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Loving God

Theme: The Path to Holiness · Page 5 of 6

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GRM 176.1 · Volume 3

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

«Tell us, and if there is anything we can do to relieve Your grief, we will do it» says His cousin Judas.

Peter speaks to Bartholomew and Philip, but I do not understand what they say.

Jesus replies: «Be good, endeavour to be good and faithful. That is the only relief. There is no other one, Peter. Have you understood? Forget your suspicion. Love Me and love one another, do not allow those who hate Me to seduce you, above all love the will of God.»

GRM 180.3 · Volume 3

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

«Our senses need a term to catch an idea. Each of us, I am referring to us believers, believes, by the virtue of faith, in the Most High Lord and Creator, Eternal God, Who is in Heaven. But every being needs more than such bare, pure, incorporeal faith, which is fit and sufficient for the angels who see and love God spiritually, as they share with Him a spiritual nature and can see God. We have to create a “picture” of God for ourselves, which picture is made with the essential features that we ascribe to God, to give a name to His infinite absolute perfection. The more a soul concentrates, the more it succeeds in achieving an exact knowledge of God. That is what I say: the immanent God. I am not a philosopher. Perhaps I have applied the word wrongly. In short, I think that the immanent God is to feel, to perceive God in our spirits, to feel and perceive Him no longer as an abstract idea, but as a real presence, bestowing strength and a new peace upon us.»

«All right. But, to sum up, how did you feel Him? What is the difference between feeling by faith and feeling by immanence?» asks the Iscariot somewhat ironically.

«God is safety, boy. When you perceive Him, as Simon says, by means of that word, which I do not understand literally, but I understand its spirit — and believe me, the trouble is that we understand only literally and we do not understand the spirit of God’s words — it means that you are able to grasp the idea of the terrible majesty, but also of the most sweet paternity of God. It means that, should all the world judge and condemn you unjustly, you would feel that One only, He, the Eternal One, Who is your Father, does not judge you, but absolves and comforts you. It means that if all the world should hate you, you would feel over you a love greater than any this world can offer. It means that if you were isolated in jail or in a desert you would always hear One speak to you and say: “Be holy, that you may be like your Father”. It means that for the true love for this Father and God, Whom at last you perceive as such, you accept, work, take and leave without any human consideration, as you are concerned only to return love for love and to copy God as much as possible in your actions» says Peter.

«You are proud! To copy God! You are not entitled to» declares the Iscariot.

«It is not pride. Love leads to obedience. To copy God seems to me a form of obedience because God said that He made us in His own image and likeness» replies Peter.

«He made us. We must not go higher up.»

«You are a poor wretch, my boy, if that is what you think! You are forgetting that we fell and that God wants to take us back to what we were.»

180.4

Jesus begins to speak: «Even more, Peter, Judas and you all. Even more than that. Adam’s perfection was still susceptible of improvement through love, which would have made him a more precise image of his Creator. Adam without the stain of sin would have been a most shining mirror of God. That is why I say: “Be perfect as your Father Who is in Heaven is perfect”. Like your Father. Therefore like God. Peter is quite right. And so is Simon. I ask you to remember their words and apply them to your souls.»

Detail

Simon the Zealot expresses one of his reflections on God. Love, pride, obedience and the case for redemption are discussed at the end of the note.

GRM 196.4-6 · Volume 3

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

My Mother had dedicated Herself to virginity for love. But, since She was a perfect creature, maternity was in Her blood and spirit. Because woman is created to be a mother and it is an aberration, if she is deaf to such sentiment, which is love of second power…»

Also the others have come near slowly.

«What do You mean, Master, by love of second power?» asks Judas Thaddeus.

«My brother, there are many loves and various powers. There is the love of first power: the one given to God. Then there is the love of second power: the love of a mother or of a father, because if the previous one is entirely spiritual, this one is spiritual by two parts and carnal by one. It is true that human affection is mixed in it, but the superior sentiment prevails, because a father and mother, who are such in a wholesome and holy way, do not only feed and caress the body of their child, but they also give nourishment and love to the mind and the spirit of their creature. And what I am saying is so true, that those who devote themselves to children, even if only to educate them, end up by loving their pupils as if they were of their own flesh.»

«In fact I was very fond of my pupils» says John of Endor.

«I understood that you must have been a good teacher by the way you deal with Jabez.»

The man of Endor bows and kisses Jesus’ hand without speaking.

«Please go on with Your classification of loves» begs the Zealot.

«There is the love for one’s wife: love of third power because it is made – I am always talking of wholesome and holy love – half of spirit and half of flesh. A man, besides being the husband of his wife, is a teacher and a father to her; and a woman is an angel and a mother to her husband, besides being his wife. These are the three highest loves.»

196.5

«And the love for our neighbour? Are You not wrong? Or have You forgotten it?» asks the Iscariot. The others look at him dumbfounded and… furious because of his remarks.

But Jesus replies placidly: «No, Judas. Watch. God is to be loved because He is God, so no explanation is required to convince one to have such love. He is He Who is, that is Everything; and man: Nothing, who participates of Everything, because of the soul infused in him by Eternal God — without which soul man would be one of the many animals that live on the earth, or in water or in the air — he must adore Him out of a sense of duty and to deserve to survive in Everything, that is to deserve to be part of the holy People of God in Heaven, a citizen of the Jerusalem that will know neither profanation nor destruction forever.

