Maria Valtorta and her work

45.6 Jesus says:

«John did not need any sign for himself. His soul, which had been presanctified in his mother’s womb, possessed that penetration of supernatural intelligence which all men would have had, if Adam had not sinned.

If man had persevered in grace, innocence and loyalty to his Creator, he would have seen God through external appearance. Genesis states that God used to speak to the innocent man in an informal way, and that man did not faint hearing His voice, neither was he deceived in discerning it. Such was the destiny of man: to see and understand God exactly as a son does his father. Then man sinned and he no longer dared look at God, he was no longer able to see and understand God. And now he is less and less able to do so.

But John, My cousin John, had been purified from fault when the Full of Grace lovingly embraced Elizabeth who, after being barren, had become pregnant. The little child had leapt out of joy in her womb because he felt the scales of sin falling from his soul, as a scab falls off a wound when the latter is healed. The Holy Spirit, Who had made Mary the Mother of the Saviour, started His mission of salvation on that child about to be born, through Mary, the living Tabernacle of Incarnate Salvation: the child was destined to be united to Me not so much by his blood, as by the mission by which we were like the lips that express a word. John was the lips, I the Word. He was the Precursor both in the Gospel and in martyrdom; I, by means of My divine perfection, made perfect both the Gospel which John had started, and martyrdom, suffered to defend the Law of God.

John did not need any sign. But a sign was necessary for the darkness of spirit of other people. On what would John base his statement, but on an undeniable proof evident to the eyes and ears of backward and dull listeners?

45.7 Neither did I need to be baptised. But the wisdom of the Lord had chosen that moment and way for our meeting. And leading John out of his cave in the desert and Me from My home, He united us in that hour to open the Heavens above Me and He descended Himself, a divine Dove, on Him Who was to baptise men with that Dove, and His announcement was heard descending from Heaven, more powerful than the angel’s, because it came from My Father: “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am very pleased”. So that man should have no excuse or doubt in following or not following Me.

45.8 The manifestations of Christ have been numerous. The first, after His Birth, was the Magi’s, the second was in the Temple, the third on the banks of the Jordan. Then there was an endless number of them, which I will let you know, because My miracles are manifestations of My divine nature, down to the last ones: My Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven.

My fatherland was full of My manifestations. Like seed scattered to the four winds, they took place in every social condition and place in life: to shepherds, powerful people, scholars, sceptical men, sinners, priests, rulers, children, soldiers, Jews and Gentiles.

And they take place even now. But, as in the past, the world does not accept. It does not accept the present manifestations and forgets the past ones. Well, I will not give up. I will repeat Myself to save you and to persuade you to have faith in Me.

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.»

45.10 As you can see, I have hastened to add these details which, being trifling matters, had escaped my notice, and were wanted by you.

• Dictations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the EMV

45.8 The manifestations of Christ have been numerous. The first, after His Birth, was the Magi’s, the second was in the Temple, the third on the banks of the Jordan. Then there was an endless number of them, which I will let you know, because My miracles are manifestations of My divine nature, down to the last ones: My Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven.

My fatherland was full of My manifestations. Like seed scattered to the four winds, they took place in every social condition and place in life: to shepherds, powerful people, scholars, sceptical men, sinners, priests, rulers, children, soldiers, Jews and Gentiles.

And they take place even now. But, as in the past, the world does not accept. It does not accept the present manifestations and forgets the past ones. Well, I will not give up. I will repeat Myself to save you and to persuade you to have faith in Me.

• Jesus Christ - God-Man
• Manifestations of Jesus Christ
• Miracle
• Miracles of Jesus Christ
• Reasons for the work

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.»

• Defense of the Work
• Reasons for the work

• Jesus Christ
• Lucifer - Satan
• Summary of EMV
• Temptations of Jesus Christ

46.11 Jesus says:

«Yesterday you had no strength, which is My will, and you were, therefore, half-alive. I let your body rest and I made you fast the only way which is burdensome to you: depriving you of My word. Poor Mary! You kept Ash Wednesday. You tasted an ashen flavour in everything because you were without your Master. I did not let you perceive Me, but I was there.

