Chapter 10. Mary's Canticle Imploring the Coming of the Christ.
2nd September 1944.
Only yesterday evening, Friday, I began
to see. I saw nothing but a very young Mary, twelve years old at
most, Her face no longer roundish, as is typical of children, but
already showing the future outlines of a woman in a perfect oval.
Also Her hair is no longer falling loose on Her neck in soft curls,
but it is plaited and two thick braids fall over Her shoulders down
to Her waist. Her hair is a very pale gold colour, so light that it
seems to be blended with silver. Her face is more pensive and mature,
although it is the face of a young girl, a beautiful and pure girl,
all dressed in white. She is sewing in a very small room, which is
also completely white, and through the wide open window one can see
the imposing central part of the Temple, the flights of steps of the
yards and porches.
Beyond the enclosure wall also the town
can be seen with its streets, houses, gardens, and in the background
the humped green top of the Mount of Olives.
Mary is sewing and singing
in a low voice. I do not know whether it is a sacred song or not. It
says:
« Like a star in clear
water
a light is shining within My heart.
It has been with Me since My childhood
and it guides Me tenderly with love.
a light is shining within My heart.
It has been with Me since My childhood
and it guides Me tenderly with love.
In the depths of My heart
there is a song.
Where does it come from?
Man, you do not know.
It comes from where the Holy One rests.
Where does it come from?
Man, you do not know.
It comes from where the Holy One rests.
I look at My clear star
And I do not want anything,
Not even the sweetest and dearest thing,
Except this sweet light that is all Mine.
And I do not want anything,
Not even the sweetest and dearest thing,
Except this sweet light that is all Mine.
You brought Me down from
the Heavens above,
O star of Mine, into the womb of a mother,
Now You live in Me, but beyond the veil
I see Your glorious face, Father.
O star of Mine, into the womb of a mother,
Now You live in Me, but beyond the veil
I see Your glorious face, Father.
When will You grant Your
servant the honour
Of being the humble maid of the Saviour?
Send us the Messiah from Heaven,
Accept, Holy Father, the offer of Mary. »
Of being the humble maid of the Saviour?
Send us the Messiah from Heaven,
Accept, Holy Father, the offer of Mary. »
Mary is now quiet. She smiles and
sighs, then She kneels down in prayer. Her little face is shining
brightly. She is looking upwards, towards the clear blue summer sky
and Her face seems to be absorbing and then radiating all the
brightness in the air. Or rather, it looks as if from within Her a
hidden sun is radiating its rays and lighting up Her face, colouring
Her snow-white flesh with a light rosy hue. And the light from Her
face spreads out towards the world and the sun shining on the world:
a blessing and a promise of much good.
While Mary is getting up after Her
prayer, with ecstatic brightness still on Her face, old Anna of
Phanuel enters the room. She stands still, amazed or at least
wondering at Mary's attitude and appearance.
Then she calls Her: « Mary! » and the
Girl turns round with a smile, a different one but still so beautiful
and says: « Peace to you, Anna.»
« Were You praying? Are Your prayers
never enough for You? »
« My prayers would be enough. But I
speak to God. Anna, you cannot imagine how close I feel Him. More
than close, within My heart. May God forgive Me My pride. But I do
not feel lonely. See? Over there, in that House of gold and snow,
behind the double Curtain, there is the Holy of Holies. Nobody is
ever allowed to look at the Propitiatory, on which the glory of the
Lord rests, except the High Priest. But My worshipping soul does not
need to look at the embroidered Curtain, which quivers at the songs
of the virgins and Levites and is scented with precious incense, as
if I wanted to pierce its fabric and see the Testimony shine through
it. I do look at it! Do not think that I do not look at it with
worshipping eyes like every son of Israel. Do not think that pride
blinds Me making Me think what I will now tell you. I look at it and
there is no humble servant amongst the people of God that looks more
humbly at the House of the Lord than I do, because I am convinced
that I am the least of all. But what do I see? A veil. What do I
think there is behind the Veil? A Tabernacle. What is in it? If I
listen to My heart, I see God shining in His loving glory and He says
to Me: "I love You" and I reply to Him: "I love You"
and I die and I am recreated at each beat of My heart in this
reciprocal kiss... I am amongst you, My dear teachers and companions.
