fatigue on you apart from that which was, not 'Mine,' but from cruel humanity.

Maria, I have said to you that in the life of victims, to live without any imbalance, it is necessary to put oneself resolutely on the spiritual level. To see, to think, to act in all as if one acts in the kingdom of the spirit. That is, in an eternity which always says: 'Now.'

Those of you who live by the spirit, what do you want to consider things according to the flesh for? What have you asked of God? To make of you spiritual creatures. And spiritual creatures who are like God: in what time do they live? --In God's Time. What kind of time is God's Time? An Eternal Present. An Eternal 'Now.' In Heaven, for your Eternal Father, there is no past, there is no future. There is the Eternal Moment.

God knows no birth and no death, no dawn and no sunset, no beginning and no end. The angels, spiritual like Him, know but 'One Day.' A Day which had its beginning from the moment in which they were created and which will know no end. The saints, from the moment when they are born into Heaven, become possessors of this unchangeable Time of Heaven which knows no running on. It is fixed in its splendour of a diamond ignited by God, and in the epochs of the world which rotate around this Time's unchangeable fixity, like the planets around the sun: some now prevailing and some now disintegrating, while this unchangeable Time is always there, and will always be. How long? Forever.

Think, Maria. If you could count all the grains of sand that are in the seas of the whole globe, on the bottoms and on the shores of the lakes, of the ponds, of the rivers, the streams, the creeks, and you said to Me: 'change them into that many days,' you would still have a limit to this number of days. Join to them all the drops of water that are in the seas, in the lakes, in the rivers, the streams, the brooks, those that tremble on the foliage bathed by the rain or the dew, and join also to them the water in the alpine snows, in the wandering clouds, in the glaciers which clothe with crystals the mountain peaks, and you would still have a limit to this number of days.

And join to them as well all the molecules which form the planets, the stars and the nebulas, all that flies through the firmament and fills it with the music that only the angels hear -- because while in its course, every astral body sings, like a shining harpist running his hands over harps of blue, it sings the praises of its Creator, and the firmament is full of this concert of an immense organ -- still, Maria, you would have a limited number of days.

Then join to them also the dust buried in the earth -- dust which is earth of men who with their matter have returned to nothing, and which for hundreds of centuries awaits the command to turn back into man and see the triumph of God -- and there are billions and billions of atoms of man-dust, belonging to billions of men who believed themselves to be so much, and now for centuries and centuries are nothing, and the world does not even know that they lived -- and still you would have a limited number of days.

The Kingdom of God is eternal, as its King. And Eternity knows only one word: 'Now'. And you too, Maria, and all those made sacred as a holocaust, must know this sole word for measuring the time of suffering.

'Now'. For how long do I suffer? From Now. When will it cease? Now. The present. For spiritual creatures there is only that which is of God. Time also. Learn, before that moment comes, to calculate time as you will possess it in Paradise: Now. Oh! Blessed that time which is unchangeable contemplation of God Who is unchangeable Joy! 'Life is the blink of an eye, the time of earth has lasted but for a breath. But My Heaven is eternal.' Behold what should be the harmony that rules your song as martyred and blessed creatures.    *

Now: look. And consider with Me. See how many astral bodies shine in the serene velvet of the nocturnal heavens? Millions. It seems their light speaks mysterious words. I, Man, in My solitary nights, lost Myself in contemplating the stars. With My gazing, and more with My soul, I immersed Myself among those flower-beds of light: passing from flower to flower, matching the grandeurs and colors of those stellar corollas, comparing the charms of their [varied] brilliance. And it pleased Me to think that, as the flowers in the fields and gardens, softly waving in the wind of morning or of evening, communicate to each other with words of perfume: so up there, from star to star go secret words of light; and that every interruption in their brilliance, every more vivid flash, every ceasing of their rays, were so many periods to a sentence, so many assents to a question, so many discourses of a most fiery orator -- and all said for the praise of God's magnificence.

The stars! So distant and so near! Millions and millions of miles distant, flying like birds of fire through the boundless fields of the heavens, and yet so visible to the eye of man, in order to say to him: 'Believe in God. We too are a proof of His existence.' You might say that with a little toil one could reach out and touch them, so near do they seem some evenings. And yet, a fool would be he who thinks he could do so, even by climbing the highest summits of the globe. Whether man contemplates them from the flattest plain, or raises his gaze to them from the tops of Asiatic mountains on which even the eagle lives with difficulty, so rarefied the air from the altitude; or again whether by raising himself aloft -- through one of those means which are proof of human intelligence, but which you men know not how to use except for barbarity, and you therefore pollute that intelligence with infernal hate -- man can never see them nearer, and so much the less reach them. The more he rises aloft, the more do they also plunge themselves deeper into space; and there, pulsating, throbbing, they say:

'We, sons of God, are not for you, because you contaminate us with your fallen humanity. We, creatures of God, are only a spark from the Ocean of Light which is the Kingdom of God. To reach the true Star, to know Its Light, you have but to strip yourselves of all your humanity. Thus will you know God, because He reveals Himself to one who loves Him and who, in that love, consumes his man-self and makes his soul-self reign. Then, after a short life, you will possess Him for Eternal Life. We, the billions of stars, we will know death. You will not know it, if you make yourselves sons of God.'

