As I told you, I have had no other contemplation today but that of the Cross, with my Jesus, who is looking down at the foot of his scaffold; He is looking at Mary and John, who, with their backs nearly turned to me, are looking up at Jesus.
While I was listening to the Mass broadcast over the radio from France, precisely at the Sanctus it became illuminated for me. It was so clear and spoke so directly to my spirit that I told myself that the Mass, when seen in this way, is something heavenly.
Then the hell of the bombs came.... But not even this terror availed to cancel out the vision I was having. It has continued throughout the day.
I can thus tell you that Mary is wearing her usual dark blue dress, which covers her entirely, and that John’s clothing is a pale violet, with a light-brown cloak.
I obliquely see the very pale face of Mary - even her lips are pale, with her mouth twisting in a curve of pain. Pain so disfigures Her that She - who was not yet fifty at the time of her Son’s death - looks over sixty years old.
I also see John obliquely, with a youthful, handsome face clouded by deep pain - he is also pale and seems to have aged in a few hours. Only the long blond hair, just a little lighter than Jesus’, remains unchanged and shines with well-kempt, soft reflections of gold.
Facing me, though, I see Jesus, with his contusions and wounds fully displayed and his face already marked by approaching death, completely disfigured, as compared to the way it was before the Passion. I notice that the Cross is very high. Jesus’ feet are at least two meters above the ground.
I do not see anything else. It seems to be the point when Jesus entrusted John to his Mother.178
It is now nighttime, and Jesus says:
“You have seen how costly it is to be Saviors. You have seen this in Me and in Mary. You have become familiar with all our torments and have seen the generosity, heroism, patience, meekness, constancy, and fortitude with which We endured them out of charity in saving you.
“All those who so desire, who ask the Lord God to make them ‘saviors,’ must properly consider that Mary and I are the model and that those are the tortures to be shared in so as to save. There will not be the cross, thorns, nails, and material scourges. There will be others, of another kind and nature. But just as painful and just as consuming. And it is only by consummating the sacrifice in the midst of those pains that people may become saviors.
“It is an austere mission. The most austere of all. The one compared to which the life of a monk or nun with the most severe rule is a flowerbed in contrast to a heap of thorns. For this is not the rule of a human Order, but the Rule of a priesthood, of a monastic profession, whose Founder I am - I who consecrate and receive into my Rule, into my Order, those chosen for it and robe them in my habit: total pain, to the point of sacrifice.
“You have seen my sufferings. They were aimed at making amends for your sins. No part of my body was excluded from them, for nothing in man is free from sins and all the parts of your physical and moral self - that self which God has given you with the perfection of a divine work and which you have debased with the first parent’s sin and with your tendencies towards evil, with your wicked will - are instruments you make use of to commit sin.
“But I came to cancel out the effects of sin with my Blood and my pain, washing every physical and moral part of you in them so as to cleanse them and strengthen them against sinful tendencies.
“My Hands were wounded and imprisoned, after having wearied themselves to carry the Cross, to make amends for all the crimes committed by the hand of man. From the real crimes of guiding and wielding a weapon against a brother - turning you into Cains - to those of stealing, writing false accusations, performing acts going against respect for your bodies and those of others, and idling in a sluggishness which is fertile ground for your vices. By your illicit liberties in the use of your hands you have caused mine to be crucified, nailing them to the wood, depriving them of all manifestly licit and necessary movement.
“Your Savior’s Feet, after being wearied and cut upon the stones on the way to my Passion, were pierced and immobilized to make amends for all the evil you do with your feet, turning them into the means to go to your crimes, thefts, and acts of fornication. I marked the streets, squares, houses, and stairs of Jerusalem to purify all the streets, squares, stairs, and houses of the earth of all the evil appearing upon and within them, sown in the past centuries and in the centuries to come by your wicked will obeying Satan’s instigation.
