My Naked Passion (From April 9 on)
1. I see only St. Joseph, who is looking at me with great mercy, but not speaking. And in the usual corner opposite my bed (April 10).
2. I see Our Lady dressed in white, with the blue band, as at Lourdes. She is praying on the lefthand side of my bed, but not speaking. St. Joseph approaches, however, and caresses my head, saying, “Pray, daughter.” I obey, weeping and hoping again (April 11).
3. On emerging from an eleven-hour sopor, this morning at seven I hear the Lord murmuring a prayer to the Crucified One, as if to dictate it to me. But though I distinctly hear it, I cannot write it in the state I am in, and my exhausted mind does not retain it. It is thus lost. But I hope, as before, until the evening. Then the torment takes hold of me again, and I rave furiously. Oh, how ugly Hell is! I remain like that until 3 a.m., the hour at which Father wants to give me Communion. Calm is restored (April 12).
4. As I pray (10 a.m.), Jesus says, “Remember when I spoke to you about possessions.”304 I cannot remember anything in my current state. Jesus speaks, but I see nothing. I spend the day amidst the ups and downs of torture. But at 12 such an agony takes hold of me that I rave even more furiously than at 12. They have all disappeared - Jesus, Mary, Joseph. All of them...! Desperation and desolation (April 13).
5. After a restless night, I rested at dawn. But I reawaken to feel the torture again. It is not delirium, but exasperating, cold reason. Father wants to give me Communion. My heart is so closed and hostile that I regard it as virtually sacrilegious. Communion slowly pacifies everything, to the point where I can pray again with joy and hear Jesus - I hear and do not see Him - who says to me, “Now you could describe my agony in Gethsemane.” Oh, I could certainly describe it! But I think I never will. Only those who have experienced it can understand it. For others it would be blasphemy. Sweating blood? I am amazed that He was not left dead against that mass of stone. Crushed by the weight of the inhuman trial (April 14).
6. When I consider that today, April 15, I won’t be receiving Communion, I feel demoralized. It already seems to me that I can’t resist and am relapsing into that atrocious torment.... It is 1:40 a.m. I am alone, for Martha is not in the house tonight. If the torment overcomes me, what shall I do? I am not the mistress of myself in those moments. I said it was not necessary for anyone to sleep with me. But I am afraid of myself. Not of a heart crisis. Die? If only I were to! But of desperation. I feel so bad. I prayed to Our Lady of Sorrows for an hour. Now I will do what I could not do tomorrow as penance, what I haven’t been able to do since Tuesday. But I must fight against the thought “I am sacrificing myself to no avail.” I feel it growing and don’t want it to take hold of me. I want to beseech the Mercy of God through boundless trust.
At 11:10, as I pray to overcome the works of the devil affecting this poor humanity (this is the time of air-raid warnings, and the bombs are falling nearby), I hear a voice which I recognize and remember, which says a sentence to me already uttered to our Lord: “Worship me, and I will help you in all things and always. You will be happy.”305 I reply, “No. Never. By my will, never. If I later go mad from the pain of being rejected by God, I may even do so. But as long as I can reason, I won’t. Torment me, but I won’t give in.” This new battle (and you306 can’t imagine how sweet the temptation was, just as he presented it) confirms for me who the cause of my present intense suffering is. Notice that I was holding the cross. But is he not afraid even of that, now? On my knees were the images of Our Lady of Fatima and St. Joseph. But is he no longer afraid of anything? One day Jesus said to me, “Answer with my own words.” I replied, “Begone, Satan. It is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him alone.’ ”307 But how long will this trial last? (April 15).
7. I have reread the dictations. It is a balm. But is it really me that received them? And how can I no longer feel any of that sweetness now? I read “Jesus and the Children”308 and wept on recalling my joy that evening, when Jesus seemed to give me his hand to observe. How far away all that is! Now, close to death, I no longer have a bit of such great good. Nothing any more. And I am afraid. I have been rebellious. I have failed to be resigned. I have displeased God, my Jesus! I do not forgive myself. But if He does not help me in this horrendous hour for me, how can I come out of it victoriously by myself? I am suffering so completely and inhumanely that no word can describe it. I no longer feel protected by God. I am afraid, afraid! Afraid of everything. Afraid of Earth and of Heaven. Afraid of myself and of Satan, who wants to tear me away from God. Afraid.... (April 16).
8. And I consider that you are not here and that I won’t be receiving Communion. I consider that from now on this will be the situation every day.309 Oh, my Bread, you that were my joy and that I am now losing, that I will now receive so infrequently! Now that I am dying, how can I remain without You? (April 17).
9. Last night, in the greatest desolation, because I had seen even the last thread of hope I had left - which I tried to render unbreakable by surrounding it with pained, but constant faith and prayer - being broken, the Redeemer appeared to me in the robes given Him by Herod to mock him,310 already scourged and crowned with thorns and with his hands bound. He was coming towards me, looking at me with intensity and pain. The Redeemer! Before I called Him “Jesus” with sweet affectionateness. I now call Him “Lord.” I call Him “God.” I call Him “Redeemer.” Lovely names. But too formal. And I can no longer call Him “Jesus” with my former familiarity. He did not speak. He leaves me in the torture without giving me the slightest comfort. It is too much! Nothing gives me peace. I feel that reason is tottering (April 18).
