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Defense of the Work

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Aa

GRM 37.1-2

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

Joseph watches and takes an interest as if it were a very serious matter. He then suggests to make a small lake, the following day, but not with an old cracked pot, but with a small wooden basin well coated with pitch and stucco, in which Jesus would be able to launch small real wooden boats which Joseph would teach Him how to make.

37.2 Just then, he was bringing Him some small working tools suitable for Him, that He might learn to use them, without any fatigue.

«So I will be able to help you!» Jesus says, smiling.

«So You will help me, and You will become a clever carpenter. Come and see them.»

And they go into the workshop. Joseph shows Him a small hammer, a tiny saw, some very small screwdrivers, a plane suitable for a doll, which are all lying on the bench of a budding carpenter: a bench suitable for little Jesus’ size.

«See, to saw, You must put this piece of wood like that. You then take the saw like that, and making sure that You do not catch Your fingers, You start sawing. Try…»

And the lesson begins. And Jesus, blushing with the effort and pressing His lips together, saws the piece of wood carefully and then planes it, and although it is not perfectly straight, He thinks it is nice. Joseph praises Him and with patience and love teaches Him how to work.

Detail

Context: Jesus, who is about five years old, plays in the garden but fails to create a small lake in the ground.

Challenge: Screwdrivers don't exist.

Editor's note on the screwdriver: in reality, the screw and the screwdriver did not exist at the time. In fact, they must have been small, old-fashioned wood chisels, i.e. an iron rod with a flattened, sharpened end, to which a wooden handle was fitted for easy manoeuvring. In 42.2, Maria clarifies her uncertainty by adding: "me semble-t-il" ("it seems to me").

GRM 42.2

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

42.2 Jesus is working at a large carpentry bench. He is planing some boards which He then rests against the wall behind Him. He then takes a kind of stool, clamped on two sides by a vice, He frees it from the vice, and He looks to see whether the job is perfect, He examines it from every angle, He then goes to the chimney, takes the little pot and stirs the contents with a little stick or brush, I am not sure; I can only see the part protruding from the pot and which is like a little stick.

Jesus is wearing a rather short tunic, the colour of which is dark hazelnut: the sleeves are rolled up to His elbows, and He is wearing a kind of apron on which He wipes His fingers after touching the little pot.

He is by Himself. He works diligently, but peacefully. No abrupt or impatient movement. He is precise and constant in His work. Nothing annoys Him: neither a knot in the wood which will not be planed, nor a screwdriver (I think it is a screwdriver) which falls twice from the bench, nor the smoke floating in the room which must irritate His eyes.

Now and again He raises His head and looks towards the southern wall, where there is a closed door, and He listens. At one point He opens a door which is on the eastern side and opens onto the road, and He looks out. I can see a small portion of the dusty little road. He seems to be waiting for someone. He then goes back to His work. He is not sad, but very serious. He closes the door again and goes back to work.

Detail

Challenge: The screwdriver doesn't exist.

Note: Regarding the screwdriver, Maria writes her uncertainty. As one note puts it, "the screw and the screwdriver didn't exist back then".

GRM 44.8

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

44.8 I have planned to alternate your contemplations and My consequent clarifications with true and proper dictations to comfort you and your spirit, granting you the beatitude of seeing, and also because in this way the difference in style between your composition and Mine will be obvious.

Furthermore, with so many books dealing with Me and which after so many revisions, changes and fineries have become unreal, I want to give those who believe in Me a vision brought back to the truth of My mortal days. I am not diminished thereby, on the contrary I am made greater in My humbleness, which becomes substantial nourishment for you, to teach you to be humble and like Me, as I was a man like you and in My human life I bore the perfection of a God. I was to be your Model, and models must always be perfect.

In the contemplations I will not keep a chronological order corresponding to that of the Gospels. I will select the points which I find more useful on that day for you or for other people, following My own line of teaching and goodness.

GRM 45.9

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

45.9 Do you know, Mary, what you are doing? Or rather, what I am doing, in showing you the Gospel? Making a stronger attempt to bring men to Me. You yearned for it with your fervent prayers. I will no longer confine Myself to words. They tire men and detach them. It is a fault, but it is so. I will have recourse to visions, also of My Gospel, and I will explain them to make them more attractive and clear.

I give you the comfort of seeing them. I give everybody the possibility of wishing to know Me. And if it is of no avail, and like cruel children they should throw away the gift without understanding its value, you will be left with My present, and they with My indignation. I shall be able once again to repeat the old reproach: “We played for you and you would not dance; we sang laments and you would not weep”.

But it does not matter. Let them, the inconvertible ones, heap burning coals on their heads and let us turn to the little sheep seeking to become acquainted with their Shepherd. It is I, and you are the staff leading them to Me.»

Detail

Objection raised: Jesus considers the Word tiresome and gives the visions to Maria Valtorta.

