Dictations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the EMV

24.6 Mary says:

«God forgives him who acknowledges his sin, repents and confesses it with a humble and sincere heart. He does not only forgive, He rewards. Oh! How good is My Lord to those who are humble and sincere! To those who believe in Him, and trust in Him!

24.7 Clear your souls of what encumbers them and makes them lazy. Prepare your souls to receive the Light. As a light in darkness, It is a guide and a holy consolation.

O holy friendship with God, beatitude of His faithful ones, wealth unequalled by anything else, he who possesses you is never alone, and never tastes the bitterness of despair. O holy friendship, you do not eradicate sorrow, because sorrow was the destiny of a God incarnate and can thus be the destiny of man. But you make this sorrow sweet in its bitterness, and you mix it with a light and a caress which relieve the cross with a celestial touch.

And when Divine Bounty grants you graces, make use of the gift received to give glory to God. Do not be like foolish people who turn a good thing into a harmful weapon, or like lavish persons who convert their wealth into misery.

24.8 You give Me too much sorrow, My children, behind whose faces I see the Enemy appear, that is, he who hurls himself against My Jesus. Too much sorrow! I would like to be the Source of Grace for everybody. But too many among you do not want Grace. You ask for ‘graces’, but with a soul devoid of Grace. How can Grace succour you if you are Her enemies?

24.9 The great mystery of Good Friday is approaching. It is commemorated and celebrated in churches. But it is necessary to celebrate and commemorate it in your hearts, and to beat your breasts like those who were descending from Golgotha and say: ‘In truth, this Man was the Son of God, the Saviour’, and say: ‘Jesus, for the sake of Your Name, save us’, and say: ‘Father, forgive us’, and finally say: ‘I am not worthy, but if You forgive me and come to me, my soul will be healed, and I no longer want to commit sin, because I no longer wish to be ill and hateful to You’.

Pray, children, with the words of My Son. Say to the Father for your enemies: ‘Father, forgive them’. Call the Father Who has withdrawn indignant at your errors: ‘Father, Father, why have You forsaken me? I am a sinner. But if You forsake me, I will perish. Come back, Holy Father, that I may be saved’. Entrust your eternal good, your spirit, to the Only One Who can preserve it unhurt from the demons: ‘Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit’. Oh! If with humbleness and love you surrender your spirit to God, He will lead it as a father leads his little one, neither will He allow anything to hurt your spirit.

Jesus, in His agony, prayed to teach you how to pray. I am reminding you of it in these days of His Passion.

24.10 And you, Mary, since you see My joy of a Mother and you are enraptured by it, consider and remember that I possessed God through an ever increasing sorrow. It descended into Me with the Seed of God and like a gigantic tree it has grown until it touched Heaven with its top, and hell with its roots, when I received on My lap the lifeless remains of the Flesh of My flesh, and I saw and counted His tortures, and I touched His torn Heart to consume My sorrow right until the last drop.»

• Dictations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the EMV

25.8 Mary says:

«It is the eve of Maundy Thursday. Some people may think that this vision is out of place. But your grief of lover of My Jesus Crucified is in your heart and will remain there even if a sweet vision is shown to you. It is like the tepidity emanating from a flame, which is still fire but is no longer fire. The flame is fire, not its tepidity which comes from it. No beatific or peaceful vision will be able to remove that grief from your heart. And regard it as something precious, more precious than your own life. Because it is the greatest gift that God can grant a believer in His Son. Further, my vision is not discordant, in all its peace, with the commemorations of this week.

25.9 Also My Joseph suffered his passion. It began in Jerusalem when he noticed My condition. And it lasted several days, exactly as it had happened to Jesus and to Me. Neither was it less painful for his soul. And only because of the holiness of My just spouse, it was contained in such a dignified and secret form, that it has been hardly noticed throughout centuries.

Oh! Our first Passion! Who can feel its intimate and silent intensity? Who can describe My pain when I realised that Heaven had not yet heard My prayer by revealing the mystery to Joseph?

