GRM 73.5-6
The Gospel as revealed to me
Quotation
73.5 «What a calamity! You will not find many of those Sarah said You want to meet and visit. Many were killed, many ran away, many… who knows!… missing, and it has never been known whether they died in the desert or were killed in jail as a punishment for their rebellion. But was it a rebellion? And who would have remained inactive allowing so many innocents to be slaughtered? No, it is unfair that Levi and Elias should still be alive when so many innocents are dead!»
«Who are those two, and what did they do?»
«Well… at least You will have heard of the slaughter. The slaughter by Herod… Over a thousand babies slaughtered in town, almost another thousand in the country. And they were all, or almost all, males, because in their fury, in the darkness, in the scuffle, the killers tore away from their cradles, from their mother’s beds, from the houses they assailed, also some baby girls, and they pierced them like sucking baby gazelles shot down by archers. Well: why all that? Because a group of shepherds, who had obviously drank a huge quantity of cider to stand the intense night cold, in a frenzy of excitement, stated they had seen angels, heard songs, received instructions… and they said to us of Bethlehem: “Come. Adore. The Messiah is born”. Just imagine: the Messiah in a cave! In all sincerity, I must admit that we were all drunk, even I, then an adolescent, also my wife, then only a few years old… because we all believed them, and in a poor Galilean woman we saw the Virgin Mother mentioned by the Prophets. But She was with Her husband, a rough Galilean! If She was the wife, how could She be the “Virgin”? To cut a long story short: we believed. Gifts, worshipping… houses opened to give them hospitality!…
Oh! They played their roles very well! Poor Anne! She lost her property and her life, and also the children of her oldest daughter, the only one left because she was married to a merchant in Jerusalem, lost all their property because their house was burned down and the whole holding was laid waste by Herod’s order. Now it is an uncultivated field where herds feed.»
«And was it entirely the shepherds’ fault?»
«No, it was the fault also of three sorcerers who came from Satan’s kingdom. Perhaps they were accomplices of the three… And we foolishly felt proud of so much honour! And the poor arch-synagogue! We killed him because he swore that the prophecies confirmed the truth of the shepherds’ and sorcerer’ words…»
«It was therefore the fault of the shepherds and of the sorcerers?»
«No, Galilean. It was also our fault. The fault of our credulity.
The Messiah had been expected for such a long time! Centuries of expectation. And there had been many disappointments recently because of false Messiahs. One of them was a Galilean, like You, another one was named Theudas. Liars! They… Messiahs! They were nothing but greedy adventurers hunting for a stroke of luck! We should have learned the lesson. Instead…»
73.6 «Well, then, why do you curse all the shepherds and sorcerers?
If you consider yourselves fools, too, then you ought to be cursed as well. But the precept of love forbids cursing. One curse attracts another curse. Are you sure you are right? Could it not be true that the shepherds and the sorcerers spoke the truth, revealed to them by God? Why do you carry on believing they were liars?»
«Because the years of the prophecy were not complete. We thought about it afterwards… after our eyes had been opened by the blood that reddened basins and rivulets.»
«And could the Most High not have advanced the coming of the Saviour, out of an excess of love for His people? On what did the sorcerers found their statement? You told Me they came from the East…»
«On their calculations concerning a new star.»
«Is it not written: “A star from Jacob takes the leadership, a sceptre arises from Israel”? Is Jacob not the great Patriarch and did he not stop in the land of Bethlehem as dear to him as his eyes, because his beloved Rachel died there? And did the mouth of a Prophet not say: “A shoot springs from the stock of Jesse, a scion thrusts from his roots”? Jesse, David’s father, was born here. Is the shoot on the stock, cut at its roots by tyrannical usurpation, is it not the “Virgin” Who will give birth to Her Son, conceived not by deed of man, otherwise She would not be a virgin, but by divine will, whereby He will be the “Emmanuel” because: Son of God, He will be God and bring God among the people of God, as His name proclaims? And will He not be announced, as the prophecy says, to the people walking in darkness, that is to the pagans, “by a great light”? And the star the Magi saw, could it not be the star of Jacob, the great light of the two prophecies of Balaam and Isaiah? And the very massacre ordered by Herod, does it not come within the prophecies? “A voice is heard in Ramah… It is Rachel weeping for her children”. It was written that tears should ooze from Rachel’s bones in her sepulchre at Ephrathah when, through the Saviour, the reward would come to the holy people. Tears which were to turn into celestial laughter, just as the rainbow is formed by the last drops of the storm, but it says: “Here, the sky is clear again”»
«You are a learned man. Are You a rabbi?»
«Yes, I am.»
«And I perceived it. There is light and truth in Your words. But… Oh! too many wounds are still bleeding in this land of Bethlehem because of the true or false Messiah… I would never advise Him to come here. The land would reject Him as it rejects a stepson who caused the death of the true children. In any case… if it was Him… He died with the other slaughtered children.»
Detail
More precise notes than EMV 73.2-8.