“My Flesh was stained, bruised, and lacerated to punish in Myself all the exaggerated worship, the idolatry you display towards your flesh and those you love for the sake of a sensual whim or even out of affection, which in itself is not reprehensible, but which you render so by loving a parent, a spouse, a child, or a sibling more than you love God.
“No. Above every earthly love and bond, there is - there must be - love for the Lord your God. No other affection, none at all, should be superior to this one. Love your dear ones in God, not above God. Love God with your whole selves. This will not absorb your love to the point of making you indifferent to relatives, but, rather, will nourish your love for them with the affection drawn from God, for those who love God possess God in themselves and in possessing God possess perfection.
“I made my Flesh a wound to remove from yours the venom of sensuality, indecency, lack of respect, ambition, and worship of the flesh destined to become dust again. It is not with the cult of the flesh that the flesh is led to beauty. It is by detachment from it that eternal Beauty in God’s Heaven is given to it.
“My Head was tortured with a thousand tortures: from blows, sun, hoots, and thorns, to make amends for the sins of your mind. Pride, impatience, irritation, and restiveness teem like a swarm in your brain. I rendered it a tortured organ, enclosed in a coffer adorned with blood, to make amends for everything that issues forth from your thought.
“You have seen the final crown I wanted. The crown which only a madman or one condemned to death can bear. No one of sound mind (speaking in human terms) and free to do as he pleases places it upon himself. But I was judged mad, and, in supernatural, divine terms, I was mad in wanting to die for you, that do not love Me or love Me so little, in wanting to die to overcome Evil in you while knowing that you love it more than God, and I was at the mercy of man, his prisoner, the one he condemned. I, God, condemned by man.
“How many acts of impatience you display over trifles, how many acts of intolerance over mere nothings, how many acts of restiveness over minor discomforts! But look at your Savior. Meditate on how stimulating that constant piercing in different points, that entanglement of my locks of hair, and that continual dislocation not enabling Me to move my head, to support it in any way that did not cause torment must have been! And consider what the mob’s catcalls, the blows to my head, and the burning sun meant for my tortured, aching, feverish Head! And reflect on the pain I must have had in my poor brain, after going to the agony on Friday when already filled with pain by the exertion undergone on Thursday night - in my poor brain, to which the fever of my whole tormented Body and of the intoxications provoked by the tortures rose!
“And in my Head, my eyes had their torture; and the mouth, its own; and the nose, its own; and the tongue, its own. To make amends for your looks, which so love to see what is evil and are so forgetful of seeking God; to make amends for too many and excessively lying and filthy and lustful words you say instead of using your lips to pray, teach, and comfort; my nose had its torture, as did my tongue, to make amends for your acts of gluttony and your sensuality in smelling, whereby you perform imperfect actions which are the soil for more serious sins, and sins involving a craving for superfluous foods, with no mercy for the hungry, foods which you are often able to afford by resorting to the means of illicit gain.
“My organs were not free from suffering. None of them. Choking and coughing for my lungs, bruised by the barbarous flagellation and rendered edematous by my position on the cross. Breathlessness and pain in my dislocated heart, made infirm by the cruel flagellation, the moral pain which had preceded it, the fatigue of ascending under the heavy weight of the wood, and the anemia resulting from all the blood I had already shed. Congested liver, congested spleen, and bruised, congested kidneys.
“You have seen the wreath of bruises around my kidneys. Your scientists - to offer proof for your incredulity regarding that proof of my suffering which is the Turin Shroud - explain the manner in which blood, cadaveric sweat, and an over-strained body, in being mixed with the aromas, were able to produce that natural painting of my lifeless, tortured Body.
“It would be better to believe with no need for so many proofs in order to believe. It would be better to say, ‘This is the work of God’ and bless God, who has granted you possession of the irrefutable proof of my Crucifixion and the tortures preceding it!
