As I received Holy Communion, Jesus said to me:
“I want all the dictations and visions which I grant to you to belong to the Order of the Servants of Mary. I want the Order to use them for its good and for preaching. I want you to be defended and protected and helped by the Order. You would be left overwhelmed alone because there are too many who mock, calumniate, and hate. It was not without purpose that I arranged for you to have contacts with this Order, which you avoided, and for belonging to it to be virtually imposed upon you.741
“The nature and mission of the Order of the Servants of Mary are in keeping with your nature and mission, in which I have wanted you. You were - and did not know it - already a daughter of the Sorrows of Mary and thus chosen to know her torments from the time when, as a child, you wept over Me, pierced and slain.742 I formed you this way because I had destined you for this. I do nothing without a purpose.
“The other Order chosen by you is not open to receiving God’s gift. It ought to be, for in its ranks it has had men and women saints who are models of supernatural manifestations. But rationalism is extinguishing too many lights therein. Too much science where my Francis wanted only love, and love for God Crucified.
“I thus repeat that I want you to be light pouring into the Order of Servants of my Mother, and I want this Order to be given you for your protection.
“And to remove all doubt on the words I say, I specify: let what is destined for relatives and Marta remain with them with the moral and spiritual obligation to use it only for themselves, without lending it to anyone, even for an hour. If they experience weariness or doubt, let them destroy what they have by burning it and thus leave a written indication for this to be done at their death, but they should not hand the copies over to anyone. So much for the copies. The original belongs and will always belong to the Order of the Servants of Mary if they take care of it as a gift of mine.
“This is my will as the Owner and Giver of the gift.”743
In the late evening I receive this vision, which at once consoles and afflicts me.
On a little grassy meadow, not entirely flat, but slightly undulating between two knolls enclosing it, Our Lady appears to me. But She is dressed in a very curious way. She looks like a Servite brother, very young and handsome, but with long hair, as we women wear it. She is wearing the long black frock, clasped at the waist with a black belt; I do not see the rosary, though. Perhaps because it is covered by the mantle. Over the frock, a stole descending down to the ground over her front and back, and She is also wearing an ample black coat, clasped at the neck and falling down to the ground. It seems to be thick, but lightweight cloth. I don’t know what this opaque silk women also use for mourning clothes is called.
I am a woman, and it must seem strange. But I have always been so little concerned with fashion and vanity that I am barely able to distinguish between cotton and wool, wool and silk, and silk and velvet, without being able to distinguish further among the qualities of the different types.
Our Lady, in short, is a wearing a coat like the one on the statue of St. Philip Benizi which was in your church in Viareggio744 and the one you wear, too, in the summer, when you745 bring me Holy Communion. The mantle is open in front, and I thus see the habit. But it is so ample that Our Lady could wrap Herself in it entirely if She wanted to. Her head is not covered: a very pale flower emerging from so much blackness. The veil, black, like everything else, and made of the same material as the mantle, fastened under her throat and over her chest, has fallen back from her head and is hanging like a hood upon her shoulders, over the mantle, serving as a garment which is almost the samen - I don’t know what it’s called - as the one you wear over the others.
I have never seen Our Lady dressed like this. I did see Her in black, in January, if I am not mistaken,746 when She was picking or rejecting the souls of priests. But it was then a black habit. Not this habit.
But what afflicts me is the expression on her face. She is facing north and thus looking towards the north, and her appearance is that of someone who has greatly wept and is still weeping in her heart. She makes no gesture and says no word. She is looks sadly towards the north. She is even paler than usual, perhaps because She is in the midst of so much blackness and is so sad.
She then turns her eyes westwards and sees me. I am close to Her, rendered motionless by her appearance. She displays the shadow of a smile. She lifts up her mantle on the left side, extending her arm, and pulls me underneath, clasping me tightly against her side and covering me completely with the black mantle. I see nothing but the black cloth of her habit and the black leather belt.
She still does not speak. She just sighs with affliction. Nothing else. What can She mean? For me, nothing unpleasant - for me as a soul. She loves me, and I am thus safe. But She is sad. Why? What pain does the Mother suffer in her robe as a Servite? Does this mean mourning in the family of the Servants of Mary or some spiritual disaster, even worse than a death?
How many things I would like to know! Things concerning visions or sounds I heard. Since I found out that the bell towers at St. Andrea’s and St. Paolino’s were demolished, I have been thinking of their very distinct tolling, which I heard in the final days of August.747 The date is in the notebooks you are copying. I would really like to know whether they fell on those nights....
Marta748 returned today.... and told me the house to the left of mine and also others on the right, in front, and in back were hit by the last cannon blasts. And she says the one on the corner has been hit. I remember having dreamed and suffered in February for this reason and having said so to you. I then calmed down because a splinter had struck the house on the corner, a little splinter from antiaircraft artillery, and I thought the dream had been fulfilled. However, at a distance of eight months, it has come true in the slightest details.
Why, Lord, do You give these out-of-the-ordinary things to me, who am so afraid of what is not ordinary...?
741 As a tertiary.
742 Cf. The Autobiography.
743 We omit the episode involving “Jesus’ Meeting Philip and Nathanael in Bethsaida,” found in the cycle on The First Year of the Public Life.
744 She is referring to the Servants of Mary.
745 Father Migliorini.
746 On December 17, 1943. See The Notebooks. 1943.
747 August 25 and 29.
748 From Viareggio. See note 312.