Jesus says:
“O you twentieth-century Christians, who hear the stories of my martyrs as if they were fables and say to yourselves, ‘It can’t be true! How can it be? After all, they, too, were men and women! This is a legend.’ Know that it is not a legend, but history. And if you believe in the civic virtues of the ancient Athenians, Spartans, and Romans and feel your spirit’s exaltation over the acts of valor and greatness by civil heroes, why don’t you want to believe in these supernatural virtues and why don’t you feel your spirit’s exaltation and spur it towards a select imitation when hearing the account of the acts of greatness and valor by my heroes?
“After all, you say, they were men and women. Of course. They were men and women. You state a great truth and give yourselves a great condemnation. They were men and women, and you are beasts. Degraded from likeness to God, from God’s filiation, to the level of animals guided only by instinct and allied by marriage with Satan.
“They were men and women. They had become ‘men and women’ again by means of Grace, just as the First Man and the First Woman were in the Earthly Paradise.
“Don’t you read in Genesis that God made Man the ruler over all that was on Earth - that is, over everything except God and his angelic ministers? Don’t you read that He made Woman so that she would be man’s companion in joy and in ruling over all the living? Don’t you read that they could eat everything except from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil?224 Why? What underlying meaning is in the phrase ‘so that he will rule’? And in the phrase referring to the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil? Have you ever wondered - you that wonder about so many useless things and are never able to ask your soul about the heavenly truths?
“Your soul, if it were alive, would tell them to you - the soul that, when in grace, is held like a flower in the hands of your angel; the soul that, when in grace, is like a flower kissed by the sun and sprinkled with dew, through the Holy Spirit, who brings it warmth and light, who waters it and decorates it with heavenly lights.
“How many truths your soul would tell you if you were able to converse with it, if you loved it as that which places in you the likeness to God, who is Spirit, as your soul is spirit. What a great friend you would have if you loved your soul instead of hating it to the point of slaying it; what a great, sublime friend to speak to about heavenly things - you that are so eager to speak and ruin each other with friendships which, if they are not unworthy (sometimes they are), are, however, almost always useless and turn into a vain, harmful din of words, and all of them earthly words.
“Didn’t I say, ‘Whoever loves me will observe my Word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our dwelling in him?’225 The soul in grace possesses love and, in possessing love, possesses God - that is, the Father, who conserves it; the Son, who instructs it; the Spirit, who illuminates it. It thus possesses Knowledge, Science, and Wisdom. It possesses the Light.
“Consider, then, what sublime conversations your soul could engage in with you. It is these which have filled the silences of jails, the silences of cells, the silences of hermitages, and the silences of the rooms of the holy infirm. It is these which have comforted the jailed waiting for martyrdom, the cloistered seeking Truth, hermits longing for advance knowledge of God, and the infirm yearning for endurance - or, I should rather say, love for their cross.
“If you were able to question your soul, it would tell you that the true, exact meaning, as vast as creation, of that word ‘rule’ is this: ‘So that Man will rule over everything. Over all three of his strata. The lower stratum - animal. The middle stratum - moral. The higher stratum - spiritual. And so that he will direct all three to a single end: ‘To possess God.’ To possess Him by deserving to with this hard-and-fast rule, which keeps all the powers of the self subject and makes them servants of this one goal: to deserve to possess God.
“It would tell you that God had prohibited the knowledge of Good and Evil because He had granted Good to his creatures gratuitously and He did not want you to know Evil because it is a fruit sweet to the palate which, however, on descending into the blood with its juice, brings about a fever which kills and produces parching thirst, and, therefore, the more one drinks that deceitful juice, the thirstier one gets for it.
“You will object, ‘And why did He place it there?’ Why! Because Evil is a power which arose by itself, like certain monstrous maladies in the healthiest body.
“Lucifer was an angel, the most beautiful of the angels. A perfect spirit inferior to God alone. And yet, in his luminous being, a fume of haughtiness arose which he did not disperse, but, rather, condensed by nourishing it. And from this incubation Evil was born. He existed before man did. God had hurled him down outside of Paradise - the accursed Incubator of Evil, this contaminator of Paradise. But he has remained the eternal Incubator of Evil, and, unable to contaminate Paradise any more, he has contaminated the Earth.226
“That metaphorical plant is intended to demonstrate this truth. God had said to the Man and the Woman, ‘Know all the laws and mysteries of creation. But do not seek to usurp my right to be man’s Creator. My love, which will circulate in you, will suffice to propagate the human lineage, and, without sensual lust, but by the pulsation of charity alone, it will bring forth the new Adams of the lineage. I give you everything. I reserve for Myself only this mystery of the formation of man.’
