The Mystery of Suffering: Fasting, Sacrifice, and Penance

Children belong first to God and then to their parents. Every son can say what I said[3] to My Mother: “Do you not know that I must be busy with My Father’s affairs?” And every father, every mother must learn the attitude to be maintained looking at Mary and Joseph in the Temple, at Anne and Joachim in the house of Nazareth, a house which was becoming more and more forlorn and sad, but where one thing never diminished, but increased continuously: the holiness of two hearts, the holiness of a marriage.

What light is left to Joachim, an invalid, and to his sorrowful wife, in the long and silent nights of two old people who feel they are about to die? Only the little dresses, the first pair of little sandals, the simple toys of their little daughter, now far away, and memories of Her, memories… And peace when they say: “We are suffering, but we have done our duty of love towards God”.

• Consecrated virginity
• Family martyrdom
• Parents and children
• Peace

“An upright conscience gives a peaceful death and the prayers of saints will obtain such a death for you”.

• Death
• Good conscience
• Prayer
• Rightness of intention - Purity of intention
• Saints and blessed
• Words of wisdom

While obeying the Law, I must obey the Voice that whispers to Me: “I want You”; I am a virgin and a virgin I shall remain, How shall I succeed? This sweet invisible Presence that is with Me will help Me, because it is Its desire. I am not afraid. I have no longer My father and mother… and only God knows how My love for whatever human being belonged to Me was burnt in that pain. Now I have but God. I therefore obey Him unquestioningly… I would have done so also regardless of My father and mother, because I have been taught by the Voice that whoever wishes to follow It, must go beyond father and mother. Parents are loving patrols watching the hearts of their children, whom they wish to lead to happiness according to their plans… and they are not aware of other plans leading to infinite happiness… I would have left them My dresses and mantles, to follow the Voice that says to Me: “Come, My beloved Spouse”. I would have left them everything, and the pearls of My tears, for I would have cried having to disobey them, and the instincts of My blood, because I would have defied even death to follow the Voice calling Me who, would have told them that there is something greater and sweeter than the love of a father and mother and that is the Voice of God.

• Consecrated virginity
• Family martyrdom
• Obedience to the Virgin Mary
• Parents and children

David’s race has been struck too severely and scattered too widely to allow the various branches to gather like foliage around the royal palm.

• David (biblical character)
• Persecution

The storm of the trial will come, as for all saints, to be tested and made coadjutors of God.

• Co-editors
• Pain and suffering
• Saints and blessed
• Soul-victim

«Was Joseph not on Golgotha? Do you think he is not amongst the co-redeemers? I tell you solemnly that he was the first and therefore he is great in the eyes of God. Great for his sacrifice, his patience, his perseverance, his faith. Which faith is greater than this one that believed without seeing the miracles of the Messiah?

13.11 Praise be to My putative father, an example to you of what you lack most: purity, faithfulness and perfect love. Praise be to the magnificent reader of the sealed Book, filled with Wisdom to be able to understand the mysteries of Grace and chosen to protect the Salvation of the world from the snares of all enemies.»

• Co-editors
• Passion of the Virgin Mary and Joseph
• Soul-victim

I, Who know, say to you, on behalf of the world which does not know, (...) I say to you “thanks” as is due to holocausts for their sacrifices.

• Co-editors
• Pain and suffering
• Soul-victim
• The fruitfulness of suffering

Thank you, My blessed one. But go on. I have great need to save the earth, to buy the earth again, and you victims are the money.

• Soul-victim
• The fruitfulness of suffering

Did I not say: “If anyone loves Me he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make Our home with him”? The soul in grace possesses love, and by possessing love it possesses God, that is the Father Who preserves it, the Son Who teaches it, the Spirit Who illuminates it. It therefore possesses Knowledge, Science, Wisdom, Light. Consider therefore what sublime conversations your soul could hold with you. Such conversations filled the silence of prisons, the silence of cells, the silence of hermitages, the silence of the rooms of holy sick people. Such conversations were the consolation of prisoners awaiting martyrdom, of cloistered monks and nuns searching for the Truth, of hermits longing for an advanced knowledge of God, of sick people in bearing, even more, in loving their crosses.

• Comfort - Relief
• Love

The triple greed has ruled the three dominions since then.

Only Grace can relax the hold of this ruthless monster. And if Grace is alive, thoroughly alive, and kept more and more alive by the goodwill of a faithful son, it will succeed in strangling the monster and will no longer have anything to fear. It will not be afraid of internal tyrants, which are the flesh and passions; neither will it be afraid of external tyrants, these are the world and the mighty ones on the earth. It will dread neither persecutions nor death. It is as Paul the Apostle says: “I fear none of these things, neither do I care for my life more than I care for myself, provided I carry out the mission and the ministry the Lord Jesus gave me, and that was to bear witness to the Good News of God’s Grace”.

• Persecution
• Thanks
• Triple concupiscence