Jesus says:
“No. Do not complain and do not grieve as if my love for you has changed. This is not a decrease - it is an increase. I am speaking to you and to all the spirits who have devoted themselves entirely to Me and find themselves in the same situation as you. My eyes rest upon them and are consoled after all the disgraceful actions I see being performed on earth.
“When someone has completed a hard task which is tormenting and even repugnant, doesn’t he experience great joy on breathing pure air and looking at a beautiful meadow, green and flourishing? His lungs expand, his eyes rest, and his mind finds recreation. He seems to be reborn.
“The same thing happens to your Jesus. So afflicted, so disgusted! And by so many! Consider: I am Goodness and Love, and I receive offenses, continual hatred, and I must use severity to punish the guilty. This wearies Me more than carrying the cross. It is not that I then did not know I was dying in vain for many. I was not ignorant of the fact, but I am speaking of the material fatigue and the moment. This is continuous fatigue for my spirit. The blameworthy weary God’s spirit. Consider this, and you will understand how serious sin is, if it is able to weary a perfect spirit, like the divine one. Well then, you, my beloved ones, bring Me rest.
“And hear this parable for you.
“A man loves a woman. He has seen she is beautiful. He has been told she is good, pure, and modest, and he has felt an affection arising in his heart and, with the affection, the hope of being able to possess that woman as a wife and make her the pearl of his house.
“He has himself introduced to her relatives and asks them for the young woman. They grant her to him. And he, with a thousand attentions, tries to conquer her affection, for his love is already giant and wants to bring his beloved to the same point. Every time he goes to her, he takes her something he knows she likes; when he is distant, he thinks of what he might take her; if he is far away from the town, he writes to her to tell her what he cannot say in person; and as soon as he comes back, he runs to her. He does not mention his worries to her, but leaves them outside the door because he does not want to grieve her, and for him it is already a relief to see the smiling face of his beloved.
“There passes in this way the time you call ‘engagement’ and we Jews call the ‘the nuptial ceremony,’ which, however, in not being a consummated marriage, was at heart a very rigorous official engagement, to the point that the woman was called a ‘widow’ if her fiancé died before the consummation of the marriage, leaving her as virgin.
“But then the time comes when the woman leaves her parents’ home and enters her husband’s house, to be ‘one single flesh with him,’ according to the ancient command,459 and forever, according to my new command, which says, ‘What God has joined may not be separated by man for any reason.’460 For to separate means to push someone towards adultery, and the sin of adultery is committed not only by those sinning by this action, but by those bringing about the causes of the sin by placing a creature in the conditions fostering sin.
“And this should be said not only to the husbands who abandon their wives and to the wives who separate from their husbands, but also to the relatives of the former and the latter who by their particular ill will or selfishness sow discord between two spouses, or to those deceitful friends of the family who with lies, or simply by fomenting a bad mood which would dissolve if not fomented, create phantoms between two spouses capable of making their life together unbearable.
“In truth I tell you that, if spouses were able to live isolated in the circle of their affection and their love for their children, 90% of separations in marriage would cease to exist, for the same grounds of incompatibility which are adduced to obtain the separation of spouses are present in every form of shared life - between children and parents, among relatives, among brothers and sisters, and even among friends who have gathered together - and you do not make them so imposing as to arrive at a split. And you break this bond, which is indissoluble in all respects, with the maximum facility.
“You should never be unfaithful - never. But this could be - not from my standpoint, but from yours - the only motive for a separation. From a natural standpoint. For the supernatural one says, ‘If one of the two is already at fault, it is twice as much the duty of the other to be faithful so as not to deprive the children of affection and respect. The parents’ affection for their children and the children’s affection for their parents. And the man or woman who, unable to forgive, sends away the guilty party and remains alone, then finds it hard to remain alone and passes on, in turn, to illicit loves whose consequences are felt in the immediate present of the children and their future morality.’ I thus say, ‘It is not licit for man, for any reason, it is not licit for the Christian to separate what a Sacrament has joined in the Name of Christ.’
“But I do not want to speak to you about this. I want to speak to you, soul of mine, who are joined not to a man, but to God, with the offering of charity which He has accepted. I want to speak to your sister souls in total love for Me.