“But since you are no longer able to believe, now, with the simplicity of children, but need scientific proofs - poor faith, yours, which, without the prop and goad of science, is unable to stand up straight and walk - know that the fierce wounds to my kidneys were the most powerful chemical agent in the miracle of the Turin Shroud. My kidneys, nearly shattered by the scourges, were no longer able to function. Like those of people burned in a blaze, they were unable to filter, and the urea accumulated and spread throughout my blood and my body, causing the sufferings of uremic intoxication and the reagent transuding from my corpse which fixed the impress upon the cloth. But whoever among you is a doctor or whoever among you is ill with uremia can grasp the sufferings which the uremic toxins must have caused Me, so abundant as to leave an indelible imprint.
“Thirst. What torture was thirst! And yet you have seen it. There was no one, among so many, capable of giving Me a drop of water in those hours. From the Supper on, I had no further comfort. And fever, sun, heat, dust, and bleeding produced so much thirst in your Savior.
“You have seen that I rejected the wine with myrrh. I wanted nothing to soften my suffering. When one has offered oneself as a victim, one must be a victim with no concessions to mercy, without compromise, without mitigation. One must drink the chalice just as it is given. Taste the vinegar and gall to the depths. Not the drugged wine, which produces a dazing of the sense of pain.
“Oh, the fate of a victim is quite severe! But blessed are those who choose it as their fate.
“This is the suffering of your Jesus in his innocent Body. And I won’t speak to you about the tortures of sympathy for my Mother and her pain. That pain was needed. But for Me it was the cruelest torment. Only the Father knows what his Word suffered spiritually, morally, and physically! Even the presence of my Mother - though it was the thing most desired by my heart, which needed to receive that comfort in the infinite solitude surrounding it, infinite solitude coming from God and from men - was a torture.
“She had to be there, an angel of flesh to keep despair from assaulting me, as the spiritual angel had impeded it in Gethsemane; She had to be there to join my Pain to her own for your Redemption; She had to be there to receive her investiture as the Mother of the human race. But to see Her die at every quiver of mine was my greatest pain. Not even the betrayal and not even the knowledge that my Sacrifice would be futile for so many - these two pains which a few hours before had seemed so great to Me as to make Me sweat blood - were comparable to this one.
“But you have seen how great Mary was in that hour. The torture did not keep Her from being much stronger than Judith.179 The latter killed. The former let Herself be slain through her Child. And She did not curse, and She did not hate. She prayed, loved, and obeyed. Always a Mother, to the point of thinking, in the midst of those tortures, that her Jesus needed her veil as a virgin to cover his innocent flesh, to defend his sense of decency, at the same time She was able to be the Daughter of the Heavenly Father and obey his tremendous will in that hour. She did not curse or rebel. Against God or men. She forgave the latter. She said, ‘Fiat’ to the Former.
“You have heard Her afterwards, as well: ‘Father, I love You, and You have loved us!’ She remembered and proclaimed that God had loved Her, and She renewed her act of love for Him. In that hour! After the Father had pierced Her and deprived Her of her reason for existence. She loved Him. She did not say, ‘I no longer love You because You have stricken me.’ She loved Him. And She was not afflicted over her pain. But over the pain suffered by her Son. She did not wail over her broken heart, but over mine, which had been pierced. She asked the Father to explain this, not her pain. She asked the Father to explain in the name of their Son.
“She was truly the Spouse of God. She was truly the Woman who had conceived through union with God. She knew that human contact had not begotten her Child, but only Fire descending from Heaven to penetrate into her immaculate womb and deposit the Divine Seed there, the Flesh of the God-Man, of the Man-God, of the Redeemer of the world. She knew and, as the spouse and mother, requested an explanation for that wound. The others had to be inflicted. But that one, when everything had been accomplished - why?
“Poor Mother! There was a reason, which your pain did not allow you to read upon my wound. And it was for men to see the Heart of God. You have seen it, Maria. And you will never forget it.
“But - do you see? Mary, in spite of the fact that at that moment She did not see the supernatural reasons for that wound, immediately considered that it had not harmed Me and blessed God for it. She did not care if that wound had done Her, poor Mother, so much harm. It had not harmed Me, and that was enough for Her and sufficed for Her to bless God, who was immolating Her.
