Passions

(...) You are so hampered by your humanity — it really overwhelms your souls too much — that you cannot follow My ways and you fall; or you stop disheartened. You go on saying to yourselves and to those who would like to assist you, quoting the examples of the Gospel for you: ‘But Jesus, but Mary, but Joseph (and so on for all the saints) were not like us. They were strong, they were immediately comforted in their sorrow, also in the little sorrow which they experienced, they did not feel passion. They were already beings out of this world’.

35.8 That little sorrow! They did not feel passion!

Sorrow has been our faithful friend and it had all the most varied forms and names.

Passion… do not use a word wrongly, by calling passion the vices which mislead you. Be honest and call them ‘vices’, and capital ones in addition. It is not true that we did not know them. We had eyes to see and ears to hear, and Satan caused those vices to dance in front of us and around us, showing them to us with their heap of filth in action, or tempting us with his insinuations. But, since we firmly wanted to please God, his filth and insinuations, instead of achieving the purpose intended by Satan, obtained the very opposite. And the more he worked, the more we took shelter in the light of God, disgusted as we were with the muddy darkness he showed to the eyes of our bodies and of our souls.

But we did not ignore passions in our hearts, in their philosophical setting. We loved our country, and in our country we loved our little Nazareth above every other town in Palestine. We were fond of our house, of our relatives and friends. Why should we not? We did not become slaves to our feelings because nothing is to be our master except God. But our feelings were made good companions.

My Mother uttered a cry of joy when, after about four years, She went back to Nazareth and entered Her house, and kissed the walls where Her ‘yes’ had opened Her bosom to receive the Son of God. Joseph joyfully greeted his relatives and his little nephews, who had grown in numbers and in years, and he rejoiced when he saw that his fellow citizens remembered him and they sought him because of his ability. I Myself appreciated friendship and because of Judas’ betrayal, I suffered as for a moral crucifixion. And why not? Neither My Mother nor Joseph ever placed more love for their home or their relatives before the will of God.

• Holy Family
• Jesus Christ
• Joseph of Jacob (Saint Joseph)
• Passions
• Saints and blessed
• Suffering and pain of Jesus Christ
• Suffering and pain of the Virgin Mary
• Temptation
• Temptations of Jesus Christ
• Temptations of the Virgin Mary
• The Virgin Mary

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.

• Family
• Passions

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.

• Consecrated virginity
• Hypocrisy - Duplicity
• Infidelity
• Passions
• Regrets
• Sensuality - Pleasure of the senses - Enjoyment

You follow Me. You love Me. Like plants in springtime you adorn yourselves with purposes and love. Israel, indeed, at the dawn of My mission is like our sweet countryside in the bright month of Nisan. But listen. Like the excessive heat in dry weather, Satan, who is envious of Me, will come to scorch you with his wrath. The world will come with its icy winds to freeze your blooms. And passions will come like storms. And tedium will come like a persistant rain. All My enemies and yours will come to sterilise what should be the fruit of your inclination to bloom in God.

I am warning you because I know. Will everything then be lost, when I, like a sick farmer, even more than sick: dead, will no longer be able to speak to you and work miracles for you? No. I will sow and cultivate as long as I have time. Then everything will grow and ripen for you, if you keep good watch.

• Disgust
• Enemies of Jesus Christ
• Goodwill
• Jesus Christ's physical absence after the Ascension
• Lucifer - Satan
• Passions
• World

Life is a gift, a gift to be loved. But what gift is it? A holy gift. So love it holily. Life lasts as long as the flesh holds out. Then the great Life, the eternal Life begins. A Life of blissful happiness for the just, of malediction for the unjust. Is life a purpose or a means? It is a means. It serves for a purpose which is eternity. Then let us give life what is required to make it last and serve the spirit in its conquest. Continence of the flesh in all its lusts, in all of them. Continence of the mind in all its desires, in all of them. Continence of the heart in all human passions. Infinite instead is to be the ardour for heavenly passions: love of God and the neighbour, obedience to the divine word, heroism in good and virtue.

• Continence
• Eternity - Eternal life
• God's gifts
• Goodwill
• Heroism
• Life
• Obedience
• Passions
• Service
• Words of wisdom

Satan, the master of the flesh and of the world, speaks also on behalf of the world and of the flesh. He, too, has his rules… Oh! He certainly has! And as your “ego” is enveloped in the flesh, and the flesh is attracted by the flesh, as metal chips are attracted by a magnet, and the singing of the Seducer is sweeter than the warble of a nightingale in love in the moonlight and among perfumed rose bushes, it is easier to follow those rules, and incline towards those powers and say to them: “I consider you my friends. Come in”. Come in… Have you ever seen an ally who remains honest forever, without asking a hundredfold return for the help he has given? That is what those powers do. They go in… And they become the masters: Masters? No: galley sergeants. They tie you, men, to the galley bench, they fasten you with chains, they do not allow you to raise your head from their yoke, and their lash leaves bleeding marks on your backs if you attempt to escape.

• Passions
• Slavery to Satan

I am made of flesh too, My dear friends. Real flesh. And my flesh is subject to the weakness common to all flesh. And, with My flesh, I have a heart. Yes, I took the first and second of the three parts that form man. I took the physical part with all its needs and the morals with their passions. And whilst, with My will, I subdued all the bad passions at birth, I let the holy passions grow like mighty age-old cedars, that is filial love, love for the fatherland, friendship, work, everything that is best and holy.

• Jesus Christ - God-Man
• Passions
• Who is Jesus? How Christ defines himself

• God's mercy and forgiveness
• Humility
• Innocence
• Passions
• Repentance and contrition
• Sin

• Coming to God and Jesus
• Discipleship - Following Jesus Christ
• God or Mammon
• Goodwill
• Light from God
• Light of the world
• Passions
• Salvation of a soul
• Sanctification
• Words of wisdom

• Anger - Irascibility
• Capital sin
• Chair
• Gourmandise
• Greed
• Judas de Kérioth (apostle)
• Laziness - Idleness
• Lessons and Teachings for the Apostles
• Lie
• Passions
• Pride
• Sensuality - Pleasure of the senses - Enjoyment
• Vice