December 25, 1945prev home next
Jesus says:
“It is a need and must be done. But I am not at all happy with it. Let it be done as soon as possible, however, and in the shortest possible time let it be completed. But let it not be begun, either, unless all that you have written and handed to Father has first been typed up. And Father should give you everything that is typewritten so that you can correct it in that month of his absence. I cannot allow there to remain uncorrected and uncopied pages. And your life is so undermined by secret, enemy forces!
“Oh, my little violet with your stem cut off, does no one realize, then, that only one surviving rootlet, the thinnest of all, still keeps you inserted into existence and you are living only through that very weak life-giving vein? A bump from a butterfly would suffice to cut away this rootlet as well.
“I will give nothing more until all that has been given has been transcribed. Do nothing else until you have corrected everything. Father Romualdo should do nothing else until this is done. There is nothing to trifle with or trust imprudently about in supernatural assistance. Act with ordinary means as if the extraordinary ones did not exist.
“As regards priestly aid, you must certainly have it. I do not give you extraordinary, obstreperous signs. You would then no longer be my violet. But in your apparent normality as a most normal creature who eats, drinks, and sleeps like every mortal, who does not present ecstasies, inexplicable fasts, bloody sweating, stigmata, or anything else, who is in perfect psychic balance - and whoever wants to say the opposite is knowingly lying - there are extraordinary factors which are the sign of what you are and of what I am in you: the All, the Origin, the Explanation, and the End of your being.
“One of these is the vitality returning with each Communion. I do not come into you with my Spirit to nourish your spirit. Not this alone. But I come with my healthy Virility, too, and transfuse it into you. How could you remain without Life - you, a nearly dead body? The key, the secret to all acts of endurance by you in the face of the diseases and exertions of the mission, which, in and of itself, with its massive weight, would overcome all the endurance of a strong, healthy person, lies in this coming of your Jesus into you with all his gifts, including that of a life-giving, physical transfusion.
“If I did not wish to put too much pressure on my servant Romualdo, who is already weary, I would want to come into you every day, as the true Physician and medicine, to attenuate your excessive agonies - really excessivè agonies - and come to the aid of your demolished strength. Consider, then, whether I could allow you to remain for days and days without the Eucharist. You would die even without undergoing a crisis. You would die because you would lack what nourishes you. And you would be too oppressed by the one who hates you. The Eucharist you bear within yourself keeps him at a distance. That alone. For he hates you more and more and with all means tries to disturb and hamper your work. For this reason, too, I exhort Romualdo not to get distracted with other cares. They are just so many false scenarios to detour, delay, and distract him, to the detriment of your work, which is truly this alone: my work.
“Let him show charity, a great deal of charity, towards all. But let him not leave you, for it would bring Me pain. You are to be followed until the end, without other goals. And without abusing trust in God. Let him not tempt Providence. Let him bear in mind that Satan makes himself numerous weapons out of all that is ordinary existence - events, needs, fears, afflictions, straitened circumstances, and so on. If he could succeed before the Cathedral of the integral reconstruction of the Gospel is finished and corrected by the spokesman, it would be his great victory.
“Who should little John be entrusted to? ‘John, here is Mary, your Mother’; ‘Mary, here is your son, John.’125 The names indicate who to give you to. But how I would have preferred not to have Mary looked after by anyone else but Romualdo! And yet it is good for you to get used to other voices, if only in order to lose other painful memories....
“And do not investigate about whether or not he was an instrument.... Man often is even without deserving to be. In truth, in truth I tell you that only in the measure of ten per thousand do men die - even if they have always been saints - without having been an instrument of Satan at least once. Don’t think! Don’t think! And pray for him.
“And that’s enough for now, little John, an undying flame because I pour myself into him.
“Tell Father this, though: that Satan is not only crafty and envious, but he is an intelligent spirit. He did not lose this quality of his from the time when he was a shining archangel. It is only that he now uses it for evil. And he knows. Beforehand. If he did not identify Me as the Christ before the hour, it is because an operation of special divine power took place in my favor. But as soon as my mission as a prophet and just one was manifested, he understood Me.
“Do you... do you know when yours began? No, you don’t know. But he saw it when it first flamed up and began his work. And so it is with many things. Satan is shrewd and circles tirelessly around souls to eavesdrop on their secret conversations with God, which take place even without the awareness of the very creature who possesses the soul that is in conversation with God.
“Go in peace.”
Jesus says:
“Do you see? I have spoken to two of your daughters and made them ‘Kings from the East.’126 But the one who brings Me the incense must be you. Bring, bring Me the incense of your office as Prioress, which is so sanctifying if carried out with justice.