See how God loves each of you, how He loves you, Maria. Write it very clearly and underline it, so that you see it well. How God Loves you. No man, by any means, can reach even a little star nearest the earth, humblest in its fire. But God grants you, since He loves you and since you love Him, to reach Him, to know Him, to immerse yourself in His Fire. And think that there is less distance between the earth and the stars, than between the stars and the throne of God. They are the immense pavement of the Celestial City: its foundation even more than its pavement. Up, up, much higher up, to inconceivable heights -- since they do not respond to human measures -- is that blessed Kingdom of which the Trinity is Lord and in which is prepared a place for one who loves. But since the loving haste of God knows no delay, He, anticipating that time, sucks each of you into Himself, with your spirit, gives Himself to you with His Fire.

And what does human meanness matter to you? Leave it to humans. Come. You have God who loves you, Maria. All the rest is nothing. Nothing can serve to reach God -- the Eternal Star. Only love serves for this: higher than the highest summit, mightier than the mightiest means, love, with its power -- unlimited because spiritual -- joins each of you to God, makes you know Him. It is enough that your concern be to love completely. Make love the only effort of your life. Do not lose yourselves in other quests. Seek to possess love and to cultivate it, make it always grow by nourishing it without laziness and without fear. Make of it a pyre: the flame rises, the flame shines, the flame sings. Rise toward God. Shine in the love that ignites you. Sing your love. Return to God what He has put into your hearts to make you like unto Him: The capacity to love.

God is love. Who has not love in himself, has no likeness with God."

The following excerpt, given to Valtorta on the date indicated, is appended here from the critical Italian edition of Valtorta's great Work, Il Poema Dell'Uomo-Dio[The Poem of the Man-God]. It is part of a vision from that Work in which Christ is conversing with His apostle, Simon the Leper or Zealot, out under the stars on the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple, today known as Hanukkah. According to a number of statements both by Christ and Mary throughout the Poem, this Feast of the Dedication or Renewal of the Temple at Jerusalem, occurring on the 25th of the Moon (month) Kislev (or Casleau) -- which included the last half of November and the first half of December of our calendar -- was actually the true day of Christ's birth. Hence the Feast of Hanukkah, or Dedication/Renewal, is the actual anniversary of Christ's Birth. -- Translator

[March 22, 1945]

JESUS :

"Look at the heavens, Simon. You see there stars and starlets, and planets of differing magnitude. All have life and splendour from God who made them and from the sun which illumines them, but not all are equally splendid and great.

In My Heaven, too, it will be so. All the redeemed will have life from Me and splendour from My Light. But not all will be equally splendid and great. Some will be simple star-dust, like that which causes Galathea [the Milky Way] to be milky, and these will be the countless ones who have had from Christ --or better: who have aspired only to that indispensable minimum, in order not to be damned; and only through the infinite mercy of God, after a long Purgatory, will they come to Heaven.

Others will be brighter and better formed: the just who have united their own will -- note: their will, not good will -- to what Christ wills, and have obeyed My words. Then there will be the planets, those of good will, Oh! the brightest ones: those with the light of a pure diamond, or with gem-like splendours of varied colours: ruby reds, violets of the amethyst, yellows of topaz, the "black"s of the pearl -- those enamoured by love even unto death; those who are penitents out of love; those who worked out of love, those who are immaculate out of love.

And there will be some of them, these planets -- and they will be My glory as Redeemer -- who will have in themselves the brilliance of the ruby as well as of the amethyst, the topaz and the pearl, because all will be out of love. Heroes, for reaching the point of forgiving themselves for not having known how to love before; penitent, through saturating themselves with expiations as did Esther with her fragrances, before presenting herself to Ahasuerus; untiring in doing in a little time -- the little that remains to them -- what they did not do in the years they wasted in sin; pure to the point of heroism in forgetting, even in their very bowels, besides in their soul and thoughts, that the senses even exist. It will be these who, by their manifold splendour, will attract the eyes of believers, of the pure, of penitents, of the martyrs, of heroes, of ascetics, of sinners. And for each of these categories, their splendour will be a word, an answer, an invitation, an assurance...."