I understood that he was not aware of it when I saw that he was respectful to Me as usual. If he had known that I bore in Me the Word of God, he would have adored that Word enclosed in My womb, with the acts of veneration which are due to God and which he would not have failed to accomplish, as I would not have refused to receive, not for My own sake, but for Him Who was within Me and that I bore, as the Ark of the Alliance carried the stone code and the vases of manna.

Who can measure My struggle against the dismay that endeavoured to overwhelm Me in order to convince Me that I had hoped in vain in the Lord? Oh! I think it was the furious rage of Satan! I perceived doubt rising behind My back, and stretching its icy claws to imprison My soul and prevent it from praying. Doubt is so dangerous and lethal to the spirit. It is lethal because it is the first agent of the deadly disease called ‘despair’, against which we must react with all our strength, so that our souls may not perish, and we may not lose God.

Who can truly tell Joseph’s pain, his thoughts, the perturbation of his feelings? Like a little boat caught in a great storm, he was in a vortex of conflicting ideas, in a turmoil of reflections, of which one was more piercing and painful than the other. He was, to all appearances, a man betrayed by his wife. He saw his good reputation and the esteem of his world collapse around him; because of Her he saw scornful fingers pointed at him and felt pitied by the village people. Above all, he perceived that his love and esteem for Me had fallen, struck to death, before the evidence of a deed.

25.10 In this respect, his holiness shines brighter than Mine. And I give this witness with the affection of a spouse, because I want you to love My Joseph, this wise, prudent, patient and good man, who is not separated from the mystery of Redemption, on the contrary, he is closely connected to it, because he suffered for it, consuming himself in sorrow for it, saving your Saviour at the cost of his own sacrifice because of his holiness.

Had he not been so holy, he would have acted in a human way, denouncing Me as an adulteress so that I should be stoned, and the Son of My sin should perish with Me. If he had been less holy, God would not have granted him His light as guidance in his trial. But Joseph was holy. His pure spirit lived in God. His charity was ardent and strong. And out of charity he saved your Saviour for you, both when he refrained from accusing Me to the elders, and when he saved Jesus in Egypt, leaving everything with prompt obedience.

25.11 The three days of Joseph’s passion were short in number, but deep in intensity. And they were tremendous also for Me, those days of My first passion. Because I was aware of his suffering, which I could not alleviate, in fact I had to obey God’s command Who had said to Me: ‘Be silent!’

And when, after we arrived in Nazareth, I saw him go away with a laconic goodbye, and bent as if he had aged in a short time, and I noticed that he no longer came to see Me in the evening as he used to do, then I tell you, My children, that My heart wept very bitterly. Closed in My house, all alone, in the house where everything reminded Me of the Annunciation and the Incarnation, and where everything reminded Me of Joseph, married to Me with spotless virginity, I had to fight despair and Satan’s insinuation, and hope, hope, hope. And pray, pray, pray. And forgive, forgive, forgive Joseph’s suspicion, his disturbance and just despair.

My children: you must hope, pray, forgive in order to obtain God’s intervention in our favour. You must live your passions, because you deserved them with your sins. I can teach you how to overcome them and turn them into joy. Hope beyond measure. Pray with confidence. Forgive to be forgiven. God’s forgiveness will be the peace you desire, My children.

25.12 I will not say anything else for the time being. There will be silence until after the Easter triumph. It is Passion time. Have pity on your Redeemer. Listen to His cries, and count His wounds and tears. The former were suffered, the latter shed for you. Let every other vision disappear before that one that reminds you of the Redemption accomplished for you.»

• Dictations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the EMV

26.6 Mary says:

«No one must interpret My pallor erroneously. It was not caused by human fear. From a human point of view I should have expected to be stoned to death. But I was not afraid because of that. I was suffering because of Joseph’s pain. Neither was I upset by the thought that he might accuse Me. I was only sorry and afraid that he might be lacking in charity if he should insist in his accusation. That is why all My blood rushed to My heart when I saw him. It was the moment when even a just man might have offended Justice by offending charity. And I would have been extremely upset if a just man were to commit an error since he never erred.

