GRM 172.3
The Gospel as revealed to me
Translation in progress
Notes for this keyword
Husband and wife - Husband and wife
Theme: Family and friends · Page 2 of 2
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GRM 174.19 · Volume 3
The Gospel as revealed to me
Quotation
It has also been said to you: “Anyone who divorces his wife, must give her a writ of dismissal”. But that is to be condemned. for it does not come from God. God said to Adam: “This is the helpmate I made for you. Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it”. And Adam, full of superior intelligence, because Sin had not yet dimmed his reason made perfect by God, exclaimed: “This at last is bone from my bones, and flesh from my flesh. This is to be called woman, that is: another I, because this was taken from man. This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife and the two become one body”. And in an increased splendour of light the Eternal Light approved smiling Adam’s word, which became the first indelible law. Now, if owing to the ever increasing hardness of man, the human lawgiver had to give a new law; if owing to the ever increasing inconstancy of man. the lawgiver had to put a restraint and say: “If you have dismissed her you cannot take her back”, that does not cancel the first genuine law, passed in the Earthly Paradise and approved by God.
Annotation
We'll call her Virago. This Latin word comes from vir (man) and designates a woman who is like a man. It is not used here in the pejorative French sense of a shrill woman.
The human legislator here is Moses.
Deuteronomy 24, 1 and 24, 3-4
Dt 24, 1: When a man takes a wife and marries her, and she ceases to find favor in his eyes, because he discovers a blemish in her, he shall write her a letter of repudiation and give it to her, sending her away from his house.
Deut 24:3-4: But if the latter husband dislikes her, writes a letter of divorce for her and hands it over to him, sending her out of his house; or if the latter husband who took her as his wife dies, 4then the former husband who sent her away will not be able to divorce her.for it is an abomination before Yahweh, and you shall not sin in the land which Yahweh your God is giving you for an inheritance.
Book of Genesis 1, 28 and 2, 22-24
Gn 1, 28 : God blessed them and said to them: "Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Be rulers over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and every animal that comes and goes on the earth."
Gn 2, 22-24 : With the rib he had taken from the man, he fashioned a woman and brought her to the man. The man said: "This time, this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh! She shall be called woman - Ishsha - who was taken from man - Ish." For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and the two will become one.
Gospel of Matthew 5, 31-32
Mt 5, 31-32 : It has also been said, "If anyone sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of repudiation. Well, I say to you, every man who sends away his wife, except in the case of an illegitimate union, leads her to adultery; and if anyone marries a woman who has been sent away, he is an adulterer.
GRM 184.9 · Volume 3
The Gospel as revealed to me
Quotation
Then Jesus turns to the woman saying: «May God bless you especially, because you are a holy wife and a holy mother. Persevere in virtue. Goodbye, Benjamin. Love the truth and obey your mother. My blessing to you, to your little brothers and to you, mother.»
A man comes forward. He is embarrassed and stammers: «But, but… I am moved by what You say of my wife… I did not know…»
«Have you no eyes or intelligence?»
«Yes, I have.»
«Why do you not make use of them? Shall I clear them?»
«You have already done that, my Lord. But I love her, You know… The trouble is… that, that… one gets used… and… and…»
«And one thinks that it is quite all right to demand too much, because the other one is more gentle than we are… Do not do that any more. You are always in danger with your work. Be not afraid of storms if God is with you. But if there is Injustice in you, be very much afraid. Have you understood?»
«More than You have said. I will do my best to obey You… I did not know…» and he looks at his wife as if he saw her for the first time.
Jesus blesses and goes out onto the little road. He resumes walking towards the country.
Detail
Jesus blesses the mother of five, and her husband is amazed at the praise he heaps on his wife. The case of habit and progressive indifference in a couple.
GRM 186.4 · Volume 3
The Gospel as revealed to me
Quotation
The natural reason is not to stimulate the blood by means of food that causes a heat unbecoming of man, who is not forbidden also carnal love, but must always moderate it with the freshness of his soul tending to Heaven. Man must therefore make sure that the sentiment that joins him to his wife, in whom he must see a fellow creature like himself, not a female, is love, not sensuality.
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).
GRM 209.5 · Volume 3
The Gospel as revealed to me
Quotation
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.
Annotation
Gospel of Matthew 11, 28-29
Mt 11, 28-29 : Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 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.
GRM 209.6-7 · Volume 3
The Gospel as revealed to me
Quotation
«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 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.»
Annotation
It's 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.
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 her 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 returned 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.