Notes for this theme
Reading comfort
GRM 205.6 · Volume 3
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.
To his child who is just, upright, and acts holily, the Father might say:
GRM 206.5 · Volume 3
One must always keep the dress clean through humility. It is so easy to dim the purity of the heart. And those
whose hearts are not pure cannot see God. Humility is like water that washes. A humble man soon notices that he has darkened his robe, because his eyes are not dimmed by the fumes of pride and thus he runs to his Lord and says: “I have stained the purity of my heart. I weep at Your feet to be cleansed. Oh! my Sun, purify my heart through Your benign forgiveness and Your paternal love!”
Jesus tells the parable of the ten virgins and points out that they have clean clothes.
GRM 206.5 · Volume 3
Oh! the freshness of a heart! Children have it by gift of God. The just have it by gift of God and through their own will. Saints have it by gift of God and through their will elevated to heroism. But will a sinner, whose soul is torn, burnt, poisoned and disgraced, ever be able to have a fresh robe? Oh! of course he will. He begins to have it the moment he looks at himself with disgust. He increases its freshness when he decides to change life. He brings it to perfection when through penance he washes, detoxicates, cures and recomposes his poor soul. And with the help of God, Who does not refuse assistance to anyone who asks Him for holy help, and through his own will elevated to super-heroism — because it is not necessary for him to protect what he has, but to rebuild what he destroyed and thus he must work twice, three times, seven times as much — and with untiring penance, relentless against his sinful ego, he will take his soul back to the freshness of a child’s soul. A new freshness, made precious by experience, which makes him the master of other people who were once like him, that is, sinners.
GRM 206.5 · Volume 3
Humility! I said: “When you pray or do penance, do not let the world see you”. In the Wisdom Books it is written: “It is right to keep the secret of the King”. Humility is the candid veil worn to defend the good we do and the good God grants us. We must not be proud of the privileged love granted to us by God, nor seek foolish human glory. The gift would be taken away at once. But from the depth of our hearts we must sing to our God: “My soul proclaims Your greatness, o Lord… because You have looked upon Your lowly handmaid”.
I said, in EMV 172.5 and in EMV 172.8.
Book of Tobit 12, 7
Tb 12, 7 : It is good to keep the king's secret hidden, but it is honorable to reveal and publish the works of God.
GRM 206.6 · Volume 3
How refulgent faith is, and what a kind friend it is! It gives a flame as bright as a star, a flame that smiles because it is sure in its certainty, a flame that also brightens the instrument supporting it. Also the flesh of man nourished with faith seems to become brighter and more spiritual, even in this world, free from premature withering. Because he who believes holds onto God’s words and commandments in order to possess God, his ultimate aim, and therefore he shuns corruption, he is not perturbed or afraid, he feels no remorse, he is not compelled to make an effort to remember lies or to conceal evil deeds and remains young and handsome by means of the beautiful incorruptibility of saints: flesh and blood, mind and heart free from lust to contain the oil of faith, to give light without smoke. A constant will to feed that light forever. Everyday life, with its disappointments, ascertainments, contacts, temptations, disagreements, tends to diminish faith. No! It must not happen. Go every day to the source of the sweet, sapiential oil of God. A lamp with little oil can be put out by the least puff of wind or by the heavy dew of the night. The night… The hour of darkness, of sin, of temptation comes for everybody. It is night for the soul. But if the soul is filled to the brim with faith, its flame cannot be put out by the wind of the world or by the fog of sensuality.
GRM 206.6 · Volume 3
Everyday life, with its disappointments, ascertainments, contacts, temptations, disagreements, tends to diminish faith. No! It must not happen. Go every day to the source of the sweet, sapiential oil of God. A lamp with little oil can be put out by the least puff of wind or by the heavy dew of the night. The night… The hour of darkness, of sin, of temptation comes for everybody. It is night for the soul. But if the soul is filled to the brim with faith, its flame cannot be put out by the wind of the world or by the fog of sensuality.
GRM 208.2-3 · Volume 3
«There are no orphans in Heaven. We have God. And God is everything. We are not orphans here either. Because the Father is always with us.»
«But Jesus in that lovely prayer, which You teach me by day and my mother at night, says: “Our Father Who are in Heaven”. We are not in Heaven yet. Therefore, how can we be with Him?»
«Because God is everywhere, son. He watches over the baby that is born and over the old man who is dying. The child who is born this moment, in the most remote part of the world, has God’s love and eye with him and will have them until he dies.»
«Even if he is as bad as Doras?»
«Yes.»
«But can God, Who is so good, love Doras who is so bad and makes my old father weep?»
«He looks at him with disdain and sorrow. But if he should repent. He would say to him what the father of the parable said to his repentant son.
208.3
You should pray that he may repent and…»
«Oh! no, Mother! I will pray that he may die!!!» says the child impetuously. Although his remark is not very… angelical, his impetuosity is so sincere that no one can help laughing.
Mary then resumes the sweet seriousness of a Teacher: «No, My dear. You must not do that to a sinner. God would not listen to you and would look sternly at you as well. We must wish our neighbour the greatest welfare, even if our neighbour is very bad. Life is a good thing because it gives man the possibility of gaining merits in the eyes of God.»
«But if one is bad, one gains sins.»
«We pray that he may become good.»
The boy is pensive… but he does not like this sublime lesson (...).
GRM 208.9 · Volume 3
Ascolta. Io credo che tuo figlio invece mi ha proprio presa per mano dicendo: “Vieni dalla mia cara mamma. Portale il Salvatore. Io sto meglio qui che sulla Terra. Ma lei sente solo il suo pianto, e non può udire le parole che io le sussurro fra i baci, povera mamma che è come posseduta da un demone che la tenta alla disperazione, perché ci vuole divisi. Mentre, se lei si rassegna e crede che Dio tutto fa per un fine di bene, saremo uniti per sempre, col padre e col fratello. Gesù lo può fare”. Ed io sono venuta… con Lui… Non lo vuoi vedere?…
The Virgin Mary speaks to a widowed mother who has lost her two sons.
GRM 208.10 · Volume 3
Do not despair. But pray devoutly for your dead ones, that their sins may be expiated.
GRM 209.5-7 · Volume 3
«Peace be with you. Yesterday I heard two unfortunate people speak. One at the dawn of life; the other at its decline: two souls bewailing their distress. And I wept in My heart with them, seeing how much sorrow there is on the earth, and how only God can relieve it. God! The exact knowledge of God, of His great infinite bounty, of His constant presence, of His promises. I saw how one man can be tortured by another one and how death can drive him to desolation, on which Satan works to increase his grief and cause ruin. I then said to Myself: “The children of God must not suffer such tortures. Let us grant the knowledge of God to those who ignore it, let us give it once again to those who have forgotten it in the storm of sorrow”. But I also saw that I am no longer sufficient by Myself for the infinite needs of My brothers. And I have decided to call many, in greater and greater numbers, so that all those who need the comfort of the knowledge of God may have it.
These twelve apostles are the first. As My representatives they can lead to Me, and therefore to comfort, all those who are bent under too heavy a burden of sorrow. I solemnly tell you: Come to Me, all of you who are afflicted, disgusted, broken-hearted, tired, and I will share your grief with you and give you peace. Come, through My apostles, disciples and women disciples, who are increasing every day with new people full of goodwill. You will find comfort in your grief, company in your solitude, the love of your brothers to make you forget the hatred of the world, you will find, above all, the supreme comforter, the perfect companion, the love of God. You will no longer doubt anything. You will no longer say: “Everything has come to an end for me!”. But you will say: “Everything begins for me in a supernatural world, which abolishes distances and cancels separations”, so that orphans will be reunited with their parents who have risen to Abraham’s bosom, and fathers and mothers, wives and widows will find their lost children and husbands.
209.6
In this land of Judaea, still near Bethlehem of Naomi, I remind you that love relieves pain and gives joy. Consider, you who are weeping, Naomi’s[1] desolation when her house was left without men. Listen to the words of her down-hearted dismissal of Orpah and Ruth: “Go back, each of you, to her mother’s house. May the Lord be kind to you as you have been to those who have died and to me…”. Listen to her weary insistence. She who once had been the beautiful Naomi and now was the tragic Naomi, crushed by grief, did not hope for anything else in life. She only wished to go and die in the place where she had been happy in the days of her youth with the love of her husband and the kisses of her children. She said: “Go, go. It is useless to come with me… I am as good as dead… My life is no longer here, but there, in the next world, where they are. Do not sacrifice your lives any longer beside a dying thing. Because I really am ‘a thing’. I am indifferent to everything. God has taken everything away from me… I am bitter grief. And I would grieve you… and that would weigh sorely on my heart. And the Lord would ask me to account for that, He Who has already struck me so hard, because it would be selfishness to keep you, alive, near me, dead. Go to your mothers…”. But Ruth stayed to support the sorrowful old woman.