26.7 Had I not been humble to the very extreme limit, as I told Joseph, I would not have deserved to bear within Me Him Who was lovering Himself, God, to the humiliation of being a man, in order to make reparation for the pride of the human race.

26.8 I have shown you that scene, which is not described by any of the Gospels, because I want to draw the excessively misguided attention of men to the conditions which are essential to please God and receive His continuous calls to your hearts.

Faith: Joseph believed the heavenly messenger’s words unquestioningly. He wanted but to believe, because he was sincerely convinced that God is good and that since he had hoped in the Lord, the Lord would not have reserved for him the torture of being betrayed, disappointed and sneered at by his neighbours. He asked for nothing, but to believe in Me, because, being honest, it was painful for him to think that other people were not honest. He lived according to the Law and the Law says: ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself’. We love ourselves so much that we think we are perfect even when we are not. Can we therefore not love our neighbour simply because we think he is faulty?

Unrestricted Charity. A charity that knows how to forgive, that wants to forgive, and forgive in advance wholeheartedly excusing the imperfections of our neighbours. It is necessary to forgive immediately, accepting every extenuating circumstance.

Humility, as unrestricted as charity. You must admit that you can be faulty even in simple thoughts, and you must not be so proud as to refuse to say: ‘I made a mistake’, because such pride would be more harmful than the previous fault. Everybody makes mistakes, with the exception of God. Who can say: ‘I am never wrong’? And there is a more difficult humility: the one that knows how to keep silent about God’s wonderful things in us, when it is not necessary to proclaim them for His glory, so that we might not discourage our neighbour who has not received such special gifts from God. If He wants, oh! if He only wants, God reveals Himself in His servant! Elizabeth ‘saw’ Me for what I was, My spouse knew Me for what I was, when it was time for him to know.

26.9 Leave to the Lord the care of proclaiming you His servants. He is anxious to do so, because every creature that rises to a particular mission, is a new glory which is added to His infinite glory, and is a witness of what man is, as God wanted him to be: a lesser perfection that reflects its Author. Remain in shadow and silence, you who are beloved by Grace, so that you may hear the only words of ‘life’, that you may deserve to have on you and in you the Sun that shines eternally.

Oh! Most Blessed Light, God, joy of Your servants, do shine on those servants of Yours that they may exult in their humility, praising You, only You, because You disperse the proud but raise the humble, who love You, to the splendour of Your Kingdom.»

• Dictations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the EMV

27.5 Mary says:

«I will not add much more, because My words are already a lesson.

But I wish to draw the attention of wives to one point. Too many marriages break up through the fault of women, who do not possess that love, which is everything: kindness, pity and solace to their husbands. The physical suffering that lies heavy on women does not lie heavily on men. But all the moral worries do: necessities of work, decisions to be taken, responsibilities before the established authorities and one’s own family… oh! how many things weigh on man! And how much comfort he also needs! And yet, a woman’s selfishness is such that she adds the weight of useless and sometimes unfair complaints to the burden of her tired, disheartened, worried husband. And all this because she is selfish. She does not love.

Love is not the satisfaction of one’s senses and utility. To love is to satisfy him whom we love, beyond senses and utility, giving him the help he needs so that he may always be able to keep his wings open in the skies of hope and peace.

27.6 There is another point to which I wish to draw your attention. I have already spoken of it. But I wish to insist: trust in God.

Trust summarises the theological virtues. Those who trust have faith. Those who trust hope. Those who trust love. When we love, we hope, we believe in a person, we trust. Otherwise we do not. God deserves our trust. If we trust poor men who may fail, why should we not trust God Who can never fail?