GRM 47.6

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

47.6 The value of purity is such that, as you have seen, the first thing Satan was anxious about, was to deceive Me about impurity. He Knows very well that sensual sins dismantle the soul and make it an easy prey to other sins. Satan’s efforts aimed at this capital point, in order to defeat Me.

Bread, hunger, are the material forms for the allegory of appetite, of the appetites that Satan takes advantage of for his own purpose. The food he offered Me to make Me fall intoxicated at his feet is quite a different thing! Greed would have followed, then avarice, power, idolatry, blasphemy and the abjuration of the divine Law. But that was the first step to catch Me. Exactly as he did to injure Adam.

Detail

Contextualization: Jesus talks about purity, virginity of spirit, and returns to his temptation in the desert.

Challenge: Adam and Eve committed a sin of lust (see Maria Valtorta's note below).

Note by Maria Valtorta
When Jesus speaks of the sensuality Satan used to get at Adam, Maria Valtorta notes on a typed copy: "Man as a child of God had been wounded by pride and disobedience. The animal man remained. He was wounded by lust, for once he had lost grace, he sinned as a natural man. Jesus was God and man. Untouchable as God. So it was only as "Man" that he could be tempted by Satan."

GRM 52.7

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

52.7 Jesus explains the meaning of the sentence to me.

«That “still”, which is omitted by many translators, is the keyword of the sentence and explains its true meaning.

I was the Son, submissive to My Mother, up to the moment when the will of My Father told Me that the hour had come when I was to be the Master. From the moment My mission started, I was no longer the Son submissive to My Mother, but I was the Servant of God. My moral ties with My Mother were broken. They had turned into higher bonds, all of a spiritual nature. I always called Mary, My Holy “Mother”. Our love suffered no interruptions, neither did it even cool down, on the contrary, it was never so perfect as when I was separated from Her as by a second birth and She gave Me to the world and for the world, as the Messiah and Evangeliser. Her third sublime mystical maternity took place when She bore Me to the cross in the torture of Golgotha, and made Me the Redeemer of the world.

“What is there still between Me and You?” Before I was Yours, only Yours. You gave Me orders, and I obeyed You. I was “subject” to You. Now I belong to My mission.

Did I not say: “He, who lays his hand on the plough and looks back to bid farewell to those who are staying, is not fit for the Kingdom of God”? I had laid My hand on the plough not to cut the ground with the plough, but to open the hearts of men and sow there the word of God. I was to take My hand away from the plough only when they would tear it away to nail it to the Cross and to open with My torturing nail My Father’s heart, out of which forgiveness for mankind was to flow.

That “still”, forgotten by most, meant this: “You were everything for Me, Mother, as long as I was only Jesus of Mary of Nazareth, and You are everything in My spirit; but since I became the expected Messiah, I belong to My Father. Wait for a little while and once My mission is over, I will be, once again, entirely Yours; You will hold Me once again in Your arms, as when I was a little child, and no one will ever again contend with You for Your Son, considered as the disgrace of mankind, that will throw His mortal remains at You, to bring on You the shame of being the mother of a criminal. And afterwards You will have Me once again, triumphant, and finally You will have Me forever when You are triumphant in Heaven. But now I belong to all these men. And I belong to the Father, Who sent Me to them”.

That is the sense of that short but so full of meaning “still”.»

Detail

Objection raised: The "henceforth" is not found in the Gospel.

Second edition notes on the passage *This henceforth that many translators pass over in silence: in translating the words that can be read in Jn 2:4.

GRM 54.5

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

«Oh! My friends! And who is perfect but God?»

«You are!»

«I solemnly tell you that I am not perfect by Myself, if you think I am prophet. No man is perfect. But I am perfect because He Who is speaking to you is the Word of the Father: part of God. His thought that becomes Word. I have Perfection in Myself. And you must believe Me to be such if you believe that I am the Word of the Father. And yet, see, My friends, I want to be called the Son of man because I lower Myself taking upon Myself all the miseries of man, to bear them as My first scaffold, and cancel them, after bearing them, without suffering from them Myself. What a burden, My friends! But I bear it with joy. It is a joy for Me to bear it, because, since I am the Son of mankind, I will make mankind once again the child of God. As it was on the first day.»

Detail

Being a part of God, his Thought made Word, I have perfection in me. In a note to the second edition, it is written: "part is not to be understood as "portion" but as "belonging". Unlike man, who belongs to God not by nature, but by likeness (note 167.9), Jesus belongs to God by nature: in other words, he is God like the Father (he will say in 487.4: "I am his, both part and all with him"). This is why his perfection does not lie in the fact that he is a prophet (as he said above), but that he is God-Man. The human part of the God-Man was exhaustively completed by his victory over temptation (as he himself will say in 80.10 and as is clear from the end of the note to 174.9). Jesus' discourses in chapters 487 and 506 on the two natures, divine and human, are fundamental.

Son of man is the most frequent title given to Jesus and by Jesus to himself. Its general meaning is given in 343.4; but its messianic meaning is found here as well as, for example, in 126.3 and 603.1.