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Aa

GRM 36

The Gospel as revealed to me

Detail

Maria saw a very poor house in Egypt. She sees the Child Jesus playing on the ground, at the age of two, two and a half at the most. Mary works at her loom while watching the child. At one point, she hands him his sandals, gives him a kiss, then puts away her loom. She returns, gives the Child her hand, and they leave the house for the street. Finally, she stops at a well. Joseph arrives in the meantime and quickens his pace when he sees his wife and Son. Joseph bends down to give the Child a piece of fruit, and there's a gentle, affectionate embrace between Jesus and his putative father. Joseph rises, taking Jesus in his right arm, and the three of them return to the house. Maria sees them preparing supper and eating together very simply, after praying.

Jesus then gives a dictation, insisting on the humility, resignation and perfect harmony of the Holy Family. Joseph and Mary are the guardians of the Holy Family, but they derive no material benefit from it. They live in poverty, in exile, in a world where people are suspicious of each other because they are strangers. Yet there is peace, serenity and harmony.

In this house, "there are no nervous, touchy people, closed faces or mutual reproaches, and even less reproaches towards God who does not shower them with material well-being." In this house," says Jesus, "we pray, we are frugal, we love work. Humility reigns in the Holy Family, and the supernatural, moral and material order is respected. We respect God (supernatural order), we respect Joseph as father and head of the family (moral order), we thank God for the goods we possess, even if they are poor (material order).

Jesus concludes by inviting us to meditate on this vision.

GRM 36.1

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

36.1 The sweet vision of the Holy Family. The place is in Egypt. I have no doubt because I see the desert and a pyramid.

I see a small house with a single floor, a ground floor, completely white. A poor house of very poor people. The walls are just plastered and whitewashed. There are two doors, one near the other, leading into the only two rooms of the house which, for the time being, I do not enter. The little house is in the middle of a small piece of sandy ground, enclosed by a fence of canes fixed into the ground, a very weak protection against thieves; it can only be used as a protection against cats or stray dogs. On the other hand, who would think of stealing where it is quite visible that there is not even the shadow of riches?

The little piece of ground, enclosed by the cane hedge, has been patiently cultivated as a little garden, notwithstanding that the earth is arid and poor. In order to make the hedge a little thicker and less scanty, they have grown some creepers which appear to be modest convolvuli, only on one side there is a shrub of jasmine in full bloom and a bush of common roses. In the kitchen garden I see some very modest vegetables in the centre under a tall plant which I do not recognise and which gives some shade to the arid ground and to the little house. A little black and white goat is tied to the plant and it is browsing on the leaves of some branches thrown on the ground.

GRM 36.3

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

I see that on the front of the house the hedge is broken by a rustic gate, which Mary opens to go out onto the road. It is a poor road at the end of a town or a village, whatever it may be, where it ends up with the country that here is formed of sand and some other houses, as poor as this one, with some scanty kitchen gardens.

I do not see anybody. Mary looks towards the centre of the town not towards the country, as if She were waiting for someone; She then moves towards a vessel or well, whatever it may be, which is some ten metres further up, and on which some palm trees form a shady circle. Over there some green can be seen on the ground.

GRM 36.4

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

(...) He moves towards the house, while Mary goes to the fountain to fill Her amphora.

After entering the enclosure of the house, Joseph puts the Child down, takes Mary’s loom into the house, and then he milks the goat. Jesus watches all these activities carefully and in particular the closing of the little goat in a little closet in one side of the house.

It is now getting dark. I can see the red of the sunset becoming violet on the sands which seem to be trembling because of the heat. The pyramid looks darker.

Joseph goes into the house, into a room which must be his workshop, the kitchen, the dining room all in one. The other room is obviously the bedroom. But I do not go in there. The fire is lit in a low fireplace. There is a carpenter’s bench, a small table, some stools, some shelves with two oil lamps and some kitchenware on them. In a corner, there is Mary’s loom. And a great deal of order and cleanliness. A very poor dwelling, but very clean.