“Satan wanted to remove from Man this intellectual virginity, and with his serpentine tongue he flattered and caressed Eve’s members and eyes, prompting reflexes and sensitivities which they formerly lacked, for Malice had intoxicated them. She ‘saw.’ And on seeing she wanted to experience. The flesh was awakened.
“Oh, if only she had called upon God! If she had run to say, ‘Father! I am sick. The serpent caressed me, and disturbance is in me.’ The Father would have purified her and healed her with his breath, for as He had infused life into her, He could have infused innocence into her again, brining her to forget the serpentine toxin and, indeed, placing repugnance towards the Serpent within her, as it is present in those whom a malady has assaulted and who, when healed of that malady, bear an instinctive repugnance towards it.
“But Eve did not go to the Father. Eve went back to the Serpent. That sensation was sweet for her. ‘On seeing that the fruit of the tree was good to eat and lovely to look at and pleasing in appearance, she took it and ate it.’227
“And ‘she understood.’ Malice had now descended to gnaw at her innards. She saw with new eyes and heard with new ears the habits and voices of the beasts. And she longed for them with a mad longing.
“She began sin by herself. She carried it out with her companion. That is why a greater condemnation weighs upon woman.228 It is because of her that man has become rebellious towards God and has known lust and death. It is because of her that he has no longer been able to master his three realms: of the spirit, for he allowed the spirit to disobey God; of the moral sphere, for he allowed the passions to rule over him; of the flesh, for he degraded it to the instinctive laws of the beasts.
“ ‘ The Serpent seduced me,’ Eve said. ‘The woman offered me the fruit, and I ate it,’ Adam said.229 And since then the threefold concupiscence has gripped the three realms of man.
“There is nothing but Grace that can ease the grip of this pitiless monster. And, if it is alive, thoroughly alive, maintained more and more alive by the will of the faithful son, it comes to strangle the monster and to have nothing more to fear. Neither inner tyrants - that is, the flesh and the passions - nor outer tyrants - that is, the world and the powerful of the world - nor persecutions, nor death.
“It is as the apostle Paul states, ‘I fear none of these things; nor do I place any value on my own life, provided that I fulfill my mission and the ministry received from the Lord Jesus to bear witness to the Gospel of God’s Grace.’230
“My martyrs were eager to fulfill their mission and the ministry received from Me to sanctify the world and bear witness to the Gospel. They were concerned about nothing else. By the Grace living in them and protected by them with greater care than they showed for the apple of their eyes and for the life they cast aside with cheerful promptness, knowing they were casting away a corruptible sheath to acquire a new one of measureless value, they had become ‘men and women’ again, no longer beasts. And they lived and acted as men and women, children of the Heavenly Father.
“ As Paul says, they ‘did not seek gold or silver or clothing from anyone,’231 but, rather, let themselves be stripped and voluntarily stripped themselves of all wealth, even of life, ‘to follow Me’ on earth and in Heaven.
“ ‘ With their own hands,’ the apostle continues, ‘they provided for the needs of themselves and others.’232 They gave themselves Life and brought others to Life.
“ ‘ By working they brought aid to those ill’ with that tremendous illness which is to live outside of the true Faith and devoted their whole self to this end by offering affections, blood, life, labors, and all things, recalling my words, which I uttered to you three days ago:233 ‘To give is to receive,’ ‘To give is better than to receive’ - those words which today, when I had you open the Book at Acts 20:35, you read with a start, for you remembered having heard them shortly before, and you rushed to look them up. And, on finding them, you wept, for you received a confirmation that it is I who speak.
“Yes, it is I. Do not fear. You don’t even realize the truths you become a channel for. Like the small bird on the branch that happily sings the song God has placed in its little throat for millennia and does not know why those specific notes come out and not others, and it does not know that with them it is saying its name and the name of its Creator, so you repeat the Word that speaks in you and don’t even know how deep it is in its manifestations.
“But remain like this: a child. I love children so much. You have seen this.234 You have not seen Me laugh except with them. They were my joy as Man. My Mother and my Disciple were my joy as God-Man and as Teacher. The Father, my joy as God. But children were my joyous relief on the very bitter earth.
“Remain like this: a child. Your Savior, cuffed by so many men, needs to refresh his cheeks on the cheeks of children. He needs to rest his brow on heads that are loving and without malice.
“Come, little John, to your Jesus. And always remain a child for Me. The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those able to have a child’s soul and receive the Truth with the trusting promptness of a child.
“It is I. Do not fear. I, who speak to you, and I, who bless you. Go in peace, little John. Tomorrow I shall send John to you.”
224 Genesis 1:26-28; 2:15-25; 3:1-3.
225 John 14:25.
226 Isaiah 14:9-21.
227 Genesis 3:6.
228 Genesis 3:14-19.
229 Genesis 3:8-13.
230 Acts 20:24.
231 Acts 20:33.
232 Acts 20:34.
233 March 2.
234 On February 7.