Trust is also humility. The proud man says: ‘I will do it by myself. I do not trust him because he is an incapable man, a liar, an overbearing fellow…’ The humble man says: ‘I trust him. Why should I not? Why should I think that I am better than he is?’ And more rightly he says of God: ‘Why should I mistrust Him Who is so good? Why should I think that I can do it by myself?’ God gives Himself to the humble, but withdraws from the proud.

Trust is also obedience. And God loves the obedient man. Obedience implies that we acknowledge ourselves as His children and we acknowledge God as our Father. And a father can but love when he is a real father. God is our real Father and a perfect Father.

27.7 The third point I want you to consider. It is always based on trust.

No event can happen unless God allows it. Are you powerful? You became so, because God permitted it. Are you a subject? You are such, because God permitted it. Endeavour, therefore, powerful one, not to turn your power to your own detriment. It would always be ‘your detriment’, even if at the beginning, it may appear detrimental to others. Because if God allows, He does not over-allow, and if you go beyond the mark He will strike you and crush you. Endeavour, therefore, o subject, to make of your condition a magnet that will draw the protection of Heaven upon you. And never curse anyone. Leave that to God’s care. It is for Him, the Lord of all, to bless and curse His creatures.

Go in peace.»

• Dictations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the EMV

28.6 «There is no dictation,» says Mary. «The vision speaks for itself. It is for you to understand the lesson of charity, humility and purity emanating from it. Rest. Rest watching, as I used to keep watch waiting for Jesus. He will come to bring you His peace.

• Dictations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the EMV

29.6 Mary says:

«I promised you that He would come to bring you His peace. Do you remember the peace you enjoyed at Christmas! When you saw Me with My Child? Then it was your time of peace. Now it is your time of pain. But you know by now. It is by means of pain that we achieve peace and every grace for ourselves and our neighbours. Jesus-Man became Jesus-God again, after the tremendous suffering of His Passion. He became Peace, once more. Peace from Heaven, from where He had come and from where He now pours out His peace for those who love Him in the world. But in the hours of His Passion, He, Peace of the world, was deprived of that peace. He would not have suffered if He had had it. And He had to suffer: and to suffer excruciatingly, to the very end.

29.7 I, Mary, redeemed woman by means of My divine Maternity.

But that was only the beginning of woman’s redemption. By refusing a human marriage in accordance with My vow of virginity, I had rejected all lustful safisfactions, thus deserving grace from God. But it was not yet sufficient, because Eve’s sin was a four branched tree: pride, avarice, gluttony and lust. And all four were to be cut off, before making the roots of the tree sterile.

29.8 By deeply humiliating Myself, I defeated pride.

I abased Myself before everybody. I am not referring to My humility towards God. Such humility is due to the Most High by every creature. Even His Word had it. It was necessary for Me, a woman, to have it. But have you ever considered what humiliation I had to suffer from men, without defending Myself in any way? Even Joseph, who was a just man, had accused Me in his heart. The others, who were not just, had committed a sin of murmuring with regards to My condition, and the rumour of their words had come like a bitter wave to break up against My humanity. And they were the first of the infinite humiliations I was to suffer in My life as Mother of Jesus and of mankind. Humiliations of poverty, of a refugee, humiliations for reproaches of relatives and friends who, being unaware of the truth, judged Me a weak woman with regard to My behaviour as a Mother towards Jesus, when He was a young man, humiliations during the three years of His public life, cruel humiliations in the hour of Calvary, humiliation in having to admit that I could not afford to buy a place and the perfumes for the burial of my Son.

29.9 I overcame the avarice of the First Parents renouncing My Creature before the time.

A mother never renounces her creature unless she is forced to. Whether her heart is asked to renounce her creature by her country or by the love of a spouse or even by God Himself, she will resent and struggle against the separation. It is natural. A son grows in our womb and the tie that links him to us can never be completely broken. Even if the umbilical cord is cut, there is a nerve that always remains: it departs from the mother’s heart and is grafted into the son’s heart: it is a spiritual nerve, more lively and sensitive than a physical one. And a mother feels it stretching even to exceedingly severe pangs if the love of God or of a creature or the need of the country take her son away from her. And it breaks, tearing her heart, if death snatches her son from her.