“She asked only for a bit of comfort so as not to die. She was necessary for the nascent Church, whose Mother She had been made a few hours before. The Church, like a newborn baby, needed care and a mother’s milk. Mary would give this to the Church by sustaining the apostles, speaking to them about the Savior, and praying for it. But how could She have if She had succumbed that night? The Church, with very few days remaining before being left without its Head in its midst, would have been left completely orphaned if the Mother, too, had died. And the fate of newborn orphans is always precarious.
“God never fails to answer a just prayer and comforts his children who hope in Him. Mary experienced this in Veronica’s comfort. She, the poor Mother, had the image of my lifeless Face impressed upon her eyes. She could not withstand that sight. That was no longer her Jesus - aged, swollen, with his eyes, no longer looking at Her, closed, and with his mouth, no longer speaking to Her and smiling, contorted. But there was a face belonging to the living Jesus - pained, wounded, but still alive. There was his gaze, looking at Her, and his mouth, which seemed to say, ‘Mother!’ There was his smile, still greeting Her.
“Oh, Maria! Seek your Jesus in your sorrow. He will always come and gaze at you, call you, and smile at you. We will share the pain, but we will be united!
“John, O little John, shared sorrow with Mary and with Jesus. Always be like John. In this, too. I have already told you this180: ‘You will not be great because of the contemplations and the dictations. These are mine. But because of your love. And the highest love lies in sharing sorrow.’ This enables one to intuit God’s slightest desires and make them a reality in spite of all obstacles.
“Observe the keen, delicate sensitivity with which John acted from Thursday night until Friday night. And beyond. But let us observe him in those hours.
“An instant of bewilderment. A trying hour. But, having overcome sleep with the anxiety of the arrest, and anxiety with love, he came, dragging Peter along with him, so that the Master would receive comfort on seeing the Head of the apostles and the Beloved One among the apostles.
“And he then thought of the Mother, to whom some cruel person might blurt out the arrest which had occurred. And he went to Her. He did not know that Mary was already living through the torments of her Son and that, while the apostles had been sleeping, She had been watching and praying, agonizing with her Son. He did not know. And he went to Her and prepared Her for the news.
“And he then went to and fro between the house and the Pretorium, between the house and Herod’s palace, and back to the Pretorium again from the house.181 And to do so that morning, going through the mob drunk with hate, with the clothing denouncing him as a Galilean, was not a comfortable matter. But love sustained him, and he did not think of himself, but of the pain of Jesus and his Mother. He might have been stoned as a follower of the Nazarene. It did not matter. He challenged everything. The others had fled and remained in hiding. Prudence and fear led them to it. He was led by love and stayed and let himself be seen. He was pure. Lave prospers in purity.
“And if his compassion and good sense as a member of the common people induced him to keep Mary far from the mob and the Pretorium - he did not know that Mary was sharing in all the tortures of her Son, undergoing them spiritually - when he felt that the time had come when Jesus needed his Mother and that it was not licit to keep the Mother separated from her Son any longer, he took Her to Him and supported and defended Her.
“What was that handful of faithful persons - one man alone, unarmed, young, and lacking authority, at the head of a few women - against a whole furious mob? Nothing. A little pile of leaves which the wind could disperse. A little boat on a stormy sea which could sink it. It did not matter. Love was his strength and his sail. He was armed with this, and with this protected the Woman and the women until the end.
“John possessed compassionate love182 like no one else in the world, except for my Mother. He is the founder of the family of those who love with this love. He is your master in this. Follow him in the example he gives you of purity and charity, and you will be great.
“Go in peace, now. I bless you.”
178 John 19:25-27.
179 Judith 10-13.
180 In the second dictation on December 26, 1943, in The Notebooks. 1943.
181 This sentence is rectified in the dictation for May 12-13, 1944.
182 Spoken about in the dictation of February 13, 1944.