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The First Friday of the Month
Yesterday I received no special dictation. I just suffered until thinking I was in agony. The physical suffering - so violent, for it had already been going on for twenty-four hours, but, for me, who am able to endure so much, it was still unbearable - began on Wednesday night. And it went on growing at a constant pace until becoming unendurable. My peritoneum hurt and caused me all the disturbances of acute peritonitis to such an extent that I thought of a peritoneal perforation. I suffered until I was in a daze. I was no longer able to say anything but “Lord, it’s for my poor despairing brothers and sisters.” It was still Wednesday”‘
Yesterday, while continuing to suffer, I offered this whole agony for idolaters. I had nothing but that to offer because I honestly had no strength for anything else and had to make a real effort to perform my usual penances. I was then left in a swoon, feeling only the agony of my flesh. But it doesn’t matter. My soul was in peace, in Jesus’ hands.... And then nothing does harm...! In the late afternoon the local priest400 came and found me with the face of someone agonizing. He wanted to console me because he is good at heart. But with a “goodness” of use only to Maria the creature, not Maria the soul.
I feel the painful absence of the one who directs me,401 who says he “does nothing.” I say, however, that he is air for my soul. My soul misses him the way my lungs miss sea air. And in spite of Jesus’ numberless acts of goodness, I lack this aid and suffer therefrom.
Last night I wanted to carry out the Hour of Nocturnal Adoration. But it was impossible for me. I was unable to read or think. And then Jesus had me... adore by giving me an appropriate vision. I shall try to describe the environment, a difficult matter for me, who in the area of architecture am incompetent and have never set foot in a cloistered monastery.
I think, then, that I am in the internal church of a strictly cloistered monastery. I see a very high, wide arch which provides light for the external church. It provides light in a manner of speaking, for the thick grating filling it entirely is made even more impenetrable by a curtain of dark red cloth falling from the summit to within about a meter and a half of the ground - that is, as far as the point where a wall rises up to support the grating.
At the center of the grating there is a sort of window - that is, a section of movable grill which opens like a door on its hinges. This is not covered by the red curtain and allows one to see the tabernacle in the external church through the web of the grating. The sisters can thus worship and, I think, receive Holy Communion while kneeling on the bench which serves as a baluster in front of the little window and is raised above a platform with three steps to place it within comfortable reach of the level of the window. Nothing in the external church is visible except the tabernacle. Perhaps monastery choirs are built this way.
There is little light. From the high, narrow windows there rains down a dim light. I think it must be either evening or dawn, for there is only a faint glimmer. The choir - this is what I call it, but I don’t know if this is the right term - is empty. There are only the seats for the sisters and the bench in front of the grating. An oil lamp introduces a little yellow star alongside the grating.
A tall, and certainly very thin, sister comes in. For, in spite of her ample religious habit, she is very slender. She goes to kneel at the bench. She lifts up the veil with which she covered her face, and I see a youthful visage, not very beautiful, but graceful, very pale, and meek. Two light-colored eyes - they seem to be greenish brown - shine gently when she raises them to look at the tabernacle, and the small mouth opens into a soft smile. The face is a long oval between the white bands, which are slightly whiter than her countenance. The black veil flows down over her black robe, in such fashion that in the kneeling figure only the delicate face, the long, well-formed hands joined in prayer, and a silver cross shining on her breast, in addition to the wimple, are seen to be light in color. She is praying fervently, with her eyes fixed upon the tabernacle.
And now the beautiful part of the vision comes. The grating, the whole grating, shines as if beyond the velarium a very intense fire has been ignited. The lamp, which previously looked like a radiant star, is now canceled out in the growing light, which is increasingly becoming a very bright silver white. So bright that one’s eyes no longer see anything but this. The grating is wiped out in the brilliant radiance. And in this splendor Jesus appears. Jesus, standing upright in his white robe and red mantle, smiling, very handsome.
“Margaret!” He calls, to rouse the sister, who has remained in ecstasy, looking at Him. He calls her three times, more and more gently, and smiling with ever-greater intensity. He advances, walking high above the ground on the carpet of light which is under Him. “It is I, Jesus, whom you love. Do not fear.”
Margaret Mary402 looks at Him blissfully and, amidst her tears, asks, “What do You want from me, Lord? Why are You appearing to me?”
“I am Jesus, who loves you, Margaret, and I want you to make Me be loved.”
“How can I, Lord?”
