Jesus says:
“What you have seen9 is the blessed falling asleep of my Mother. You are so exhausted and tortured that my love feels the need to pour the sweetness of visions upon you. And - for you, that must die - what could be more comforting than this one?
“The death of the victims is not always so placid as Mary’s passing on. There are some among you that remain on the cross until their last breath. But even if it were for the duration of this last breath, ecstasy accompanies you, beyond pain, to the peace of heaven. Pain is already exhausted when your evening comes, and from the Heavens peace flows over you, not waiting for you, but running to meet you to cover you with its balm after so much martyrdom.
“Do not fear, you that offer yourselves. I, Expiator for the whole world, was the only one who knew no comfort in my death. And because I experienced that bitterness, I have mercy and open the gates of Heaven to my little christs to assail them with light and rejoicing in their final moments. No, you that have chosen the cross do not die. You leave pain to enter into joy. And since the joy of the child of God is to possess God, this joy is given you in advance of death in a knowledge of God, whom your eyes see before closing upon the horror of the Earth.
“Have faith in Me. The death of my disciples is the envy of the angels. “You have already been told by my Mother10 that at the end of her earthly days love increased in Her like an overflowing flood and a fire reaching its peak.
“Mary’s life had always been life in the Lord. The vicissitudes and occupations of existence were not an obstacle to her union with God. For Her, to live had been to pray; to pray had been to contemplate. Her hours of prayer were abysses of adoration, of charity, pearls of inestimable beauty in the great treasury of her days. What for others is consumption in ardor was for Her an increase in life, and, for Her, to rest was not to sleep, but to recollect Herself in God, in the silence of the nights, and to love Him, to love Him with her spirit enraptured, while the flesh, abandoned by the soul, lay awaiting the return of the spirit, made joyful and strengthened by the embrace of her God. Dew is nourishment for the flowers. The dew of love was nourishment for Mary. She fed on it as if upon divine manna.
“When her final sunset came,11 like a weary lily bending under the stars at night and closing her eyes of whiteness, Mary lay back on her couch and closed her eyes upon the world to recollect Herself in a final earthly contemplation of her God.
“Bending over her rest, Mary’s angel anxiously waited for the impetus of ecstasy to separate that spirit from the earth forever, while from the Heavens there descended the gentle command of God: ‘Come, O All- Beautiful One,’ and that angelical light shone more brightly in her holy rejoicing, calling from Heaven other cohorts of lights to the hosanna for the Victorious Woman who was ascending to her triumph.
“Bending over her rest, the angel John also watched over the Mother, who was leaving him alone. And when he saw that She was still, he kept on watching so that the Inviolate One of God, sleeping so placidly and beautifully, would remain unprofaned by irreverent gazes, even after death. John, to whom virginity had given the gift of feeling Mary’s desires, as love had given him the capacity to understand Me like no one else, ever, did not permit any violation of the Blessed One, whose death had been like the change in color of a flower towards an even purer whiteness, like that of a lily opening on an April dawn. On her dawn in Heaven.
“Your legend states that in Mary’s tomb, reopened for Thomas, there were only flowers. Mary’s tomb did not swallow up her body. Mary’s body was not there. Mary did not die. She was joined with her body to the spirit which had preceded her. Reversing the usual laws whereby ecstasy ends when the spirit returns to the body, it was Mary’s body that returned to the spirit after a pause on the deathbed.
“Everything is possible for God. I came out of the tomb with no help other than my power. Mary came to Me without experiencing the tomb, with its horror of putrescence. It is one of the brightest miracles of God.
“You have no relics of the body and tomb of Mary because Mary had no tomb. Her Body was taken up into Heaven. She awaits you there, praying to her Son for you.”
I told you that since last night I have been seeing the Virgin’s sleep. Entirely white, composed, serene. Her hands joined over her chest, the right leg slightly bent at the knee. I saw her lie back on that sort of bed and close her eyes like someone falling asleep in great peace. It is impossible to express the grace of the act and appearance. It is something both restful and moving.
9 The explanation comes at the end.
10 Perhaps on December 18, 1943. See The Notebooks. 1943.
11 From this point on, the dictation was also copied - almost literally, with a few additions - into the section entitled “Considerations and Explanations Regarding the Assumption and Falling Asleep of Mary Most Holy,” contained in the narratives forming the Glorification cycle.