10. Oh, God! You have really abandoned me! Not even receiving You brings me peace. Where are You? (April 19).
April 20. After so much silence, the Blessed Woman says, “You have contemplated Me from birth to death. You have been mine as the daughter of the Child Mary, mine as the daughter of the Queen of Heaven, and mine as the daughter of the Lady of Sorrows. I have wanted you to be mine in three different congregations so that you would always love Me. My daughter! I am close to your tears. Abandon yourself to Me.” I heard this while kissing the image of Mary Most Holy as a Child. Immediately afterwards the letter from Sister Isa311 arrived.
April 21. Even that thread of union has disappeared. Why, then, so much abandonment?
April 22. Nothing. Harsher and harsher desolation.
April 23. Nothing. My desolation grows more bitter. I beseech Mary alone because I can do nothing else, for I feel Her to be merciful, even if She is absent and not free to intervene on my behalf.
April 24. Rebelliousness takes hold of me again. I should say “Rebelliousness,” for it is Satan that slams me about wrathfully to tear me away from God and lead me to, first, spiritual, then physical, madness. I leave my house at 3:30 p.m....312 And my mortally wounded spirit remains there. Maria the spokesman no longer exists. God’s instrument has been broken by God’s inexorableness. No one can understand this. No one. And they all say customary words; they all maintain meaningless arguments which are “counterarguments” because the facts, in their brutal reality, nullify them and cause their unreality to shine out more than ever. Though in my tremendous hour, amidst total sufferings which only God knows - if God goes so far as to concern Himself still with the worm He has crushed, the poor worm that thought it was destined to become a butterfly because of the love which nourished it for Love and which was instead rejected with repugnance by Love - I still squeeze out a prayer for peace, for Paola, and to bend God to have mercy on me. Nothing.
April 25. A tremendous night. A tremendous day. At 12 another separation from Father Migliorini, which brings everything to a head again. I call Mary. But She also seems not to exist. There is no more Heaven for me.
April 26. I see a crucifix. But not Jesus on the cross. A crucified one of wood on his wooden cross. An emblem. Not Him, as I saw Him before. It looks to me like one of those Crucifixes placed along the roads, like the ones I hailed the day before yesterday, dying, in the car. For, even if He does not love me, I love Him, and this lack of love from Him is the greatest, most surprising torment for me, who would never, ever have thought I would have to convince myself that Jesus no longer loves me.
April 27. The physical, moral, and spiritual sufferings are building up, and so are the acts of restiveness. Everything makes me suffer. Even the sight of flowers - which I so loved before - leaves me indifferent now; rather, it brings me to tears. I want nothing because I don’t have God. I reread Sister M. Gabriella,313 and more than ever I feel equal to her in pain. The climate, the air, the light, the water - everything does me harm. The small events which are the result of the cruel evacuation make my suffering more acute. I cry all day long until I am exhausted. I hear the others laughing and joking. I see them remaining distant without mercy. By “the others,” I mean my relatives. For I have no wish for strangers. What I foresaw is coming true. Confined down here, I am a forgotten person. So willingly forgotten now that I am no longer the one who offers hospitality and consoles, but the one who must look after herself and be consoled. And God does not come. I pray, as Father tells me to. But God does not come. It drives me mad with pain. And yet, though in these conditions, I renew the offering of myself for the usual purposes: Peace, the Kingdom of Jesus, and so on and so forth, introducing as the only reservation this one: “Let me go back to my house.” Even Sister Gabriella introduced one reservation, and she was an angelic creature. I, too, can include it. One should not demand from a human soul what is impossible. And those preaching a total gift without reservations are precisely the ones who on their own are unable to offer even a scratch.
April 28. I am in the same condition.
April 29. The local priest314 comes; he was not sought by me - for I know it’s useless - but by Paola, who has the illusion that this will relieve me. Out of respect for his dignity, I receive him with honor. But he leaves me in the previous state.
April 30. A desolating day of pain. Communion leaves me as dry as a stone and more than ever without comfort. Heaven is closed. I weep over my wretchedness throughout the day. God has abandoned me, and men increase my anxiety by showing themselves in this circumstance to be biting, indifferent, and lacking in understanding. But, above all, biting. Last night it seemed to me that Heaven was approaching, for, by mental sight, I saw Our Lady appear to me, alive, at the top of a tree which looked like an elm. But it was an instant. Then darkness as before and the silence which has been haunting me for twenty days. But am I the one who heard so many words and saw so many things? But was I mad then? But am I possessed, now that I no longer deserve anything else? I do not demand special graces. I have always rejected them out of fear. But at least the comfort of the union with God which I had been enjoying since April 23, 1943. And yet I pray. Without feeling any more joy in it, but I pray. When I see this bell tower315 in the mirror or hear its chiming, I adore the Cross or say the Regina Coeli. But, like a wound in my throat, the water of prayer does not descend to quench the thirst of my heart. It flees, in spite of the fact that I, dying, draw close to this fount.
