God — notes (page 98/112)

GRM 204.1-2 · Volume 3

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

«What do You want, Mother?»
«My Son, some Gentiles have come with some ladies. They say that they heard from Johanna that You were here. They also said that they have been waiting for You all these past days near the Antonia…»
«Ah! I know! I will come at once. Where are they?»
«At Lazarus’ house, in his garden. He is loved by the Romans and does not feel the repugnance towards them that we do. He let them go into the large garden with their carts, so that no one would be scandalised…»
«All right, Mother.
204.2
They are Roman soldiers and ladies. I know.»
«And what do they want from You?»
«What many in Israel do not want: light.»
«But how and what do they believe You are? God perhaps?»
«Yes, in their way of thinking. It is easier for them to accept the idea of the incarnation of a god in mortal flesh, than it is for us.»
«So they believe in Your faith…»
«Not yet, Mother. I must destroy theirs, first. For the time being they consider Me a wise man, a philosopher, as they say. But both their desire to become acquainted with philosophical doctrines and their inclination to believe the incarnation of a god as possible, are of great help to Me in leading them to the true Faith. Believe Me, they are more ingenuous in their way of thinking, than many Israelites.»
«But are they sincere? It is rumoured that the Baptist…»
«No. Had it been for them, John would be free and safe. Non-rebellious people are left in peace. On the contrary I can assure You that for them to be a prophet – they say a philosopher because the loftiness of supernatural wisdom is still philosophy to them – is a guarantee of respect. Do not worry, Mother. No harm will come to Me from that end…»
«But the Pharisees… if they find out, what will they say also about Lazarus? You are You… and You are to bring the Word to the world. But Lazarus!… They already offend him so much…»
«But they cannot touch him. They know that he is protected by Rome.»
«I leave You, Son. Here is Maximinus, he will take You to the Gentiles» and Mary, Who had walked beside Jesus all the time, withdraws quickly, and goes towards the Zealot’s house. Jesus on the other hand, goes through a little iron door in the garden wall, into a distant part of the garden, where it actually becomes an orchard and precisely near the place where Lazarus will be buried later.

Keywords

GRM 204.4 · Volume 3

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

« (...) Is it not so?»
«Yes, it is, Master. You have seen and studied them very well» confirms Plautina praising Jesus.
«But we know that He never left Palestine!?» exclaims Quintilian.
«I never left Palestine to go to Rome or Athens. But I am acquainted with Greek and Roman architecture and I was present when the genius of man decorated the Parthenon because I am wherever there is life or a manifestation of life. Wherever a wise man meditates, a sculptor sculptures, a poet writes, a mother sings over a cradle, a man toils in fields, a doctor fights diseases, a living being breathes, an animal lives, a tree vegetates, I am there together with Him from Whom I come. In the rumble of the earthquake or in the peal of thunder, in the light of stars or in flood-tide and ebb-tide, in the flight of eagles or in the buzzing of mosquitoes, I am there with the Most High Creator.»
«So… You… You know everything. Both thoughts and deeds of men?» asks Quintilian again.
«Yes, I do.»
The Romans look at one another amazed.

Detail

Jesus describes at length the temples built by the Romans and Greeks.

