July 12, 1946prev home
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Friday
I was weeping because it was Friday, the day for Holy Communion, and I was deprived of it.... The agony, always acute, became tremendous. My whole spirit, wounded, was moaning, and my flesh suffered as if mortally stricken.... And, while weeping, I thought of both the cruel and the good ones among my brothers in religion, considering that the good ones suffered with me and for the same cause as I. And I offered my suffering to relieve theirs and to wrest a definitive “yes” from Jesus concerning the manuscripts. For this time divine intransigence was not bending to any prayer.245
My Lord came and consoled me, saying:
“Here I am, little John. They do not let us be one: I in you; you, a ciborium containing Me, for the joy of both of us. Little, little John, let us love one another, and may love be fusion. Come. On my chest, little John, like the other John, and let my love enter into you to give you what has been denied you....”
Union bestows confidence. Blessed, I asked for the grace which Father Berti, Father Migliorini, and others requested.
Jesus grew severe, with the unbearable gaze of the moments when He is more Justice than Mercy.... I looked at him in fear, even though I knew that glance was not for his poor Maria. He moved slowly around the room and bent over the handwritten notebooks which had come back from Rome for the corrections to the Pre-Gospel. He repeated some isolated sentences found therein. I recognized them. He turned and asked, “You understand them, don’t you?”
“Yes, my Lord. Do You want me to write them?”
“No, they are already written. To repeat them would mean provoking their judgment, which is always the same: ‘Is that the way you speak to priests?’ The sentence spoken to Me on numberless occasions by the priests of Israel, for those who are at fault speak imperiously to silence those who are right, saying, ‘You are at fault,’ in order not to say, ‘I have been at fault.’ And even when the words come from Wisdom and are known to come therefrom, they say, ‘It’s you that have spoken’ in order to strike out at the creature. Do not rewrite them, then. They are already written here so that they will read them. And they are written elsewhere, where no human hand can manage to destroy or human eye refuse to read. For this reason I tell you that in all truth they shall read them one day. But these notebooks and the others which are still in Rome must return to this house, under your protection. The delay obtained does not change the decree. Even if it were my own Vicar who, with the heart of a true Christ, took the Work and you under his protection - and grace and blessing would descend upon his head from the Divinity - the manuscripts must return here, to the house of my spokesman.
“The sign of my condemnation of what has been done against your spirit must remain as an admonition for those who have acted and those who will be their successors. The tremendous tor- ture they have caused you shall never be erased from your spirit either on earth or in heaven: here, as a mark of agony; there, as a sign of glory - great tribulation becoming election, as stated in John’s Apocalypse.246 Let the sign remain for them as in you. For I can forgive all that is done to the ‘instrument,’ since I have mercy on the ‘dead,’ like those of the Church in Sardis,247 and I give them time to confirm what is not yet dead and revive what has been extinguished - that is, the capacity for understanding God through you, my voice. But I cannot pass over without a sign of punishment what is being done to your spirit, and even more to Me, in refusing to let us be united in the Sacrament, to nourish you with the Sacraments which I have instituted for all the souls in the grace of God or in need of returning to Grace. And to refuse while knowing your conditions and those of this city.
“With my Blood I paid for all souls. I paid in advance. I gave Myself so that you may have Me. Who can refuse Me to my beloved children? I cannot forgive everything because, if it is true that I am He who forgives, as the condition for the measure of forgiveness I establish the measure of the love shown by the blameworthy. Here no love has been shown either God - for whom communicating Himself is a joy - or you, a soul for whom to receive Me is life. And if I forgive the pain caused the spokesman, I punish for the pain caused your soul as a Christian. Make this known as well to those to whom it should be said.”
And Jesus departed after having blessed me.
This was at 9:30.... At 11 the mail brought me two letters - or, rather, three: one from Father Migliorini, in contrast to the one from Father Berti the same day, one from Sister Saviane in Venice,248 and the third from Father Pennoni, who mentioned his intention of turning to the Holy Father to receive protection. I shall not make any comments. I simply observe that Jesus has already set forth this possibility, confirming, however, that even in this case the manuscripts must return to me.249
245 In minute writing, certainly at a later date, she added: “(When the Father General had ordered that I no longer be brought Holy Communion. I nearly died. It was then that Jesus sent me Father Luigi...).” See notes 237 and 201.
246 Revelation 7:13-14.
247 Revelation 3:1.
248 See note 103 and The Notebooks. 1944, note 540.
249 We omit ten handwritten pages containing Azariah’s commentary on the Mass for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost.