Maria Valtorta – Quad. - 19 gen. 1947: La mia Umanità ha sofferto nel dover vivere fra i peccatori

Maria Valtorta – Notebooks - January 19, 1947: My Humanity has suffered from having to live among sinners, witnessing the offenses they commit against the Eternal One, and man's descent into the mire of the brutes. [Precedes chapter 49 of the BOOK OF AZARIAH] Jesus says: "I could have spoken sooner to give you this gem, my little John. But such is the dignity of the Holy Sacrifice, too little known for what it is by too many Catholic Christians, that I have given priority to its explanation. And this is the first lesson I give to many, speaking exceptionally on a feast day and on a Gospel passage I have already treated according to the usual teaching. When a priest or a voice speaks in the name of God and by God's command, when a precept is obeyed, I, who am the Lord, am silent because great is the dignity of a teacher who speaks in my name and by my command, and great is the dignity of a rite, very great that of the Holy Mass, the rite of rites, just as the Eucharist is the Sacrament of Sacraments. Now then, listen, my little John. I told you long ago—you were in the place of exile and suffered as only I know—that every Gospel passage and episode is a mine of teachings. Do you remember? I showed you the second multiplication of the loaves and I told you that, just as I was able to feed the crowds with a few fish and a few loaves, so too your spirits can be infinitely fed by the few passages reported in the four Gospels. Indeed, for 20 centuries, an incalculable number of men have been fed with them. And now, through my little John, I have increased the number of episodes and words, because truly, hunger is about to consume the spirits, and I have pity on them. But even from those few episodes in the four Gospels, for 20 centuries, bread and fish have been coming to men so that they may be satisfied and have more to spare. All this is done by the Holy Spirit, who is the Master who teaches on the chair of evangelical teaching. "When the Paraclete comes, He will instruct you in all truth and will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have said," teaching the true spirit of every word, of every letter of the episode. For it is the spirit of the word, and not the word itself, that gives life to the spirit. A misunderstood word is an empty sound. It is misunderstood when it is merely a word, a noise, not "life, a seed of life, a spark, a source" that takes root, ignites, cleanses, and nourishes. The Wedding at Cana. For 20 centuries, this has inspired spiritual masters to preach the sanctity of marriage fulfilled by the grace of God, to preach the power of Mary's prayers, her teaching of obedience: "Do whatever He tells you," my power that turns water into wine, and so on. None of these fruits gleaned from the Gospel passage are erroneous. But these are not the only fruits the episode bears and that you can gather from it. My little one in love, lover of Me, hungry for Me Eucharist, this is one of the episodes of my public life in which the germ of the ultimate miracle of the Man-God is present: the Eucharist. The Resurrection is already a miracle of the God-Man, the first of all the miracles that have come since, from the Victim destroyed by Sacrifice, emerged the glorified Jesus God-Man, the Victor. Before that, the God in Man was still hidden. His Nature shone through in flashes of light in his words and miracles, like the blazes that occasionally crown a mountain and prompt one to say: "Here lies the fire, and this mountain, seemingly like many others, is a volcano whose soul is the element of fire, rather than merely layer upon layer of earth and rock." But the Humanity of Christ, who was to suffer and die, was in every way similar to that of every man, having a flesh subject to the laws of matter, with the need for food, sleep, drink, clothing, and discomfort from cold or heat, and weariness from much work or a long journey, and compactness of flesh, and—pity for the Omnipresent One—and constriction in one place. Everything except guilt and the cravings for it. Indeed, everything, and above all that which is the martyrdom of the righteous: having to live among sinners, witnessing the offenses committed against the Eternal One, and man's descent into the mire of the brutes. Man—I tell you, Mary—has suffered, with his intellect and his heart of the Just, more from this than from anything else. The stench of vice and sin! The vermin of all lusts! I tell you: I began to atone for them from the moment I had them near me, so great was the torment they inflicted on my soul and intellect. The angels have counted the blows of the immaterial scourges of man's vices on my Humanity, as numerous and more painful than those of the Roman flagrum. After the Sacrifice, my true Body, while remaining a true Body, assumed the free beauty and power of glorified bodies, which will also be yours. That in which matter will resemble the spirit with which it lived and fought to become queen like that king.