Elements in the Christian life

A soul "is not in grace who is against God’s Law, which is very clear in its commandments".

• Soul
• Thanks
• Words of wisdom

«How long have You been consecrated to the Lord?»

«I have always been, I think. I was not yet in this Temple, and I had already given Myself to the Lord.»

«But are You not the little one who came twelve years ago and asked me to be allowed to enter?»

«I am.»

«Well, then, how can You say that You already belonged to God then?»

«If I look back, I find I was consecrated… I do not remember when I was born, neither do I remember how I began to love My mother and to say to My father: “Father, I am your daughter”… But I remember that I gave My heart to God, although I do not know when it started. Perhaps it was with the first kiss that I was able to give, with the first word that I learned to say, with the first step that I took… Yes, I think I find My first recollection of love with My first steady step… My house… near the house there was a garden full of flowers… and there was an orchard and some fields… and there was a spring of water at the rear, under the hill, and the water gushed out from a hollow rock that formed a grotto… it was full of long and thin herbs that hung down forming small green waterfalls everywhere and they seemed to be weeping because the thin little leaves, that seemed an embroidery work, had tiny little drops of water on them and when the drops fell they tinkled like little bells. Also the spring seemed to be singing. And there were birds on the olive and apple-trees above the spring and white doves used to come and wash in the clear water of the fountain… I was no longer thinking of all that, because I had put all My heart in God and, with the exception of My father and mother, whom I loved in life and in death, every other worldly thing had disappeared from My heart… But you have made Me think of it… I must find when I gave Myself to God… and the things of My first years come back to My mind… I loved that grotto, because I heard a voice sweeter than the song of the water and the warbling of the birds say to Me: “Come, My Beloved”. I loved those herbs covered with tinkling and sparkling diamond drops, because I could see in them the sign of My Lord and I used to say to Myself: “O soul of Mine, see how great Your God is, He Who made the cedars of Lebanon for the eagles, has also made these little leaves that bend down under the weight of a little mosquito and He made them for the joy of Your eyes and as a protection for Your little feet”. I loved that silence of pure things: the light breeze, the silvery water, the purity of the doves… I loved the peace that hovered over the little grotto, and descended from the apple and olive-trees, now full of blossoms, then laden with beautiful fruit… And I do not know… the voice seemed to be saying to Me, yes, just to Me: “Come, specious olive; come, sweet apple; come, sealed spring; come, My dove”… Sweet is the love of a father, sweet the love of a mother… sweet their voices calling Me… but this, this one! Oh! in the earthly Paradise I think that she, who became guilty, heard it thus, and I do not understand how she could prefer a hiss to this voice of love, how she could desire any other knowledge that was not God… With My lips which still tasted of My mother’s milk, but with My heart full of celestial honey, I then said: “Here I am. I am coming. I am Yours. No one will have My body, but You, My Lord, neither will My soul have any other love…” And while saying so, it seemed to Me that I was repeating things already said and that I was fulfilling a rite already fulfilled, and the chosen Spouse was not a stranger to Me, because I already knew His ardour and My sight had been formed at His light and My capacity for loving had been fulfilled in His embrace… When? I do not know. Beyond life, I would say, because I feel I always had Him, and that He always had Me, and that I exist because He wanted Me for the joy of His Spirit and Mine…»

• Love of the Virgin Mary

I exist because He wanted Me for the joy of His Spirit and Mine…

• Reasons to live
• Why create man?
• Words of wisdom

Which faith is greater than this one that believed without seeing the miracles of the Messiah?

• Faith
• Miracle
• Words of wisdom

Love Me more and more. (...) Love Me as daughter and sister in our destiny of victims. And love God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit with perfect love.

• Loving the Virgin Mary

A soul in grace is held like a flower in the hands of your angel, and like a flower it is kissed by the sun and sprinkled with dew by the Holy Spirit, Who warms and illuminates it, sprays and decorates it with heavenly lights.

• Soul
• Words of wisdom

How many truths your soul would tell you, if you only knew how to converse with it, if you loved your soul that makes you like God, Who is a spirit, as your soul is a spirit. What a great friend you would have if you loved your soul instead of hating it to the extent of killing it; what a great and sublime friend with whom you could talk of celestial matters, since you men are so eager to talk and you ruin one another with friendships which, if they are not unworthy ones (as sometimes they are), they are almost always useless and they turn into a vain and damaging tumult of worldly words.

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.

• Soul

God had said to the man and the woman: “You know all the laws and the mysteries of creation. But do not infringe on My right of being the Creator of man. My love will suffice for the propagation of the human race and it will spread among you and will excite the new Adams of the race without any lust of the senses but with purely charitable pulsations. I have given you everything. I am only keeping for Myself this mystery of the formation of man”.

17.5 Satan wanted to deprive man of this intellectual virginity and with his venomous tongue he blandished and caressed Eve’s limbs and eyes, exciting reflections and a perspicacity which they did not have before, because malice had not yet intoxicated them.

She “saw”. And seeing, she wanted to try. Her flesh was aroused. Oh! If she had called to God! If she had hurried to Him saying: “Father! I am sick. The Serpent has caressed me and I am upset”. The Father would have purified and healed her with His breath, which could have infused new innocence into her as it had infused life. And it would have made her forget the snake’s poison, even more it would have filled her with a disgust for the Serpent, as it happens in those who bear an instinctive dislike for diseases of which they have just been cured. But Eve does not go to the Father. Eve goes back to the Serpent. The sensation is a sweet one for her. “Seeing that the fruit of the tree was good to eat and pleasing and agreeable to the eye, she took it and ate it”.

And “she understood”. Now Malice was inside her and was gnawing at her intestines. She saw with new eyes and heard with new ears the habits and voices of beasts. And she craved for them with insane greed.

17.6 She began the sin by herself. She accomplished it with her companion. That is why a heavier sentence is laid on woman. Because of her, man has become rebellious towards God and has become acquainted with lewdness and death. Because of her, he was no longer capable of dominating his three reigns: the reign of the spirit, because he allowed the spirit to disobey God; the moral reign, because he allowed passions to master him; the reign of the flesh, because he lowered it down to the instinctive level of beasts. “The Serpent seduced me” says Eve. “The woman offered me the fruit and I ate of it” says Adam. And the triple greed has ruled the three dominions since then.

17.7 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”.

• Adam and Eve
• Consequences of Fault - Original sin
• Original sin
• The Fall

The joy of being the Woman by means of Whom peace was re-established between Heaven and earth.

Oh! What a joy to have desired this peace for the sake of God and of men and to know that it was coming to the world through Me, the poor handmaid of the Almighty! What a joy to say: “Men, do not cry any longer. I have in Me the secret that will make you happy. I cannot tell what it is because it is sealed in Me, in My heart, just as the Son is enclosed in My pure womb. But I am already bringing it to you, and the moment when you will see Him and hear His Holy name is getting nearer and nearer”.

• Love of the Virgin Mary
• Rosary
• Visitation

17.12 Disobedience was the beginning of the downfall: “Do not eat and do not touch of that tree” said God. And man and woman did not respect that prohibition, although as kings of creation they were allowed to touch and eat of everything except of that tree, because God wanted them to be inferior only to angels.

The tree: the means to test their obedience. What does obedience to God’s commands imply? It implies all possible good, because God commands nothing but good. What is disobedience? It is evil, because it brings about a rebellious mental state in which Satan can be active.

• Original sin