“Look. And you will be capable of everything, for what you will see will give you strength and a voice to rouse the world and bring it to Me. This is my Heart. Look. It is the Heart which has so loved men, wishing to be loved by them. But it is not loved. And in this love the salvation of the human race would be found. Margaret, tell the world that I want my Heart to be loved. I am thirsty! Give Me something to drink. I am hungry! Give Me something to eat. I suffer! Console Me. This mission will be your joy and your sorrow. But I ask you not to refuse it.
Come. Come to Me. Come close to Me. Kiss my Heart. You will no longer be afraid of anything....” Margaret Mary rises and walks in ecstasy towards Jesus. The intense light makes her face even whiter. She prostrates herself at Jesus’ feet.
But He lifts her up and, supporting her with his left hand, opens his robe over his chest, and his flesh seems to open along with his robe, and his Divine Heart appears, alive, beating amidst torrents of light setting the poor choir aflame and making the human body of the beloved disciple shine, like an already spiritualized body. Jesus inclines his cherished one towards Himself and, with loving violence, brings her face up to the level of his Heart, against which he clasps it, holding up the ecstatic, who would collapse out of joy, and when He separates her, He continues to hold her up, with gentle care, and sets her back on the ground - for Margaret walked over the wake of light to reach Jesus - and does not let her go until He sees she is safely in her place. He then says, “I shall come back to tell you what I want. Love Me more and more. Go in peace.”
The light absorbs Him like a cloud and then fades out progressively, finally disappearing, and in the now darkened choir only the little yellow star of the lamp shines.
This is what I saw. And Jesus says to me, “You have carried out the adoration for Thursday, the eve of the First Friday. What do you want that’s better than this?” He smiles and leaves me. I now want to tell you - for I think it will interest you - about a little communication I received from Jesus on May 29.
I happened to look at an old newspaper article in which there is an announcement concerning a book by Catherine of Siena. I have had it for years.403 And I had never purchased that book, partly because I thought it was useless, in that I seemed unable to comprehend the mystical life of St. Catherine. Too sublime for me. And, in addition, partly because it seemed useless to look for it, since the book was not available. Initially, I had had inquiries made, but had been told that “it was not to be found.”
I had resigned myself without difficulty to not having it and had thought no more about it. On May 29, this short newspaper article fell into my hands again. I looked at it and tore it up with indifference. I heard Jesus say to me, “No. Get this book. You will now find it at once, in the first shop in which it is requested. It will help to convince you that the Voice speaking is one. The one that is speaking to you and that spoke to Catherine. Get it, for it is time to.”
On May 30, since Martha had to go to Lucca, I told her to look for it. Without saying anything else. And she in fact found it in the first bookshop she entered.
I have read very little, but what I have seen repeats for me, in the medieval style, the concepts I hear in the current style. As I encounter them, I am gradually marking the points which I have already heard. This gives me peace, for I am always afraid of a deceit.
Jesus is very, very-too-good to me! He not only instructs me and consoles me with words and visions, but regulates them according to my physical weakness and makes up for my incapacity for prayer, as occurred last night, when He had me adore his Heart together with Margaret Mary, and indicates to me what I should obtain to gain reassurance in my fears. I am resuming later to tell you what I am now hearing.
Jesus says:
“The effort it takes to tear that soul away from its ideas is due to the fact that it is filled with them. “In order to introduce liquid into a vase, it is necessary for the vase to be prepared. If it is empty, it can be entirely filled with the liquid we want; if is half full, we shall introduce half; if it is an inch away from being full, we can introduce at least an inch. It won’t be much, but it will be of use for mixing in something. But if it is full to the brim, we can introduce nothing. Nothing. It has to be emptied first.
“This is easy when the vase lets itself be moved. But if it is fixed and thus not movable, how can it be emptied? It has to be dried by either the heat of the sun or our patient work of soaking it up with a sponge which will absorb the liquid until it is empty.
“Some souls are filled to the brim and irremovable. Their will makes them that way. They thus maintain themselves in the water they have introduced, which is not the water you and I would like them to have. And it is then necessary to remove their contents with the ardor of charity and patient constancy.
“It would be a much easier task if they let themselves be overturned by an impetus of love. But it is more meritorious for you to burn with love to empty them of evil and dry them of every evil with more and more sacrifice. And then introduce God into them. Introduce your God into them. “Oh, Maria...!”
He says nothing else. This short dictation was begun while I was carrying out my devotions and penances and, while interceding for one person or another, thinking of a heart which does not budge from its decisions. More anchored to them than a ship to a rocky bottom. The most refractory of all to my prayer.