But a circle of fire isolates Me from you. Within the circle, God and
Myself. And I see you through the Fire of God and so I love you...
but I cannot love you according to the flesh, neither shall I ever be
able to love anyone according to the flesh. I can only love Him Who
loves Me, according to the spirit. This is My destiny. The secular
Law of Israel wants every girl to be a wife, and every wife to be a
mother. But, while obeying the Law, I must obey the Voice that
whispers to Me: "I want You"; I am a virgin and a virgin I
shall remain, How shall I succeed? This sweet invisible Presence that
is with Me will help Me, because it is Its desire. I am not afraid.
I have no longer My father and
mother... and only God knows how My love for whatever human being
belonged to Me was burnt in that pain. Now I have but God. I
therefore obey Him unquestioningly... I would have done so also
regardless of My father and mother, because I have been taught by the
Voice that whoever wishes to follow It, must go beyond father and
mother. Parents are loving patrols watching the hearts of their
children, whom they wish to lead to happiness according to their
plans... and they are not aware of other plans leading to infinite
happiness... I would have left them My dresses and mantles, to follow
the Voice that says to Me: "Come, My beloved Spouse". I
would have left them everything, and the pearls of My tears, for I
would have cried having to disobey them, and the instincts of My
blood, because I would have defied even death to follow the Voice
calling Me, would have told them that there is something greater and
sweeter than the love of a father and mother and that is the Voice of
God. But now, by His will, I am free from this tie of filial love.
Nay, it would not have been a tie. My parents were two just people
and God certainly spoke to them as He speaks to Me. They would have
followed justice and truth. When I think of them, I imagine them in
the quiet expectation among the Patriarchs and I hasten with My
sacrifice the coming of the Messiah to open for them the gates of
Heaven. I am My own guide on earth, or rather God guides His poor
servant giving Her His commands and I fulfill them because it is a
joy for Me to obey. When the time comes, I will reveal My secret to
the spouse... and he will accept it.»
« But, Mary.... which words will You
find to persuade him? You will have the love of a man, the Law and
life against you.»
« I shall have God with Me... God will
enlighten the heart of the spouse... life will lose the incentives of
the senses and become a pure flower with the fragrance of charity.
The Law... Anna, don't call Me a blasphemer. I think the Law is about
to be changed. By whom, do you think, if it is divine? By the Only
One Who can change it. By God. The time is nearer than you think, I
tell you. Because when I was reading Daniel, a great light came to Me
from the depths of My heart and I understood the meaning of the
enigmatic word. The seventy weeks will be shortened because of the
prayers of just people. Does this mean that the number of the years
is being changed? No. A prophecy is never wrong. But the measure of
the prophetic time is the course of the moon, not of the sun.
Therefore I say: “Near is the hour when the Baby born of a Virgin
will be heard crying.” Oh! Since this Light that loves Me tells Me
so many things, I wish it would tell Me where the happy mother is,
that will give birth to the Son of God and Messiah of His people!