“When the bride leaves her parents’ home, then, and becomes the wife of the man she loves, she rises to a greater degree of love. They are no longer two who love one another. They are one loving himself in his double. One loves himself reflected in the other, for love fastens them into such a tight knot that joy annuls personality, and the two individuals relish a single joy.
“These correspond to the first two periods in mystical betrothal. First you are loved and become fond of God, who loves you. You then penetrate into a higher love and rejoice in his joys, which become yours. But this is not the perfection of the bride. I have already told you this461 and now repeat it to you in response to your question. ‘Why, now, do You no longer speak those words of such secure peace, of such an affirmative promise that You would spare me certain pains?’ you asked a short time ago while rereading the pages in October.
“O Maria! Why! Because I have taken you higher.
“Men accuse Me of repeating Myself in my statements. But if it I must repeat Myself with you, that are entirely intent on listening to Me and seem to Me like a little bird in its nest with its mouth wide open, waiting for the food which its father offers it - your food, which is my word - how can I fail to repeat Myself when speaking for those who are not attentive to Me? I must reiterate the same truths once, twice, a hundred or a thousand times to get a morsel of them into their hearts and arouse light there. And if that light later goes out, I am not to blame, and they cannot accuse Me of their blindness.
“Now I tell you this. When the exciting period of love has passed, love matures into a dignified strength in both the man and the woman, shortly before nothing more than two inhabitants of the earth and later becoming one single flesh, and it makes them a father and a mother who love one another over a cradle and look at each other, saying, saying as God the Creator said on observing man, ‘We have made a creature who is eternal, who belongs to the Heavens, to God.’ This is man’s destiny, and if his ill will does not pervert it, this is his glorious goal. But when they arrive at this perfect union, doesn’t the wife also become a mother, sister, and friend to her husband?
“Oh, what a sweet comfort for man is the woman able to love him with such perfection that he can convey all his thoughts to her and be sure they are understood and will find consolation!
“Oh, blessed is the house where the sanctity of the Sacrament lives in the true sense of the word and produces an inexhaustible flowering of acts of love. Not only love in the flesh, but more in the spirit. A love which lasts and, indeed, grows, as the years and concerns grow. A love which is true love. For it is not limited to loving for enjoyment, but embraces a spouse’s pain and bears it with oneself to lighten its weight.
“Do two who weep together love one another less than two who kiss each other and smile? No, Maria. They love one another more. A man shows he esteems his wife greatly if he entrusts everything about himself to her to receive her advice and comfort. A woman shows she loves her husband greatly if she is able to understand him in his thoughts and willingly helps him to bear his concerns. There will no longer be fiery kisses and words of poetry. But there will be caresses from soul to soul and secret words which spirits murmur to each other, giving one another the peace of true love. Of true marriage.
“Well then, soul of mine. You are now in this state. With your love fused to mine, you have given birth to children. All those who have known Me, or known Me better, through your active love are children you have given Me. You will meet them one day and rejoice.
“Now that I love you many times more for every child you have given Me, now that I know that you love Me to the point of wanting to take upon yourself the cross of what I am concerned about, for the glory of your Lord spurs you more than your life, I thus act with you as a Husband who is sure of his wife. I no longer show you only a smile, but my tears as well. I no longer caress you with roses, but impress roses of blood upon your heart, leaning you against my brow crowned with thorns; I no longer kiss you with my lips soaked in honey and wine, but with my mouth bitter with the vinegar and gall which was my last beverage and with which there was mixed the acrid taste of the blood rising from my lungs, broken in the last death rattle. If I treat you like this, it is because I regard you as a ‘strong woman,’462 in the biblical sense of the word.
“Oh, how restful for Me to have hearts like these! You generous ones who are able to love - give this rest to the Eternal Beggar, who goes on asking you for love and receives only indifference and offenses. Give it to Me, Maria. And do not be afraid that you have descended. If you had the wings of an angel, you would always rise less swiftly than you do with the wings of generous love.” For your information, the expression of mine which prompted Jesus’ comfort emerged as follows. I was rereading the ardent pages of last October,463 when He was promising me that He would soon come to take his dove.
“When the springtime is in our land and the voice of the turtle-dove is heard, I shall come,” He was saying. And I was hoping for this so much, since I feel no repugnance over dying. On the contrary, I wish only for death.