And I renounced My Son from the very moment I had Him. I gave Him to God. I gave Him to you. I deprived Myself of the Fruit of My womb to make amends for Eve’s theft of God’s fruit.

29.10 I defeated gluttony, both of knowledge and of enjoyment, by agreeing to know only what God wanted Me to know, without asking Myself or Him more than what I was told. I believed unquestioningly. I overcame the innate personal delight of enjoyment because I denied Myself every sensual pleasure. I confined flesh, the instrument of Satan, together with Satan, under My heel and made of them a step to rise towards Heaven. Heaven! My aim. Where God was. My only hunger. A hunger which is not gluttony, but a necessity blessed by God, Who wants us to crave for Him.

29.11 I defeated lust, which is gluttony carried to the extreme of greed. Because every unrestrained vice leads to a bigger vice. And Eve’s gluttony, which was already blameworthy, led her to lust. It was no longer enough for her to enjoy pleasure by herself. She wanted to take her crime to a refined intensity and thus she became acquainted with lust and was a mistress of lust for her companion. I reversed the terms and instead of descending I have always ascended. Instead of causing other people to descend, I have always attracted them towards Heaven: of My honest companion, I made an angel.

Now that I possessed God and His infinite wealth with Him, I hastened to denude Myself of it saying: ‘Here I am: may Your will be done for Him and by Him’. He is chaste who not only chastises his flesh but also his affections and his thoughts. I had to be the Chaste One in order to annul the One who had been Unchaste in her flesh, her heart and her mind. And I never abandoned My reservedness, not even by saying of My Son: ‘He is Mine, I want Him’, since He belonged only to Me on earth, as He belonged only to God in Heaven.

29.12 And yet all this was not sufficient to achieve for woman the peace lost by Eve. I obtained that for you at the foot of the Cross: when I saw Him dying, Whom you saw being born. When I felt My bowels being torn apart by the cry of My dying Creature, I became void of all femininity. I was no longer flesh, but an angel. Mary, the Virgin Spouse of the Spirit, died that moment. The Mother of Grace remained, Who gave you the Grace She generated from Her torture. The female reconsecrated ‘woman’ by me on Christmas night, achieved at the foot of the Cross the means to become a creature of Heaven.

This I did for you, depriving Myself of all satisfactions, even of holy ones. And whereas you had been reduced by Eve to females not superior to the mates of animals, I made of you, if you only wish so, saints of God. I ascended for you. As I had done for Joseph, I lifted you higher up. The rock of Calvary is My Mount of Olives. From there I took My leap to carry to Heaven the resanctified soul of woman together with My flesh, now glorified because it had borne the Word of God and had destroyed in Me the very last trace of Eve. It had destroyed the last root of that tree with four poisonous branches, a root stuck in the sensuality that had dragged mankind to fall and that will go on biting at your intestines until the end of time and to the last woman. From there, where I now shine in the ray of Love, I call you and I show you the Medicine to control yourselves: the Grace of My Lord and the Blood of My Son.

29.13 And you, My voice, rest your soul in the light of this dawn of Jesus, to gain strength for the future crucifixions which will not be spared you, because we want you here and one comes here through pain, because we want you here and the higher one comes the more one has suffered to obtain Grace for the world.

Go in peace. I am with you.»

• Dictations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the EMV

30.10 Jesus says:

«I will speak today. You are very tired, but have a little more patience.

It is the eve of Corpus Christi. I could speak to you about the Eucharist and the saints who became apostles of Its cult, as I spoke to you of the saints who were apostles of the Sacred Heart. But I want to speak to you of something else and of a class of worshippers of My Body who are the forerunners of Its cult. That is: the shepherds. They were the first worshippers of My Body of the Word, Who had become Man.