“Oh, in all truth, as incense is broken into grains and cast upon coals to give off fragrance and fulfill the mission for which it was created, so a Superior in a Convent, to perform the function for which he was elected to that office in true fashion, must be demolished and consumed by the burning coal. And the mortar and the pestle are the duty to be carried out: the mortar embraces all, and the characters of the souls entrusted to the Lord - characters which, burdensome as they are in their varying characteristics and tendencies, form a very heavy pestle of bronze, when joining with each other. And the poor men’s or women’s Superior is underneath, sweet-smelling resin that the others pulverize and that could not be placed in the thurible unless crushed. And it would not give off fragrance unless, inside the thurible, moved by an angelic hand before the altar in the Heavens, there were no burning coals - in part, very sweet: those set aflame by the charity of the victims giving themselves to have their immolating pyre; in part, very bitter: those of the forms of selfishness surviving in creatures even when they are no longer Rosa, Giuseppina, Antonia, Angela, and so on, but Sister A, B, or C, creatures who, on renouncing their secular garb when taking the religious habit, should have renounced their pre-existing moral habits and risen up as new, entirely new, to enter, singing, into the house of the Bridegroom.
“But it is necessary to have compassion...! Human nature is worse than a polyp.... You cut and cut... and some tentacle, some sucker gripping the past always remains - a past which ought to be dead, with all its tendencies and savors.
“Burn, burn! Your fragrance rises up to here. Gold is precious and is of use to kings for their crowns. Myrrh is salutary and serves to protect against putrefaction. It is of use to men, then. But incense is God’s. For his throne. For his acclaim.... Teresa Maria, be incense. My peace be in you.”
Jesus says:
“I like seeing those two humble little words on Mother’s envelope. In these times, indeed, the green heads of the hyacinths barely emerge from the earth. All the rest bites the earth in the vase or flowerbed; it is mortified in the darkness and wetness - it is ignored.... But when the time comes for my glorification as Redeemer, all the hyacinths uplift their scented corollas and seem to be offering them to heaven and to my altar, holding them in the chalice of their leaves, like the fingers of two hands joined in prayer which open to beseech. Precisely because I like the mortification of the hyacinth, I say my words to the hyacinth.
“I told one of your sisters to bring Me myrrh. I will tell Mother to bring Me incense. I tell you, Giacinta, ‘Bring Me gold.’ Charity! How much you can do in this field!
“You wish to receive direction from my Mother. I will take you to Her. Let Her, the All-Loving, speak.”
Jesus grows silent and is replaced by Mary. Mary says:
“Daughter, the heart - not knowledge - leads over fields blossoming with love.
“When my Child was beginning to walk, many flowers blossomed again in the meadows of Bethlehem, with the first rains of autumn. And He, the beloved Baby, pushed forward his holy little body, directing his feet towards different corollas scattered here and there amidst the meadow grass, and, like a small bird, He chirped his formless words to those flowers created by his Father. And, I am sure, those flowers understood the mysterious words of the Infant God, reduced, out of charity towards all of us, to a stammering child - He, the Word.
“But the next spring - and even more so during the ones coming after - along the Nilotic roads which the flood waters had nourished and turned into fertile land, He, now secure, proceeded like a golden bee, like a joyful calandra lark, from flower to flower, to pick them for me, and He would laugh, with all his little teeth shining between his rosy lips, while pouring his booty onto my lap and behind my head to ask for kisses upon his heavenly eyes, and ask about the names of and the stories connected with the flowers. And He wanted to know what their sap was good for.
“And once, the last spring in Egypt, Divine Wisdom spoke through his innocent lips. He had listened to me speaking. He had then separated the flowers according to an idea He had. He seemed to be playing. But his mind was working. Joseph, who was cutting long boards in the green shade of the young leaves in the poor garden, observing that the most beautiful flowers were on one side, neglected, whereas caresses and sweet words went to the humble flowers of camomile, wild lilies of the valley, scurvy grass, buttercups, chicory, chickweed, and red clover, asked Him, ‘Why, my son, do you prefer those, simple and common, to the splendid roses, the riccardias, and the double jasmines Rachel of Levi gave you?’ ‘Because these are the flowers showing charity to men. They are charity, not just pleasure to the eyes and the nose,’ replied Jesus. And Joseph and I, after remaining speechless before the wisdom of the Child, bent over to kiss his luminous brow.
“Daughter, you are also familiar with the humble, common virtues, the acts they prompt, like flowers. Prefer them. Carry them out. Jesus loves them so much. You heard: ‘I prefer them because they are charity.’ In your role you can pick many of them. A meadow in flower stands before you. Cut, cut.... There is never enough charity. Be wholly charity, and you will bear the gold of the King from the East to my sweet Jesus.”
“And now that the Sweetness of God and men has spoken, I, along with Her, bless you. Peace be with you.”
125 John 19:26-27
126 Matthew 2:1-12