Elements of the Credo

27.1 I see the house in Nazareth once again: the little room where Mary usually takes Her meals. She is now working at a white piece of cloth. She lays Her work down to light a lamp, because it is getting dark, and She can no longer see well in the greenish light which comes in through the door half open on to the orchard. She closes the door, too.

Her abdomen is now very big. But She is still so beautiful. Her walk is always agile and all Her gestures are gentle. There is none of the heavy awkward movements which are generally noticed in a woman when she is about to give birth to her child. Only Her face has changed. Now She is «the woman». Before, at the time of the Annunciation, She was a young girl with the serene innocent face of a child. Afterwards, in Elizabeth’s house, when the Baptist was born, Her face had become more refined and gracefully mature. Now it is the serene but sweetly majestic face of a woman who has reached her full perfection in maternity.

She no longer resembles the «Annunciation» of Florence, so dear to you, Father. When She was a girl, I saw the resemblance. Her face is now longer and thinner, Her eyes are more pensive and larger. In brief, it is like what Mary is now in Heaven. Because Her countenance and age are once again as they were when the Saviour was born.

Her youth is the eternal youth which not only has not known the corruption of death, but has not even experienced the withering of age. Time has not touched our Queen and Mother of the Lord Who created time; and if in Her torture at the time of Passion — a torture which had begun for Her a long time previously, I could say since Jesus began to evangelise — She looked old, such aging was like a veil cast over Her incorruptible person. In fact since the moment that She sees Jesus risen, She becomes once again the fresh perfect creature She was before such torture, as if by kissing His Most Holy Wounds She had drunk a balm of youth which cancels the action of time, and even more so, of sorrow. In fact even eight days ago, when I saw the descent of the Holy Spirit on Whitsunday, I saw that Mary was ‘beautiful, most beautiful and all of a sudden looked younger’ as I wrote and had written previously: ‘She looks like a blue angel’. Angels do not grow old. They are eternally beautiful, because they reflect the eternal youth and the eternal presence of God.

The angelical youth of Mary, blue angel, is perfected now, but not in the secrecy of a room unknown to the world and with only one archangel as witness. It reaches the perfect age which She took with Her to Heaven and which She will keep forever in Her holy glorified body, when the Spirit adorns Her with the bridal ring and crowns Her in the presence of everybody.

I wanted to make this digression because I thought that it was necessary. I will now revert to the description.

Mary, thus, is now really a «woman» full of dignity and grace. Also Her smile has gained in sweetness and majesty. How beautiful She is!

• A state of grace before the sin - Original sin
• Glorious body of the Virgin Mary
• Motherhood of the Virgin Mary
• The Virgin Mary

Trust is (...) 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.

• God the Father
• Obedience
• Trust
• Words of wisdom

A thin ray of moonlight creeps in through a crack in the vault and it seems like a blade of unearthly silver looking for Mary. It stretches in length as the moon climbs higher in the sky and at last reaches Her. It is now on Her head, where it forms a halo of pure light.

Mary lifts Her head, as if She had a celestial call, and She gets up and goes onto Her knees again. Oh! How beautiful it is here now! She raises Her head, and Her face shines in the white moonlight and becomes transfigured by a supernatural smile. What does She see? What does She hear? What does She feel? She is the only one who can tell what She saw, heard and felt in the refulgent hour of Her Maternity. I can only see that the light around Her is increasing more and more. It seems to come down from Heaven, to arise from the poor things around Her, above all it seems to originate from Herself.

Her deep blue dress now seems of a pale myosotis blue, and Her hands and face are becoming clear blue as if they were placed under the glare of a huge pale sapphire. This hue is spreading more and more on the things around Her, it covers them, purifies them and brightens everything. It reminds me, although it is somewhat softer, of the hue I see in the vision of holy Paradise, and also of the colour I saw in the visit of the Wise Men.

The light is given off more and more intensely from Mary’s body, it absorbs the moonlight. She seems to be drawing to Herself all the light that can descend from Heaven. She is now the Depositary of the Light. She is to give this Light to the world. And this blissful, uncontainable, immeasurable, eternal, divine Light which is about to be given, is heralded by a dawn, a morning star, a chorus of atoms of Light that increase continuously like a tide, and rise more and more like incense, and descend like a large stream and stretch out like veils…

The vault, full of crevices, of cobwebs, of protruding rubble balanced by a miracle of physics, the dark, smoky repellant vault, now seems like the ceiling of a royal hall. Each boulder is a block of silver, each crack an opal flash, each cobweb a most precious canopy interwoven with silver and diamonds. A huge green lizard, hibernating between two stones, seems like an emerald jewel forgotten there by a queen: and a bunch of hibernating bats is like a precious onyx chandelier. The hay from the upper manger is no longer grass blades: it is pure silver wires quivering in the air with the grace of loose hair.