304 See July 3, 1943, in The Notebooks. 1943.
305 The episode involving Jesus’ being tempted by the devil is found in the cycle on The First Year of the Public Life.
306 She is addressing Father Migliorini.
307 Matthew 4:10; Luke 4:8.
308 See the vision on February 7.
309 Perhaps because of the imxninent evacuation.
310 Matthew 27:27-31; Mark 15:16-19; Luke 23:11; John 19:2-3.
311 It is almost certainly a sister at the Bianconi School in Monza, where the writer had studied from 1909 to 1913.
312 1944 was marked by eight months of evacuation which forced Maria Valtorta to leave her house in Viareggio and take refuge in St. Andrea di Compito, a hamlet in the municipality of Capannori in the Province of Lucca. In this note we group together the useful data to understand the references to events and persons in that period, in which the writings from April to December 1944 are situated. Since July 29, 1943 her Belfanti relatives, evacuated from Reggio Calabria, had already been living as guests at the Valtorta house in Viareggio - Giuseppe, her mother’s cousin; his daughter, Paola; and Anna, nicknamed Titina, Giuseppe’s second wife and Paola’s stepmother. One evening in the autumn of 1943 there was added to these young Luigi, known as Gigi, Giuseppe’s son and Paola’s brother, who had escaped from the Germans and sought a safe refuge. It was then that they thought for the first time of St. Andrea di Compito, where Marta Diciotti knew people and Gigi moved at once, remaining there until March 1944, when a lucky break enabled him to go to Rome, the first stage of his return to Reggio Calabria. On April 10, 1944 a friend came to the Valtorta house with the confidential information that obligatory evacuation would be decreed for the residents of Viareggio, to be effected by the end of the month. When, after a few days, the news was officially confirmed, Maria Valtorta and Marta Diciotti, with the three members of the Belfanti family, were already arranging a move to St. Andrea di Compito, regarded as a suitable place after the previous experience. For practical reasons Camaiore, a locality which Maria would have preferred, had been excluded. On April 24, 1944, at about 3:30 p.m., Maria left in an old rented Balilla, not having wanted the risk of asking the German Command for an ambulance. The infirm woman was placed as comfortably as possible on the back seat of the car, and Paola sat beside her. Father Migliorini accompanied her, sitting alongside the driver; he had oil for the Anointing of the Sick with him. Anna, nicknamed Titina, also left at that time, but traveled on the truck transporting the furniture from the Valtorta household. Marta and Giuseppe, for their part, left five days later, going by train to Tassignano and reaching St. Andrea di Compito on foot. There the family group, with the little dog Toi and the cage with birds, was reunited in the house of the married couple Settimo and Eleonora Giovanetti. Father Migliorini, who left for his convent in Viareggio on April 25, is thought to have visited St. Andrea di Compito a few times during those eight months of evacuation to see Maria Valtorta, to whom the local pastor, Father Narciso Fava often brought Communion. Maria also received visits from Father Pennoni (from Viareggio); Father Fantoni ( from Lucca), who brought news from Father Migliorìni; Sister Gabriella, a Stigmatine from Camaiore; and other people who were there as a result of the evacuation, both friends from Viareggio, such as the Lucarinis, and new acquaintances. In St. Andrea di Compito, in the midst of hidden manifestations and complex sufferings documented by the writings included in this work, the infirm Maria Valtorta continued the mission as a writer she had commenced the year before, which began to be enriched with passages pertaining to her major work on the Gospel, which are also documented in this volume. Because of varied needs, Marta Diciotti visited Lucca from time to time, in a kind of stagecoach or on foot. She stopped by Viareggio for the first time on September 24, 1944, in the company of Enzo Lucarini, and went back again in early October and in November, bringing back news about the condition of the house and the damage caused by the war. On November 10, 1944 Giuseppe, Anna, and Paola Belfanti were able to start out on the difficult return journey to Reggio Calabria. On December 21, 1944 a letter from Father Migliorini, brought by his brother in religion Father Fantoni, notified them that the longed-for return home was now possible, and Maria and Marta in fact left two days later, on December 23, in an ambulance which luckily was available, preceded by the truck taking back some of their household goods, on a trip marked by diverse vicissitudes. Father Migliorini was waiting in Viareggio. In February 1945 Marta Diciotti returned to St. Andrea di Compito to bring back the remaining furniture.
313 The biography of Sister Maria Gabriella, a Trappist of Grottaferrata (1914-1939), previously mentioned in The Notebooks. 1943.
314 Father Narciso Fava, mentioned in note 312.
315 The bell tower of the parish church in St. Andrea di Compito, which was reflected in the mirror in the infirm writer’s room. See note 312.
317 Numbers 6:24-26