Once I told you and also My Church says this, the Holy Innocents are the protomartyrs of Christ. Now I tell you that the shepherds are the first worshippers of the Body of God. And they have all the qualifications to be the worshippers of My Body, o Eucharistic souls.

Firm faith: they believe the angel promptly and unquestioningly.

Generosity: they give all their wealth to their Lord.

Humility: they approach people, who from the human point of view, are poorer than they, and they do so with a modest attitude that does not humiliate them, and they profess themselves their servants.

Desire: what they are unable to offer, they endeavour to obtain by means of charitable work.

Prompt obedience: Mary wishes to inform Zacharias and Elias goes at once. He does not postpone the matter.

Love finally: they suffer in departing from the grotto and you say: ‘They leave their hearts there’. And you are right.

But should the same not happen with My Sacrament?

30.11 And there is another point, and it is entirely for you: note to whom the angel reveals himself first and who deserves to hear Mary’s love effusions. Levi: the boy.

God shows Himself to those who have a child’s soul and He shows them also His mysteries and allows them to hear His divine words and Mary’s. And those with a child’s soul have also Levi’s holy daring and they say: ‘Let us kiss Jesus’ dress’. They say that to Mary. Because it is always Mary Who gives you Jesus. She is the Bearer of the Eucharist. She is the Living Pyx.

He who goes to Mary, finds Me. He who asks Her for Me receives Me from Her. When a creature says to Mary: ‘Give me Your Jesus that I may love Him’, My Mother’s smile causes Heaven’s colours to change into a more lively brightness because of its greater delight.

Say, therefore, to Her: ‘Let me kiss Jesus’ dress, let me kiss His wounds’. And dare even more: ‘Let me rest my head on Your Jesus’ Heart, that I may delight in It’.

Come. And rest. Like Jesus in His cradle, between Jesus and Mary.»

• Dictations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the EMV

• Dictations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the EMV

31.6 Mary then says:

«I know that you understand. But you will see Me crying more bitterly.

For the time being, I want to relieve your spirit by showing you Joseph’s holiness. He was a man, that is, he had no other help for his spirit, except his holiness. I had all the gifts of God, in My condition of Immaculate. I did not know I was such. But the gifts were active in My soul, and gave Me spiritual strength. But he was not immaculate. Humanity was in him with all its heavy weight and he had to rise towards perfection with all that burden, at the cost of continuous efforts of all his powers to reach perfection and be agreeable to God.

Oh! My holy spouse! Holy in everything, even in the most humble things in life. Holy for his angelical chastity. Holy for his human honesty. Holy for his patience, his activity, for his constant serenity, for his modesty, for everything.

His holiness shines also in this event. A priest says to him: ‘You ought to settle here’ and he replies, fully aware of the greater hardships he would have to face: ‘It is nothing for Me. I am concerned with Mary’s grief. If it was not for that, I would not be upset. Provided that it will help Jesus’. Jesus, Mary: his angelical loves. My holy spouse loved nothing else on earth. And he sacrificed himself to that love.

They elected him protector of Christian families, of workers and many other categories. But he should be appointed protector not only of dying people, of married couples, of workmen, but also of those consecrated to God. Who, of all the people in the world consecrated to the service of God, has consecrated himself as he did, to the service of his God, accepting everything, foregoing everything, bearing everything, fulfilling everything with quickness, with a cheerful mind, a constant humour? There is no one like him.

31.7 «And I wish to draw your attention to another point, or rather two points.