In the evening of this first Friday, I am presented again with a vaster and lovelier vision of Jesus, with a radiant Heart surrounded by many, many saints. There are many men, but in the foreground, and more radiant than all the other figures, as if through the light of a special privilege, there are three holy women.
In this vision, however, the bodies, which, as far as I can understand, are already spiritualized, also show themselves to me in their earthly dress, just as occurs in my visions of the life of Our Lord. I recognize St. John the Apostle among the men, who is standing almost in back of Jesus, looking at Him and smiling. And I then see a Franciscan who is not St. Francis, but I do not know who he is. But the ones who attract my attention are the three holy women in the first row.
One is Margaret Mary. I clearly recognize her. The other is a small, beautiful sister dressed entirely in white. Only her veil is black. Her face is very intelligent and radiant with supernatural joy. The third one is a thin, austere woman Capuchin, with the serious, good eyes of someone who has greatly suffered and wept. She is the oldest of the three. She is not crying now. But she looks at me with great compassion.
Jesus points to them and says:
“They are my heralds. They are the ones who did not reserve intense love for my Divine Heart for themselves, but spread it around the world, at the cost of every exertion and sorrow.
“This is the first one in chronological order. She is the first voice to speak of confidence in my Heart. The world was one big bramble of human ferocity and religious restrictions when Gertrude404 said to the world, ‘Love and hope. Jesus assures us that we are reconciled to the Father. His pierced Heart tells us so. Let us work for his glory. Let us do his will to give Him joy, and He will work the miracles of his mercy for us.’ She had understood the words emerging from this Wound of mine.
“You know the other one.405 You saw her last night.
“The third one is Veronica, a Capuchin Poor Clare.406 The ‘voice’ who in Italy said what Margaret was saying in France. The two who defeated philosophism, the enemy of Truth, even more than the Church did with her condemnations, and they defeated it with the strength of their love, which preached the truth of what it had heard and seen. They were tormented for this reason by blind men. And, among the blind, how many ‘should have seen!’407 How many consecrated people among them! But they, my messengers, my ‘voices,’ had been created for this. And they did this because to do my will was their joy.
“There are more holy women than holy men among the ‘voices’ speaking of my Heart. Because the gentleness of loving belongs to woman. John, angelic, is among the saints because he had a boy’s heart in a hero’s body. He is the first to have understood my Heart. But all the saints are fruits of my Heart, of love for my Heart. Even those who seem to have been created to become the apostles of other devotions are in reality the fruits of my Heart and of love for it.
“Whoever does not love is not sanctified. It is the heart that loves. And what is loved in the beloved? His heart. As in a mother the heart of her child is formed first of all in her womb, so in those who bear God in the world the Heart of their Lord is formed first of all.
“When it beats within you, Jesus has already been born in you and speaks to you and caresses you and brings you the Father and the Spirit, for where One is, the other Two are not lacking. You are thus a Heaven in which the wonders of God are worked and from which splendors issue forth and words emerge which are lights and words of the God dwelling in you.
“Oh, blessed are you that understand how I love you! And that repeat this love to the world to convince it to love me.
“I have shown you this family of saints, whose passion was my Heart, for you are a little sister.
“The Heart of your Jesus and his Cross: your loving goals. But the Heart of Jesus was opened on the Cross.408 In the maximum opprobrium He obtained the supreme refuge for you. To tell you that the more one agrees to be scorned to do the will of the Eternal, the more one becomes salvation and blessing for one’s blameworthy brothers and sisters.
“Even if their hearts split from the pain men cause my heralds, let these beloved ones of mine not tremble or draw back. I am with them, and here, here in this Wound, is the nest for my loving doves, wounded by cruel sparrowhawks. And I call them and say, ‘Come. Come, O my doves, and rest alongside the one who loves you. Come to the nest I have prepared for you, where I shall dry all your tears and heal all your wounds, and I shall nourish you with the fruit of the tree of life and quench your thirst in the river of living water which flows from under my throne, and you shall bear my Name on your brow, and on your heart, the sign of my Heart, and you shall reign eternally because with love you have conquered Love.’ ”
399 The sufferings on Wednesday were for the despairing, and those on Thursday, for idolaters, as indicated on May 29.
400 Father Narciso Fava, pastor at St. Andrea di Compito. See note 312.
401 Father Migliorini, who remained in Viareggio.
402 St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690), the messenger and apostle of the Sacred Heart.
403 She is referring to the newspaper article, not the book.
404 St. Gertrude the Great of Helfta, forerunner of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (1256 - 1301).
405 St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.
406 St. Veronica Giuliani (1660 - 1727).
407 John 19:33-34.
408 John 19:33-34.