The dark wood of the lower manger is a block of burnished silver. The walls are covered with a brocade in which the white silk disappears under the pearly embroidery of the relief, and the soil… what is the soil now? It is a crystal lit up by a white light. Its protrusions are like roses thrown in homage of the soil; the holes are precious cups from which perfumes and scents are to arise.

29.3 And the light increases more and more. It is now unbearable to the eye. And the Virgin disappears in so much light, as if She had been absorbed by an incandescent curtain… and the Mother emerges.

Yes. When the light becomes endurable once again to my eyes, I see Mary with the new-born Son in Her arms. A little Baby, rosy and plump, bustling with His little hands as big as rose buds and kicking with His tiny feet that could be contained in the hollow of the heart of a rose: and is crying with a thin trembling voice, just like a new-born little lamb, opening His pretty little mouth that resembles a wild strawberry, and showing a tiny tongue that trembles against the rosy roof of His mouth. And He moves His little head that is so blond that it seems without any hair, a little round head that His Mummy holds in the hollow of Her hand, while She looks at Her Baby and adores Him weeping and smiling at the same time, and She bends down to kiss Him not on His innocent head, but on the centre of His chest, where underneath there is His little heart beating for us… where one day there will be the Wound. And His Mother is doctoring that wound in advance, with Her immaculate kiss.

The ox, woken up by the dazzling light, gets up with a great noise of hooves and bellows, the donkey turns its head round and brays. It is the light that rouses them but I love to think that they wanted to greet their Creator, both for themselves and on behalf of all the animals.

• Motherhood of the Virgin Mary

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.

• Passion of Jesus Christ
• Passion of Jesus Christ - God's abandonment
• Peace

Every unrestrained vice leads to a bigger vice.

• Sin
• Vice
• Words of wisdom

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.

• Holy Spirit
• Words of wisdom

‘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!

• Holy Spirit
• Holy Trinity
• Instruction
• Knowledge
• Who is the Holy Spirit?
• Wisdom
• Words of wisdom

34.8 «In the meantime, here is the gold which befits a king to possess, here is the incense which befits a God, and here, Mother, here is the myrrh because Your Child is a Man as well as God and He will experience the bitterness of the flesh and of human life as well as the inevitable law of death. Our souls, full as they are of love, would prefer not to utter those words and we would rather think that His flesh is also eternal as His Spirit. But, Woman, if our writings and above all our souls are right, He is Your Son, the Saviour, the Christ of God and consequently, to save the world, He will have to take upon Himself the evil of the world, of which one of the punishments is death. This myrrh is for that hour. That His holy flesh may not be subject to the rot of putrefaction, but may preserve its integrity until its resurrection. And on account of this gift, may He remember us and save His servants by allowing them to enter His Kingdom. In the meantime that we may be sanctified, will You, Mother, trust Your Little One to our love. That His heavenly blessing may descend upon us, while we kiss His feet.»

Mary, Who has overcome the fright caused by the words of the Wise Man, and has hidden with a smile the sadness of the doleful allusion, offers the Child. She lays Him in the arms of the oldest one, who kisses Him and receives His caress, and he then hands Him over to the other two.

• Death of Jesus Christ
• Gold
• Incense
• Jesus Christ - God-Man
• Myrrh

They were humble, generous and obedient to the ‘voices’ from Above. They tell them to take gifts to the New-Born King. And they take gifts. They do not say: ‘He is rich and does not need them. He is God and will not die’. They obey. And they are the first to help the Saviour in His poverty. How useful that gold will be for Him Who is about to be a fugitive! How meaningful that myrrh is for Him Who will soon be killed! How pious that incense is for Him Who will have to smell the stench of human lewdness raging round His infinite purity!

• Death of Jesus Christ
• Escape to Egypt
• Gold
• Incense
• Myrrh

Such way of seeing things in their reality does not diminish My Humanity or Mary’s, neither does it offend My Divinity or the Majesty of the Father or the Love of the Most Holy Trinity. On the contrary, the merits of My Mother and My perfect humility shine brightly and so does the omnipotent kindness of the Eternal Lord.

• God the Father
• Holy Spirit
• Holy Trinity
• Humility of Jesus Christ
• Jesus Christ - God-Man