“But why?” I was asking Him this morning, thinking of his promise and feeling my life escaping hour by hour, like water from a broken vase - and escaping in such desolation, in such loneliness that it would be less cruel if I were in a desert, escaping along with my judgment, which is being consumed here even more quickly than my organism, which is also going to rack and ruin, and only I know how ruined it is, in this climate, which drives me mad with its barometric pressure deleterious for a patient with my illnesses and because of the weakness of my body, more and more undernourished, since I cannot assimilate food and must thus suspend it. “Why,” I was asking Him,
“didn’t You take me before the... I can’t help calling it that most dreadful April 10?464 With a thousand tortures but before that day. With my flesh corroded by a cancer, as I had requested, but not like this.... And it is not yet done with. Is it possible that You, that have always heard me for others, for all the others, great and small, good and wicked, believers and atheists have not wanted to hear me for my own sake? Why?”
The question boring into my heart and mind. The question to which an answer is not given to bring such peace to my own self that I am no longer moved to ask it. Why? Why? It is the amazement arising again and again in me over God’s refusing this grace which I had requested of Him, this one alone for myself, after having given Him everything. One grace! One for me!
Amazement. Because I know how good He is. I have experienced it for everyone and for myself. For all, since He has always assented when I have requested graces for others. For myself, since He has so many caresses for my soul. But in this He has not wanted to hear me. Hence my pained amazement, which does not die, which cannot die, which, the more time passes and I feel death upon me and think I shall quite probably have to die away from my home, cries out more loudly than ever.
Nine years ago Jesus asked me for my father,465 and only He, who sees my daily tears and hears my cries calling out, “Dad! Dad!” unceasingly, can know the torture with which I assented. And here the tears are even more bitter. A year ago He asked me for Mother.466 On June 3, 1943. And only He knows the tears with which I gave her to Him. The others do not, for I weep while the others sleep or eat or think I am doing the same. But there I wept in peace; here I don’t. I have no comfort, no.
No, dear ones. If charity towards my neighbor spares you the sight of my pain, let all of you, near and far, know that it is as intense as when I learned Mother’s fate was decreed, and I suffered the agony of an orphan even before, four months before, I was one, and it is always fresh and burning, like a wound just inflicted. Here, more burning than ever.
But I wanted to die there, there, in the place where they died and where they loved me as best they could and where I loved them - oh, much more than myself! I wanted to die in the place where at least I had found a guide in you, Father, and where there was so much of Jesus. Here I am a reed bent by the wind, and there is nothing to hold me up, not even the memory and echo of Jesus, for here it is not like there. I hear the voices and even feel the caresses (very rarely - they were continuous there), but I have seen them, for myself ...,467 only once, and cannot recall their appearance. Indeed, once God is removed, everything else is the wind bending and breaking the poor reed....
But it is also because it is You alone that do not torture me that I say to You, “Have mercy. Don’t have me experience the mire. Don’t make me savor its nauseating taste any more. I want You. You alone. I want to go on saying continuously, “God is good.” I want to go on saying it, and I could no longer do so if too cruel a blow destroyed the intelligence You have given me, which wants to remain whole to understand You and repeat what You say to it.”
Today is Wednesday. It is the day of the week dedicated to the despairing.468 Perhaps I am suffering for them, to take them out of torture.... If that’s the case.... It is enough for tomorrow not to be like today. It is like a snake twisting and causing suffocation in its slimy, cold coils. O hope, hope, never fade out in men’s hearts! Do not turn men into beasts by removing your light, which is intelligence, faith, peace, and the way to the house of God, the Kingdom of God.
459 Genesis 2:24.
460 Matthew 19:5-6.
461 In the dictation on February 13, for example.
462 Proverbs 31:10-31.
463 Cf. October 13, in The Notebooks. 1943, in particular, where phrases like the one mentioned below are found.
464 Cf. note 312.
465 Giuseppe Valtorta, a noncommissioned cavalry officer, who was born in Mantova in 1862 and died in Viareggio on June 30, 1935.
466 Iside Fioravanzi, a French teacher, who was born in Cremona in 1861 and died in Viareggio on October 4, 1943.
467 See June 7.
468 See May 15.