The love of man, and particularly of woman, for their offspring, is indicated as an order in the words of God to Adam and Eve, after He had blessed them, seeing that He had made a “good thing”, on a remote sixth day, the first sixth day of creation. God said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…” I can see your tacit objection, and this is My reply to you: Since before sin everything in creation was regulated by and based on love, that multiplication of children would have been a holy, pure, powerful, perfect love. And God gave it as His first commandment to man: “Be fruitful and multiply”. Therefore, love your children after Me. Love, as it is now, the present procreator of children, did not exist then. There was no malice nor the detestable thirst for sensuality. Man loved woman and woman loved man, naturally, not naturally according to nature as we understand it, or rather, as you men understand it, but according to the nature of children of God: supernaturally. Sweet were the days of love of the Two who were brothers, because born of one Father, and yet were husband and wife, who loved and looked at each other with the innocent eyes of twins in a cradle; and man felt the love of a father for his wife “bone from his bones and flesh from his flesh”, what a son is for his father; and the woman experienced the joy of being a daughter, protected by a very high love, because she felt that she had in herself something of the wonderful man who loved her, with innocence and angelical ardour, in the beautiful meadows in Eden!

Later, in the sequence of commands that God, smiling, gave to His beloved children, there comes what Adam himself, gifted by Grace with an intelligence inferior only to God’s, decreed speaking of his wife and of every woman through Eve, a decree of the thought of God, which was clearly reflected by the spotless mirror of Adam’s spirit, a flower in thought and in word: “Man will leave his father and his mother and will join himself to his wife and they will become one body”.

If there had not been the three pillars of the three above mentioned loves, could there have been love for one’s neighbour? No. It could not have existed. The love of God makes God a friend and teaches love. He who does not love God, Who is good, cannot certainly love his neighbour who in most cases is faulty. If there had been no conjugal love and paternity in the world, there could have been no neighbours, because a neighbour is the son of man. Are you convinced?»

«Yes, Master. I had not thought of that.»

«It is difficult indeed to go back to the sources. Man has been stuck in mud for thousands of years, and those sources are so high up on the summits! The first one, above all, is a source that comes immense from an immense height: God… But I will take you by the hand and lead you to the sources. I know where they are…»

196.6

«And the other loves?» ask together Simon Zealot and the man from Endor.

«The first one of the second series is the love for our neighbour. In actual fact it is the fourth in power. Then comes the love for science. Finally the love for work.»

«Is that all?»

«That is all.»

«But there are many more loves!» exclaims Judas of Kerioth.

«There are other hungers. But it is not love. They are the negation of love. They deny God, they deny man. It cannot be love because it is negation and Negation is Hatred.»

Detail

The different powers of love.

Annotation

He is He who is, i.e. the All; and man is the nothing who becomes a part of the All thanks to the soul infused into him by the Eternal. "Part" has been corrected (according to the explanation given in EMV 167.9) to "participant" on a typed copy; it adds at the bottom of the page: "If the soul knows how to remain in a state of grace, thus deified, not by identity of substance, but by elevation to the supernatural order. "

EMV 167 note: "Parcel of God" seems to have been changed to parcel born of God by an unclear correction by Maria Valtorta on a typed copy, on which she added the following note: "The word parcel should not be given the meaning of "part of God" infused into us, but of "throne-place", "seat" infused or "spirited" (by the "breath of life" spoken of in Genesis 2:7) by God, hence thing of God come from God in man. St. Thomas Aquinas calls it "a capacity of God" that God fills with himself, so that we may all participate in his divine life."

This explanation by Maria Valtorta (and the text ofEMV 10.9) should be borne in mind whenever the work speaks of the soul as a "part" or "particle" of God.

Link it to the notes in EMV 4.6, EMV 54.5, EMV 165.4, EMV 170.4, EMV 365.16, EMV 444.4, EMV 463.4, EMV 524.7, EMV 537.11.

"Grow and multiply, and fill the earth... "According to Genesis 1:28.

Man loved woman and woman loved man, naturally, not naturally according to nature as we understand it, or rather as you men understand it, but according to the nature of God's children: supernaturally. "Supernaturally": Maria Valtorta notes on a typed copy: without the disorder of malice uniting or even "substituting itself" for God's ordered laws, inherent in the multiplication and population of the earth. She adds in the margin: As long as man remained in this order, the venom of the triple concupiscence that made him delusional, then rebellious, finally fallen, was not born in him.

Man felt the love of a father for his companion "bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh", as a child does for a father. According to Genesis 2:23.

"A man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. "According to Genesis 2, 24.

Book of Genesis 1, 28

Gn 1, 28 : And God blessed them, and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

Book of Genesis 2, 23-24

Gn 2, 23-24 : And the man said: "This one is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh! This one shall be called woman, because she was taken from man." Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

GRM 196.4.6 · Volume 3

The Gospel as revealed to me

Quotation

There are many loves and various powers. There is the love of first power: the one given to God. Then there is the love of second power: the love of a mother or of a father, because if the previous one is entirely spiritual, this one is spiritual by two parts and carnal by one. It is true that human affection is mixed in it, but the superior sentiment prevails, because a father and mother, who are such in a wholesome and holy way, do not only feed and caress the body of their child, but they also give nourishment and love to the mind and the spirit of their creature. And what I am saying is so true, that those who devote themselves to children, even if only to educate them, end up by loving their pupils as if they were of their own flesh. (...) There is the love for one’s wife: love of third power because it is made – I am always talking of wholesome and holy love – half of spirit and half of flesh. A man, besides being the husband of his wife, is a teacher and a father to her; and a woman is an angel and a mother to her husband, besides being his wife. These are the three highest loves. (...) The first one of the second series is the love for our neighbour. In actual fact it is the fourth in power. Then comes the love for science. Finally the love for work.

Detail

Synthesis of the different powers of love (explained in detail in this note).