Zacharias is a priest. Joseph is not. But you must note how he, who is not a priest, has a more heavenly soul than the priest. Zacharias thinks in a human way, and in a human way he expounds the Scriptures because he allows himself to be led by his good human sense, and it is not the first time he does so. And he was punished for it. But he relapses, although less gravely. With regard to John’s birth he said: ‘How can that happen, if I am old, and my wife is barren?’ Now he says: ‘To smooth His way, Christ is to be brought up here.’ And with that subtle root of pride that persists also in the best people, he thinks that he can be useful to Jesus. Not useful in the sense that Joseph wanted to be, by serving Him, but by teaching Him… God forgave him, because of his good intention. But did the ‘Master’ need teachers?

I endeavoured to make him see the truth of the prophecies. But he felt he was more learned than I was and made use of such feeling in his own way. I could have insisted and outdone him. But — this is the other point I wanted to draw your attention to — I respected the priest because of his dignity, not because of his knowledge.

31.8 In general, a priest is always enlightened by God. I said: ‘in general’. He is enlightened when he is a real priest. It is not his robe that consecrates him: it is his soul. To judge whether one is a real priest, one must consider what comes out of his soul. As My Jesus said, the things that sanctify or contaminate come out from the soul, and they characterise the whole behaviour of a person. So, when one is a real priest, he is generally inspired by God. We must have a supernatural charity and pray for the others, who are not such.

But My Son has already placed you at the service of this redemption, so I will say no more. Be happy to suffer, so that the number of real priests may increase. And rely peacefully on the word of him who guides you. And believe and obey his advice.

31.9 Obedience always saves you, even if the advice given to you is not completely perfect .

As you know, we obeyed. And we were right to do so. It is true that Herod confined the slaughter of the children to Bethlehem and its surroundings. But could Satan not have spread and propagated such hatred much farther and wider and have induced all the mighty ones in Palestine to commit a similar crime in order to kill the future King of the Jews? He could have done that and it would have happened in Christ’s early days, when the repeated miracles had drawn the attention of both the crowds and of those in power. If such an event had taken place, how could we have crossed the whole of Palestine, to go from Nazareth to Egypt, the hospitable land for persecuted Jews, and make such a journey with a little child, and while persecution was raging? It was easier to flee from Bethlehem, even if the flight was equally painful.

Obedience always saves you. Remember that.

31.10 And respect for a priest is always a sign of a Christian education. Woe to those priests who lose their apostolic ardour! Also Jesus said that. But woe also to those who think that they are right in despising them! Because they consecrate and hand out the True Bread that descends from Heaven. And that contact makes them holy, just like a sacred chalice, even if they are not totally holy. They will answer to God for it. You must consider them as such and not worry about anything else. You must not be more strict than your Lord Jesus, Who, at their command, leaves Heaven and descends to be raised by their hands. You must learn from Him. And if they are blind, if they are deaf, if their souls are paralysed and their thoughts are unsound, if they are lepers full of faults in strong contrast with their mission, if they are like corpses in sepulchres, then call Jesus that He may heal them and revive them.

Call Him with your prayers, and your suffering, o victim souls. To save a soul is to predestine one’s own soul to Heaven. But to save the soul of a priest is to save a large number of souls, because every holy priest is a net that drags souls to God. And to save a priest, that is to sanctify: re-sanctify, is to create this mystical net. Each prey is a light to be added to your eternal crown.

Go in peace.»

• Dictations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the EMV

Jesus says:

«Two teachings, applicable to everybody, derive from the description given by you.

The former: truth is not revealed to a priest engrossed in rites, but absent with his spirit, it is instead revealed to a simple believer.

The priest, always in contact with Divinity, devoted to what concerns God and to everything that is above the flesh, should have realised at once who the Child was Who was being offered that morning in the Temple. But it was necessary for him to have a living spirit, in order to realise it. A mere robe covering a drowsy spirit, if not a dead spirit, was not sufficient.

The Spirit of God can thunder if It wants, and rouse like a thunderbolt and shake like an earthquake the dullest spirit. It can. But generally, as It is an orderly Spirit, as God is Order in each Person and way of acting, It inspires and speaks, not where there is sufficient merit to deserve its effusion — in which case Its effusions would be most rare and not even you would know their light — but where It sees the ‘goodwill’ to deserve such effusion.