Keywords

GRM 204.5 · Volume 3

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

« (...) There is only One and True God.»
«So… He is up there, in His Olympus, all by Himself? And what does He do if He is alone?»
«He is Self-sufficient and takes care of everything in creation. I have just told you that God is also present in the buzzing of a mosquito. He does not get bored, do not worry. He is not a poor man, the master of an immense empire in which he feels he is hated and lives trembling with fear. He is Love and lives loving. His Life is continuous Love. He is Self-sufficient because He is infinite and most powerful, He is Perfection. So numerous are the things created that live because of His continuous will, that He has no time to grow weary. Tedium is the fruit of idleness and vice. In the Heaven of the True God there is neither idleness nor vice. Soon, in addition to angels which now serve Him, He will have a great crowd of just people rejoicing in Him and the crowd will grow greater and greater with the future believers in the True God. »
«Are the angels genii?» asks Lydia.
«No, they are spiritual beings like God Who created them.»
«What are genii, then?»
«As you imagine them, they are falsehood. They do not exist, as you imagine them. But owing to the instinctive need of men to search for the truth, you have also realised that man is not only flesh and that there is something immortal in his perishable body. And that is the consequence of the incentive of the soul, which is alive and present also in heathens, and suffers in them, as it is disappointed in its desires, because it is famished longing for the True God Whom it remembers in the body in which it dwells and which is guided by a pagan mind. And the same applies to towns and nations. And thus you believe, you feel the need to believe in “genii”. And thus you give yourselves an individual genius, a family, a town, a national genius. You have the “genius of Rome”, the “genius of the emperor”. And you worship them as lesser deities. Come to the true faith. You will become acquainted and friendly with your angel, whom you will venerate, but not worship. Only God is worshipped.»

Keywords

GRM 204.5 · Volume 3

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

Owing to the instinctive need of men to search for the truth, you have also realised that man is not only flesh and that there is something immortal in his perishable body. And that is the consequence of the incentive of the soul, which is alive and present also in heathens, and suffers in them, as it is disappointed in its desires, because it is famished longing for the True God Whom it remembers in the body in which it dwells and which is guided by a pagan mind.

Keywords

GRM 204.6 · Volume 3

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

One sins when one consciously rebels against the order given by God and says: “I know that what I am doing is wrong. But I want to do it just the same”. God is just. He cannot punish one who does the wrong thing thinking that he is doing the right one. He punishes those, who being able to tell Good from Evil, choose the latter and persist in it.

Keywords

GRM 204.6 · Volume 3

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

«So we have a soul and it is alive and present in us?»
«Yes, it is so.»
«And it suffers? Do You really think that it remembers God? We do not remember the womb that bore us. We could not tell what its inside was like. If I have understood You correctly, the soul is spiritually born of God. Can it possibly remember Him if our body does not remember the long time it was in a womb?»
«The soul is not material, Plautina. An embryo is. In fact the soul is infused when the foetus is already formed. The soul is, like God, eternal and spiritual. It is eternal from the moment it is created, whereas God is the Most Perfect Eternal Being and thus has no beginning in time and will have no end. The soul[1], the lucid, intelligent, spiritual work of God, does remember. And it suffers, because it longs for God, the True God, from Whom it comes, and it hungers for God. That is why it spurs the torpid body to endeavour to approach God.»

Annotation

- The soul is not raw material, Plautina. The embryo is. It's so true that the soul is only given when the fetus is already formed.

INFUSION OF THE SOUL: The embryo, yes, instead of:the fœtus, si, is a correction by Maria Valtorta to the original manuscript, where she inserts: "So true is it that the soul is given when the fœtus is already formed". This phrase is present in the 1985 French translation by Felix Sauvage, but has been removed on the grounds that it would contradict other statements in the chapter, but this statement, which is in line with that of St Thomas Aquinas (see below), is confirmed by other statements such as in EMV 118: Man is first of all only an animal embryo, no different from that of a sheep.

The soul is, in the likeness of God, eternal and spiritual. This position was upheld by Saint Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church, in the tradition of Aristotle. He estimated the insufflation time at 40 days (about 6 weeks). Today, as science advances, John Paul II, without deciding on the exact moment of insufflation, reminds us that from the very origin of the embryo, there is a personal definition to be respected (we all come from it). Anthropological study leads us to recognize that, by virtue of the substantial unity of the body with the spirit, the human genome has not only a biological significance; it is the bearer of an anthropological dignity which has its source in the spiritual soul which penetrates and vivifies it"(Address to the members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, February 24 1998 {it}). For his part, St Thomas Aquinas affirmed "The soul pre-exists in the embryo; it is there first nutritive, then sensitive, and finally intellective"(Summa Theologica, Part I, Question 118, from whence comes the soul of Man, Article 2, Answer).

