GRM 196.1.2 · Volume 3
The Gospel as revealed to me
Quotation
The group has spent most of the Sabbath morning resting their tired bodies and cleaning their clothes which had become dusty and creased during the journey. There is so much inviting water in the spacious cisterns of Gethsemane, full of rain water, and in the foamy Kidron, now in flood, because of the recent downpours, where the water resounds against the stones like a symphony. And the apostles, one after the other, defying the low temperature of the water, plunge into it and then, clad from head to foot in fresh clothes, their hair rather sleeked by the spray of the torrent, they draw water from the cisterns pouring it into large vats in which they have sorted out their clothes according to the colours. (...)
They scatter in the olive-grove, which is so beautiful on this serene April day. The rain of the past days seems to have silvered the olive-trees and sown flowers, so bright are the leaves in the sun and so numerous the little flowers at the foot of each tree. Birds are singing and flying everywhere. The town is lying over there, to the west of an onlooker.
It is not possible to see the crowds thronging inside, but one can see the caravans going towards the Gate of the Fish and to others, with names unknown to me, on this eastern side, and the travellers are swallowed by the town as it if were a hungry mouth.
Annotation
The city stretches out over there, west of Gethsemane. See the sketch drawn by Maria Valtorta.
Maria Valtorta drew the sketch in black pencil, sometimes overlaid with red and blue. Some names were drawn in pen. In the center is the "Temple", with "Tightly packed houses", and, in a semicircle to the left: "Suburbs and sparser houses", all encircled by a double circle whose explanation is at the bottom of the page: "(The red and blue circle indicates the walls)". On these "walls", we read a "door" next to the "north" indication, and another "door" to the southeast. Outside the "walls": "Cedron" and "Gethsemane" to the east, "Houses" twice to the south, "torrent" and "Golgotha" to the west.
We see the caravans heading for the Pisces Gate. North of Jerusalem, next to the Temple.