This morning, as our anxiety is mutual, when you were half asleep, I whispered to you: “Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem” and I made you repeat it many times and I repeated it to you many times. You thought that I was going to speak about that. No. First there is the subject which I showed you and upon which I will comment for you. Then this evening I will illustrate this other one.

46.12 As you have seen kindness is always Satan’s disguise when he presents himself. He looks like an ordinary person. If souls are careful, and above all, if they are in spiritual contact with God, they perceive the warning that makes them cautious and prepares them to fight the devil’s snares. But if souls are distracted, separated from God by an overwhelming sensuality, and are not assisted by prayer, which joins them to God and pours strength into the hearts of men, then they seldom perceive the snares hidden under the innocent appearance and they fall into the trap. It is then very difficult for them to free themselves.

46.13 The two most common means adopted by Satan to conquer souls are sensuality and gluttony. He always starts from material things. Once he has dismantled and subdued the material side, he attacks the spiritual part.

First the morals: thoughts with their pride and greed; then the spirit, obliterating not only its love — which no longer exists when man replaces divine love with other human loves — but also the fear of God. Then man surrenders his body and soul to Satan, only for the sake of enjoying what he wants, and enjoying it more and more.

46.14 You saw how I behaved. Silence and prayer. Silence. Because if Satan performs his work of a seducer and comes close to us, we must put up with the situation without any foolish impatience or cowardly fears. We must react with resolution to his presence, and with prayer to his allurements.

It is useless to debate with Satan. He would win, because he is strong in his dialectics. Only God can beat him. And so you must have recourse to God, that He may speak for you, through you. You must show Satan that Name and that Sign, not so much written on paper or engraved on wood, but written and engraved in your hearts. My Name, My Sign. You should answer back to Satan, using the word of God, only when he insinuates that he is like God. He cannot bear that.

46.15 Then after the struggle, there comes victory and the angels serve and defend the winner from Satan’s hatred. They restore him with celestial dews, with the Grace that they pour with full hands into the heart of the faithful son, with a blessing that caresses his soul.

One must be determined to defeat Satan, and have faith in God, and in His help. Faith in the power of prayer, and in the Lord’s bounty. Then Satan can do no harm.

Go in peace. This evening I will gladden you with the remainder.

• Dictations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the EMV

46.11 Jesus says:

«Yesterday you had no strength, which is My will, and you were, therefore, half-alive. I let your body rest and I made you fast the only way which is burdensome to you: depriving you of My word. Poor Mary! You kept Ash Wednesday. You tasted an ashen flavour in everything because you were without your Master. I did not let you perceive Me, but I was there.

This morning, as our anxiety is mutual, when you were half asleep, I whispered to you: “Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem” and I made you repeat it many times and I repeated it to you many times. You thought that I was going to speak about that. No. First there is the subject which I showed you and upon which I will comment for you. Then this evening I will illustrate this other one.

• Maria Valtorta's suffering and pain
• Writing the Work

• James of Zebedee (apostle)
• John of Zebedee (apostle)
• Locations - Gué du Jourdain
• Lucifer - Satan
• Summary of EMV

47.4 Jesus says:

«The crowd that met Me was a large one. But only one recognised Me. He, whose soul, mind and flesh were pure and free from all lewdness.

I insist on the value of purity. Chastity is always the source of clear ideas. Virginity refines and then preserves intellectual and emotional sensitiveness, elevating it to such a perfection that only a virgin can experience.

47.5 There are many ways of being a virgin. By compulsion, and this applies particularly to women, when no one ever proposed to them. The same should apply to men. But it does not. And that is bad, because only heads of families, with unhealthy minds and often diseased bodies, can be born of youth soiled with lust before time.

There is wanted virginity, that is the virginity of those who consecrate themselves to the Lord with the ardour of their souls. A beautiful virginity! A sacrifice pleasing to God! But they do not all persist in their purity like lilies which stand upright on their stalks, looking towards Heaven, unaware of the mud on the ground, open to the kisses of God’s sun and His dews.