Barefooted I would travel all over the world, neither cold nor frost,
neither dust nor heat, nor wild beast nor hunger would prevent Me
from reaching Her and I would say to Her: “Grant Your servant and
the servant of the servants of Christ to live under Your roof. I will
turn Your millstone and Your press, use Me as a slave to work Your
millstone and to watch Your herds, make Me wash the napkins of Your
Child... I will work in Your kitchen, at Your oven, wherever You
wish.... but receive Me. That I may see Him! And hear His voice! And
receive His glance!” And if She did not want Me, I would live at
Her doorstep like a beggar, in cold and hot weather, just to hear the
voice of the Child Messiah and the echo of His laughter, and see Him
passing by... And perhaps one day He would offer Me a piece of
bread... Oh! If I were dying with hunger and I were fainting because
of extensive fasting, I would not eat that bread. I would hold it
close to My heart like a bag of precious pearls and I would kiss it
to scent the perfume of Christ's hand and I would never be hungry or
cold, because its touch would give Me ecstasy and heat, ecstasy and
food ... »
«You ought to be the Mother of the
Christ, since You love Him so much! Is that why You wish to remain a
virgin? »
« Oh! No. I am misery and dust. I dare
not lift My eyes towards the Glory. That is why, rather than the
double Veil, beyond which I know dwells the invisible Presence of
Jehovah, I love looking into My heart. Over there, there is the
terrible God of Sinai. Here, within Me, I see our Father, a loving
Face that smiles and blesses Me, because I am small like a little
bird, that the wind sustains without feeling its weight and I am weak
like the stem of a lily of the valley, that can only bloom and smell
sweetly and can present no other force to the wind but its scented
and pure sweetness. God, My loving wind! Not because of that. But
because the Son of God and of a Virgin, the Holy of the Most Holy
One, can but like what in Heaven He chose as his Mother and what on
the earth speaks to Him of His Heavenly Father: Purity. If the Law
pondered that, if the rabbis, who have complicated the Law with all
the quibbles of their teaching, turned their minds to higher horizons
and aimed at supernatural things, deserting the human and lucrative
affairs which cause them to forget the supreme End, they should,
above all, make Purity the main subject of their teaching, so that
the King of Israel may find it when He comes. With the olive branches
of the Peaceful One, with the Palms of the Triumpher, spread lilies,
lilies, lilies... How much Blood the Saviour will have to shed to
redeem us! How much indeed! From the thousands of wounds that Isaiah
saw on the Man of Sorrows, a stream of Blood is falling, like dew
from a porous vase. May this divine Blood not fall where there is
desecration and blasphemy, but into chalices of fragrant purity that
may receive it and gather it for the purpose of spreading it amongst
the diseased and leprous souls and amongst those who are dead to God.
Give lilies to wipe with their pure petals the sweat and the tears of
Christ! Give lilies for His keen desire of Martyrdom! Oh! Where will
that Lily be, that will bear You? Where is the Lily that will quench
Your parching thirst, that will become red with Your Blood, will die
for the pain of seeing You dying, and will cry over Your bloodless
Body? Oh! Christ! Christ! My desire! ...»
Mary is now silent, weeping and
overwhelmed.
Anna is also silent for a little while
and then with her clear voice of a deeply moved old woman, she asks:
« Have You anything else to teach me, Mary? »
Mary rouses. She must think, in Her
humility, that Her teacher is reproaching Her and She exclaims: «
Oh! Forgive Me! You are My teacher. I am nothing. But this voice
comes from My heart. I watch over it, to avoid speaking. But like a
river that under the fury of water breaks its embankment, it has now
overcome Me and overflowed. Please pay no attention to My words and
chastise My presumption. Words of mystery should remain in the depths
of one's heart, which God helps in His goodness. I know. But this
Invisible Presence is so sweet that I am filled with joy... Anna,
please forgive your little servant! »
Anna embraces Her while tears shine on
her old wrinkled trembling face. The tears run along her wrinkles,
like water along an uneven ground that becomes a trembling swamp. But
the old teacher does not provoke laughter, on the contrary her crying
excites the deepest respect.
Mary is clasped in her arms, Her little
face against Her teacher's breast. And it all finishes thus.
-------------
Jesus says:
Jesus says:
« Mary remembered God. She dreamt of
God. She thought She dreamt. She was only seeing again what She had
seen in the splendour of God's Heaven, in the instant She was created
to be united to the body conceived on the earth. She shared with God
one of God's properties, although in a lesser degree, as was fitting.
That is the property of remembering, seeing and foreseeing, which is
an attribute of the mighty and perfect intelligence not impaired by
Fault. Man was created in the image and likeness of God. One of the
likenesses is the capability, for the soul, of remembering, seeing
and foreseeing. This explains the faculty for reading into the
future. This faculty sometimes comes directly, by God's will,
sometimes it is a power of recollection, that rises like the sun in
the morning, illuminating a point on the horizon of centuries,
already seen in the vision of God.
