December 14, 1946prev home
next
5:20 a.m.
I awakened. I found my affliction at my bedside and shouldered it, like a cross. But at the same time the dear Divine Voice was heard: “Jesus is coming to give his kiss (the Eucharist) to his little bride”. I replied, “Oh, my Lord! Grant me a light. Tell me if it is really You! All that the Fathers of the Servants of Mary in general and Father Migliorini in particular make me suffer leads me to believe that I am deluded, mentally ill, or obsessed. Is it You that speak, or is it my brain that has fallen ill and become delirious? It is You or Satan? My greatest pain is this, and You know it. The fear of listening to voices that are not yours or your saints’ or of erring by calling what is just my own thought ‘your word.’ ”
Jesus replied:
“And even if it were? Didn’t I say that men’s thoughts emerge from the heart and that you know whether a plant is good from the fruit? Isn’t it stated in the Scripture and in Wisdom that those clarifying Me will possess eternal life and those working for Me will not sin? How often has it been stated in open or veiled fashion that those filled with Wisdom are filled with Me and those speaking supernatural words are voices of the Spirit of God dwelling in their hearts? For it is the Spirit of God, my beloved soul, who carries out these operations in the hearts of the men in whom He makes his dwelling, finding them deserving of being indwelt by Him. And the Paraclete Spirit is the Love of the Father and of the Son. If you, then, hear these words sounding in your heart, it is a sign that you are listening to the divine conversations of the Most Holy Trinity If you hear Me speaking, then, it is a sign that I am in you with my love. Consequently, even if it were really your heart that suggested these thoughts, later written down by you, it would be a sign that your heart is full of God, for ‘it is from a man’s heart that what emerges from his mouth proceeds.’265 Now then, if your heart prompts thoughts in your mouth and your mind, divine or supernatural sights and words, it is a sign that your heart is holy, that your heart harbors only love, justice, and heavenly things; it is a sign that your conversation is in Heaven and in your spirit you dwell in Heaven, possessing Heaven, enclosed within yourself. Blessed are those who are like you! And what are you afflicted over, O my beautiful tree - sweet apple tree, gentle olive tree - if you yield heavenly fruit, sweet with the Wisdom that We are, luminous like pure oil set aflame with the Light that We are?
“Be at peace? Be at peace, my beloved one, my faithful one, one in love with Me, and my beloved little bride. Be at peace. And proceed in peace. You are doing what I will. Those attacking you do not wound you, but wound Me, for they attack Me, Me alone; in any event, I - and no one else but Me - possess and manifest greatness and shine and instruct and live in you. Proceed. You bring the Lord, Mary, and the heavenly population of the Saints to be loved. For this reason alone, for this reason alone, you would receive eternal life! And, moreover, there is all your long and ever-growing love. There is your suffering. There is your immolation. There is all of you. Oh, do not be afraid! You cannot err because you are immersed in heroic love. Do not be afraid. What is full or immersed cannot receive any more or be more soaked or submerged by anything except that in which it already finds itself. Do not be afraid. Proceed and forgive.
“The near-sighted and those who because of threefold sensuality - or even just because of pride - live on the flat plain have cataracts over the eyes of their intellect and cannot see the sun shining on the summit of the mountains reaching out to the sky because they love the sky, the heights, and the purest regions. They do not see the plants whose growth the sun prompts on the peaks. In the same way, they do not see the divine contacts of the Sun God with the summit of your spirit and the plants whose growth there has been brought about by your desire to love Me, plants that the Sun God has grow more and more luxuriantly and that no storm can uproot.
“The words in the sapiential book can be applied to every soul that gives itself entirely to Wisdom: ‘Like a cedar on Lebanon I am raised aloft, like a cypress on Mount Hermon. Like a palm tree in En-gedi, like a rosebush in Jericho. Like a fair olive tree in the field, like a plane tree growing beside the water. Like cinnamon, or fragrant balm, or precious myrrh, I give forth perfume. Like galbanum and onycha and sweet spices, like the odor of incense in the holy place.’266 For those giving themselves to Wisdom give forth Wisdom. And Wisdom is fertile; it is a useful, beautiful forest with plants of every kind, including flowers, fruits, and soft fragrances, nourished by the eternal founts of its own nature: the Divinity. This praise it not only of Mary Most Holy. In Her Wisdom was complete, and every creaturely perfection was reached by Her. But - I am telling you so - it also applies to all the souls giving themselves to Wisdom, and the Liturgy applies it to many of them who were able to possess Wisdom.
“Who are you? Do they ask and do you ask yourself who you are? I will tell you in the words of Isaiah what your name is: ‘I, the Lord, give and will give them a name better than that of sons and daughters: I will give them an eternal name which shall never perish.’267 I will tell you in the words of John the Beloved: ‘To the victor I will give hidden manna and a white stone on which a new name is written that no one knows except the one receiving it.’268 And I have already given it to you and will not take it away from you if you remain faithful to Me. I will not take it away from you, and you shall bear it with many others, with all ‘those who come from the great tribulation,’ where there is no more pain, ‘for God will dry every tear from their eyes.’
“Are you at peace, little bride? Did I come to kiss you, as I said at the outset? Is my Eucharistic honey in you? Do you feel how soft it is? Aren’t our two hearts beating with just one beat? Does my blood inebriate you? Is my Sun shining in you? Does it warm and console you? Oh, my Maria! Why, come? Why, abandon yourself! It is so beautiful to love one another and forget Aminadab’s chariot’s,269 ferocious, harsh, dark, cold, and material. Come to love. Give Me love. I have so few souls that love Me unreservedly, as you do. Why would you like to retreat in fear from the voices of those remaining between the grass and the guagmire, like frogs that would like to silence the nightingale and fly into the sun like the dove and are annoyed because they cannot do so? Come. It’s really Me. Come. You cannot doubt. You can no longer doubt when I hold you like this. But ecstasy is not at all hours. And you must be able to remain blessed, secure, as you are now, even when ecstasy withdraws and incomprehension and distrust willed by men envelop you. Everything shall pass, my soul. But I will always remain for you - forever. After Calvary comes the Resurrection. After the Passion, the Ascension. For Christ and for the brides of Christ.
“May my peace and my charity be in you, for you, and with you always.” 270
265 Matthew 15:18-20, Mark 7:20-23, Luke 6:45.
266 Sirach 24:13-15
267 Isaiah 56:4-5.
268 Revelation 2:17; 17:7, 13-17 (Isaiah 25:8)
269 Song of Songs 6:12.
270 We omit about nine handwritten pages, dated December 15 and 22, 1946, containing Azariah’s commentaries on the Masses for the Third and Fourth Sundays of Advent.