Ruth had understood that there are sorrows which are always greater than one’s own and that her grief of a young widow was lighter than the woman’s who had lost her husband and two sons; as the grief of an orphan boy, who is compelled to live begging, without caresses, without good advice, is by far greater than the deep sorrow of a mother bereft of her children; likewise the keen regret of him who, for a number of reasons, goes as far as to hate mankind and see in every man an enemy whom he must fear and against whom he must defend himself, is even greater than other sorrows, because it involves not only flesh, blood and mentality, but the soul with its supernatural duties and rights and drives it to perdition. How many childless mothers there are in the world for motherless children! How many childless widows there are who could be compassionate towards solitary old aged people! How many there are, who, having been deprived of every love so that they may devote themselves entirely to the unhappy, could fight hatred with their need to love and thus give love to unhappy Mankind, which suffers more and more because it hates more and more!
209.7
Sorrow is a cross, but it is also a wing. Mourning divests to reclothe. Rise, you who are weeping! Open your eyes, get rid of nightmares, of darkness, of selfishness! Look… The world is the barren land where one weeps and dies. And the world shouts: “help” through the mouths of orphans, of sick, lonely, doubtful people, through the mouths of those who are made prisoners of hatred by treason or cruelty. Go among those who are shouting. Forget yourselves among those who are forgotten! Recover your health among those who are sick! Be hopeful among those who are despairing! The world is open to those willing to serve God in their neighbour and to gain Heaven: to be united to God and to those whom we mourn. The gymnasium is here. The triumph there. Come. Imitate Ruth in all your sorrows. Say with her: “I will be with you until I die”. And even if those misfortunes, which consider themselves incurable, should reply to you: “Do not call me Naomi, call me Mara, for God has marred me bitterly” you must persist. And I solemnly tell you that those misfortunes one day, because of your persisting, will exclaim: “Blessed be the Lord Who relieved me of my bitterness, desolation and solitude, by means of a creature who knew how to make his sorrow bear good fruit. May God bless him because he is my saviour”.
Remember that Ruth’s kindness to Naomi gave the Messiah to the world, because the Messiah descends from David, as David descended from Jesse, Jesse from Obed, Obed from Boaz, Boaz from Salmon, Salmon from Nahshon, Nahshon from Amminadab, Amminadab from Ram, Ram from Hezron, Hezron from Perez, and they populated the fields of Bethlehem preparing the ancestors of the Lord. Every good deed is the origin of great things, which you do not even imagine. And the effort man makes against his own selfishness can cause such a wave of love, capable of rising higher and higher, supporting in its limpidity him who caused it, until it lifts him to the feet of the altar, to the heart of God.
May God grant you peace.»
And Jesus, without going back into the garden through the door built in the hedge, watches that no one goes near the hedge, from the other side of which comes a long weeping… Only when all the people of Bethzur have gone away, He departs with His apostles without disturbing those beneficial tears…
The heart of this preaching is condensed in the following note.
Yesterday, I listened to two great unfortunates, one at the dawn of life, the other at its twilight: they are two souls made to weep by the weight of their misfortune. They are Marziam(EMV 208.1-4) and Elise(EMV 208.7-11). This speech is given for both of them.
Truly, I say to you, come to me, all you who are distressed and disgusted, all you who are faint-hearted and weary; I will share your pain and bring you peace. Cf. Matthew 11:28-29 below.
It is in this land of Judea, still close to Naomi's Bethlehem, that I remind you how love relieves pain and brings joy. Cf. the Book of Ruth, chapter 1, 1-22.
The Messiah is descended from David, who is descended from Jesse, himself descended from Jobed, and Jobed from Boaz and Ruth. Boaz from Salmon, Salmon from Naasson, Naasson from Aminadab, Aminadab from Aram, Aram from Esron, Esron from Phares. This is the genealogy of Jesus. Cf. Matthew 1, 1-16 and Luke 3, 23-38 below.
Gospel of Matthew 11, 28-29
Mt 11, 28-29 : Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will ease your burden. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is sweet and my burden light.
Book of Ruth 1, 1-22
Rt 1, 1-22 : In the days when the Judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. A man from Bethlehem of Judah went with his wife and two sons to sojourn in the fields of Moab. The man's name was Elimelech, his wife's name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahalon and Cheljon; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem of Judah. They went to the fields of Moab, and settled there.
When Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died, she was left alone with her two sons. They took Moabite wives, one named Orpha and the other Ruth, and lived there for about ten years. Mahalon and Cheljon also both died, and the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. Then she and her daughters-in-law arose and left the fields of Moab, for she had heard in the countryside of Moab that Yahweh had visited his people and given them bread. So she went out from the place where she had settled, with her two daughters-in-law, and they set out to return to the land of Judah. Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law: "Go, return each to your mother's house. May Yahweh show kindness to you, as you did to those who died and to me! May Yahweh make you each find rest in the house of a husband!" And she kissed them. They raised their voices and wept, and said to her, "No; we will return with you to your people." Naomi said, "Return, my daughters; why should you come with me? Do I still have sons in my womb who can become your husbands? Go back, my daughters, go. I'm too old to remarry. And when I say: I have hope; when I would be this very night to a husband and would bear sons, would you wait for that until they were grown up? would you refrain for that from remarrying? No, my daughters. It is very bitter to me because of you, that Yahweh's hand has fallen upon me." And, raising their voices, they wept again. Then Orpha kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.
Naomi said to Ruth, "Behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her god; return with your sister-in-law." Ruth replied, "Don't press me to leave you by returning away from you. Where you go, I will go; where you dwell, I will dwell; your people will be my people, and your God will be my God; where you die, I will die and be buried there. May Yahweh deal with me in all his severity, if anything but death separates me from you!" Seeing that Ruth was determined to go with her, Naomi ceased her entreaties.
The two of them set off until they reached Bethlehem. When they entered Bethlehem, the whole town was moved by them, and the women said, "Is this Naomi? "20She said to them, "Don't call me Naomi; call me Marah, for the Almighty has filled me with bitterness I went away with full hands, and Yahweh is bringing me back empty-handed. Why would you call me Naomi, after Yahweh has testified against me and the Almighty has afflicted me?"
So Naomi returned, and with her her daughter-in-law, Ruth the Moabitess, who had arrived from the fields of Moab. They arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
Gospel of Matthew 1, 1-16
Mt 1, 1-16 : Genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac; Isaac begat Jacob; Jacob begat Judah and his brothers; Judah, of Thamar, begat Phares and Zara; Phares begat Esron; Esron begat Aram; Aram begat Aminadab; Aminadab begat Naasson; Naasson begat Salmon; Salmon, of Rahab, begat Boaz; Boaz, of Ruth, begat Obed; Obed begat Jesse; Jesse begat King David.
David begat Solomon, of her who was Uriah's wife; Solomon begat Rehoboam; Rehoboam begat Abias; Abias begat Asa; Asa begat Jehoshaphat; Jehoshaphat begat Jehoram; Jehoram begat Uzziah; 9Oziah begat Joathan; Joathan begat Ahaz; Ahaz begat Hezekiah; Hezekiah begat Manasseh; Manasseh begat Amon; Amon begat Josiah; Josiah begat Jechonias and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.
And after the deportation to Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel; Salathiel begat Zorobabel; Zorobabel begat Abiud; Abiud begat Eliacim; Eliacim begat Azor; Azor begat Sadoc ; Sadoc begat Achim ; Achim begat Éliud ; Éliud begat Eléazar ; Eléazar begat Mathan ; Mathan begat Jacob ; And Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, from whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
Gospel of Luke 3, 23-38
Lk 3:23-38: Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his ministry; He was the son of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Janné, the son of Joseph, the son of Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Hesli, the son of Naggé, the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of Semei, the son of Josech, the son of Judah, son of Joanan, son of Resa, son of Zorobabel, son of Salathiel, son of Neri, son of Melchi, son of Addi, son of Cosam, son of Elmadam, son of Her, son of Jesus, son of Eliezer, son of Jorim, son of Matthat, son of Levi, son of Simeon, son of Judah, son of Joseph, son of Jonan, son of Eliakim, son of Melea, son of Menna, son of Mattatha, son of Nathan, son of David, son of Jesse, son of Obed, son of Booz, son of Salmon, son of Naasson, they of Aminadab, son of Aram, son of Esron, son of Phares, son of Judas, son of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham, son of Tare, son of Nachor, son of Sarug, son of Réü, son of Phaleg, son of Héber, son of Salé, son of Cainan, son of Arphaxad, son of Sem, son of Noah, son of Lamech, son of Mathusalé, son of Enoch, son of Jared, son of Malaléel, son of Cainan, son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God.