How is such will exerted? With a life devoted, as far as possible, entirely to God: in faith, obedience, purity, charity, generosity and in prayer. Not in practices: in prayer. There is less difference between night and day than there is between practices and prayer. The latter is communion of the spirit with God, from which you emerge with fresh strength and a decision to belong more and more to God. The former are common habit exerted for various purposes, which are always selfish, and they leave you exactly as you were, on the contrary, they aggravate your burden with the faults of falsehood and sluggishness.

32.8 Simeon had such goodwill. He had not been spared troubles and trials in his life. But he had not lost his goodwill. Age and misfortunes had not impaired or shaken his faith in the Lord and in His promises, neither did his goodwill to be more and more worthy of God tire or falter. And God sent Him the ray of the Spirit to guide him to the Temple, that he might see the Light that had come to the world, before his eyes of a faithful servant closed to the light of the sun, awaiting to be reopened to the Sun of God glowing in the Heavens, which I had reopened when I ascended after my Martyrdom.

‘Prompted by the Holy Spirit’ says the Gospel. Oh! If men only knew what a perfect Friend the Holy Spirit is! What Guide, what Teacher! If they only loved and invoked Him, this love of the Most Holy Trinity, this Light of Light, this Fire of Fire, this Intelligence, this Wisdom! How much more they would know of what is necessary to know!

Look, Mary; listen, My children. Simeon waited all his long life before ‘seeing the Light’ and before knowing that God’s promise was fulfilled. But he never doubted. He never said to himself: ‘It is useless to persevere in hoping and praying’. He just persevered. And he deserved ‘to see’ what neither the priest nor the proud and dull members of the Sanhedrin saw: the Son of God, the Messiah, the Saviour in the flesh of a Child Who warmed him and smiled at him. He received the smile of God from the lips of a Child, his first reward for an honest and pious life.

32.9 The other lesson: the words of Anna. She too, a prophetess, saw in Me, a new-born Baby, the Messiah. And this is quite natural, considering her prophetic prerogative. But listen to what she says to My Mother, moved by faith and charity. And use her words as a light for your souls that quiver in these days of darkness and in this Feast of Light. ‘He who gave a Saviour will not lack the power to send His angel to console Your tears’.

Consider that God gave Himself to obliterate Satan’s work in your souls. And will He not be able now to defeat the satans that torture you? Will He not be able to wipe your tears routing these satans and sending you once again the peace of His Christ? Why do you not ask Him with faith? A real overbearing faith, a faith before which the rigour of God, indignant at your many faults, may turn into a smile and He may grant you His forgiveness, which is relief, and His blessing which will be a rainbow in this world submerged in a deluge of blood which you wanted yourselves.

Remember: the Father, after punishing men with the storm, said to Himself and to His Patriarch: ‘Never again will I curse the earth because of man, because his heart contrives evil from his infancy. Never again will I strike down every living thing as I have done’. And He has been faithful to His word. He has not sent a storm again. But how many times have you said to yourselves and to God: ‘If we are spared this time, if You save us, we shall never make wars again, never again’, and after, you have always made more terrifying ones? How many times, o false men, who have no respect either for God or for your own word? And yet God would help you once again, only if the large mass of the faithful would invoke Him with faith and ardent love.

Lay your worries at the feet of God: you who are too few to counterbalance the many who keep God’s rigour alive, you who have remained devoted to Him, notwithstanding the dreadful times which are increasing from day to day. He will send you His angel, as He sent the Saviour to the world. Do not be afraid. Be united to the Cross. It has always defeated the snares of the demon, who with the cruelties of men and the sadness of life endeavours to drive to desperation, that is, to separation from God, the hearts he cannot conquer in any other way.»

• Dictations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the EMV
• Presentation of Jesus Christ at the Temple (purification of the Virgin Mary at the Temple)
• Rosary