The soul, lucid, intelligent, spiritual, the work of God, remembers this. This has already been discussed above, in EMV 204.5, as well as in EMV 94.7, EMV 121.7, EMV 154.7 (with a note), EMV 157.5, EMV 169.5, EMV 344.7 (in the mouth of a child), EMV 428.4 (with a note), EMV 534.6 (in the mouth of an old man), EMV 554.10, EMV 556.8.

The memory that souls have of God is dealt with more specifically in : EMV 10.9 | EMV 286.7 | EMV 290.9. Furthermore, Mary "was never deprived of the remembrance of God", as we read in EMV 4.6; this is illustrated in EMV 10.8/10 and in the last lines ofEMV 11.4. Mary's soul is also mentioned in EMV 136.6 and EMV 348.9/10.

Keywords

GRM 205.3 · Volume 3

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

Intelligence is a great gift of God. But it is a gift to be used wisely. Otherwise it is like certain medicines that, when taken in the wrong way, kill instead of curing.

Keywords

GRM 205.5 · Volume 3

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

I will go back to my father! This pride of mine is silly, as it deprives me of my freedom. And why? Why should I suffer in my body and even more in my heart when I can be forgiven and receive comfort? I will go back to my father. That is settled.

Keywords

GRM 205.6 · Volume 3

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

Do you think that I do not love you because I give you no visible prize? But day and night, in every moment of my life, you are present to my heart, and I bless you every moment. You have the continuous reward of being always with me, and what is mine is yours.

Detail

To his child who is just, upright, and acts holily, the Father might say:

Keywords

GRM 205.8

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

… The apostles, together with Mary and the women, go towards the house, preceded by Marjiam who runs ahead frisking. But he soon comes back and takes Mary by the hand saying to Her: «Come with me. I have something to tell You, when we are alone.» And Mary follows him. They turn towards a well, situated in a corner of the little yard and completely covered by a thick bower that from the ground climbs up towards the terrace forming an arch. Behind it, there is the Iscariot.
«Judas, what do you want? Go, Marjiam… Speak. What do you want?»
«I am guilty… I dare not go to the Master or face my companions… Help me…»
«I will help you. But do you not consider how much grief you cause? My Son wept because of you. And your companions suffered. But come. No one will say anything to you. And, if you can, do not commit the same sins again. It is shameful for a man and a sacrilege against the Word of God.»
«And will You forgive me, Mother?»
«I? I count for nothing as far as you are concerned, since you think you are so great. I am the least of the servants of the Lord. How can you worry about Me, if you feel no pity for My Son?»
«Because I have a mother as well, and if You forgive me, I will feel as if she did, too.»
«She does not know about this fault of yours.»
«But she made me swear I would be good to the Master. I am a perjurer. I can feel the soul of my mother reproaching me.»
«You feel that, do you? But do you not feel the lament and the reproach of the Father and of His Word? You are disgraceful, Judas! You cause grief to yourself and to those who love you.»
Mary is very serious and sad. She speaks without bitterness but with much seriousness. Judas weeps.
«Do not weep. Improve yourself. Come» and She takes him by the hand and enters the kitchen.
Everybody is filled with astonishment. But Mary wards off any possible uncharitable remark. She says: «Judas has come back. Behave as the first-born did after his father’s speech. John, go and tell Jesus.»
John of Zebedee runs away. Silence hangs heavy on the kitchen… Then Judas says: «Forgive me, all of you, and you, Simon, first of all. Your heart is so paternal. And I am an orphan, too.»
«Yes, I forgive you. Please, say no more about it. We are brothers… and I do not like these ups and downs of forgiveness and relapses. They humiliate both the offender and the forgiver. Here is Jesus. Go to Him. That’s all.»
Judas goes away and Peter, not being able to do anything else, starts chopping wood with keen impetuosity…