Many are faithful only in a material way. But they are unfaithful in their thoughts, which regret and wish for what they sacrificed. They are virgins only by half. If their flesh is intact, their hearts are not. Their hearts ferment, boil, exhale fumes of sensuality, the more refined and reproved, the more it is the invention of a mind that caresses, nourishes and continually enlarges the images of satisfactions, illicit even for those who are free, more than illicit for those consecrated to God.

Then you have the hypocrisy of the vow. Its appearance is there, its essence is not. And I tell you that between those who come to Me with their lilies broken by the brutality of a tyrant, and those who come with their lilies materially intact, but covered with the slaver of a sensuality they have caressed and cultivated to fill their hours of solitude, I will call “virgins” the former, and “non virgins” the latter. I will give the former the crown of virgins and a double crown of martyrs, because of their flesh which has been wounded and of their hearts which have been ulcerated by a mutilation they did not want.

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.

47.7 The world sneers at pure people. Those who are guilty of lewdness strike them. John the Baptist is the victim of the lust of an obscene couple. But if there is still some light in the world, this is due to the pure of the world. They are the servants of God, they understand God and repeat God’s words. I said: “Happy the pure in heart, they shall see God”. Also in this world: since the fumes of sensuality do not perturb their hearts, they “see” God, they hear Him, they follow Him and they show Him to other people.

47.8 John of Zebedee is a pure soul. He is the Pure One amongst My disciples. A soul as beautiful as a flower in an angelical body! He calls Me with the words of his first master and asks Me to give him peace. But he already has peace in his heart because of his purity, and I loved him because of his purity, to which I entrusted My teachings, My secrets, and the most dear Creature I had.

He was My first disciple, who loved Me from the very first instant he saw Me. His soul had melted with Mine from the day he saw Me passing near the Jordan and he saw the Baptist pointing to Me. Even if he had not found Me later, when I came back from the desert, he would have looked for Me until he found Me, because who is pure, is humble and anxious to be taught in the science of God, and like the water that flows to the sea, he goes towards those he knows to be masters in the celestial doctrine.»

• Dictations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the EMV

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.

• Adam and Eve
• Chair
• Defense of the Work
• Impurity
• Jesus Christ - God-Man
• Original sin
• Sensuality - Pleasure of the senses - Enjoyment
• Temptations of Jesus Christ
• The Fall

47.9 Jesus also says:

«I did not want you to speak about the sensual temptation of your Jesus. Even if your internal voice had made you understand Satan’s motive in attracting Me towards sensuality, I preferred to speak of it Myself. Think no more about it. It was necessary to mention it. Go on now. Leave Satan’s flower on its sands. Follow Jesus as John did. You will be walking among thorns, but as roses you will find the drops of blood of Him Who shed them for you, to defeat the flesh in you too.

47.10 I will forestall a remark as well. In his Gospel, John mentioning his meeting with Me says: “And the following day”. It would therefore appear that the Baptist pointed Me out the day after My baptism and that John and James followed Me at once. But that conflicts with what the other Evangelists said about the forty days spent in the desert. But you should read as follows: “(John having already been arrested), one day, later, the two disciples of John the Baptist, the ones to whom he had pointed Me out saying: ‘Here is the Lamb of God’, on seeing Me again, called Me and followed Me”. After I had come back from the desert.

And we went back together to the shores of the lake of Galilee, where I had taken shelter to begin evangelising from there, and the two – after being with Me during the whole journey and then for one day in the hospitable house of a friend of My relatives – spoke of Me to the other fishermen. But it was the initiative of John, whose will to do penance had made his soul, already so limpid owing to his purity, a masterpiece of pellucidity in which the Truth was clearly reflected, bestowing on him also the holy daring of the pure and generous, who are never afraid of stepping forward, wherever they see that there is God, and truth and doctrine and the way of God. How much I loved him for that simple, heroical feature of his!»

• Dictations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the EMV