Such mysteries are too deep to be fully
understood by you. But consider.
Can the Supreme Intelligence, the Mind
that knows everything, the Sight that sees everything, give you
something different from Himself, having created you by an act of His
will and a breath of His infinite love, and having made you His
children both by your origin and your destination? He gives you it in
an infinitesimal part, as the creature cannot contain the Creator.
But that part is perfect and complete, although infinitesimal.
What treasure of intelligence God gave
man, Adam! The Fall impaired it, but My sacrifice reinstates it and
opens the splendour of Intelligence, its wealth, its science for you.
How sublime is the human mind united to God by His grace, sharing
with God the faculty of knowledge!... The human mind united to God by
Grace.
There is no other way. Those who
inquisitively seek ultrahuman secrets should remember that. All
knowledge that does not come from a soul in grace - and is not in
grace who is against God's Law, which is very clear in its
commandments - such knowledge comes from Satan. It seldom corresponds
to the truth when human matters are concerned, it never corresponds
to the truth with regard to superhuman matters. The Demon is in fact
the father of falsehood and can but lead on to the path of falsehood.
There is no other method of knowing the truth, except the one that
comes from God, Who speaks and says or reminds, as a father reminds
his son of his paternal house and says to him: “Don't you remember
when you used to do this with Me, you saw that, you heard something
else? Don't you remember when I used to kiss you goodbye? Do you
remember when you saw Me for the first time and you admired the
bright light on My face shining on your virginal soul, which, having
been just created by Me was still pure and free from the evil that
later impaired you? Do you remember when you understood for the first
time, in a throb of love, what Love is? Which is the mystery of our
Being and Proceeding?” And what the limited capability of a man in
grace cannot reach, the Spirit of science clarifies and teaches.
But to possess the Spirit, Grace is
needed. To possess Truth and Science, Grace is required. To possess
the Father, Grace is necessary. Grace is a tent in which the three
Persons dwell, it is a Propitiatory on which the Eternal Father rests
and speaks, not from within a cloud, but revealing His face to His
faithful children. Saints and just people remember God. They remember
the words they heard in the Creating Mind and which the Supreme
Goodness revives in their hearts to raise them like eagles to the
contemplation of the Truth and to the knowledge of Time.
Mary was full of Grace. The whole One
and Trine Grace was in Her. The whole One and Trine Grace prepared
Her like a Bride for the Wedding, like a Nuptial Bed for the
Offspring, like a Divine Person for Her Maternity and mission. She
closes the cycle of the Prophetesses of the Old Testament and opens
the period of the “spokesmen of God” of the New Testament.
True Ark of the Word of God, looking
into Her immaculate heart, She discovered the words of eternal
knowledge, which the finger of God had written there, and She
remembered, as all saints do, that She had already heard them when
Her immortal soul was being created by God Father, the Creator of all
living beings... And if She did not remember everything of Her future
mission, the reason is that God leaves some gaps in every human
perfection, according to a Law of divine prudence, out of goodness
and as a reward to creatures.
Mary, the second Eve, had to achieve
Her part of merit in being the Mother of Christ, with a faithful good
will, that God exacted also from His Christ to make Him a Redeemer.
The spirit of Mary was in Heaven. Her
morale and Her body were on the earth and they had to tread on the
earth and on the flesh to reach the spirit and join it to the Spirit
in a fruitful embrace. »
---------------------
A note of mine. All day yesterday I
thought I was going to see the news of the death of Her parents being
given to Mary by Zacharias, I do not know why. I also thought, in my
way, that Jesus would have dealt with the point « remembrance of God
by the saints ». This morning, when the vision started, I said to
myself: « Here we are, they will now tell Her that She is an orphan
» and my heart was already trembling because I would have
experienced my own sadness of these past days. Instead there has been
absolutely nothing of what I thought I was going to see or hear. Not
even one word by mistake. I am very happy about this because it
confirms that there is nothing of my own in this work, not even an
honest suggestion with regard to one situation. It all comes from a
different source. My continuous fear ceases... until the next time
because I shall always be afraid of being deceived and deceiving.
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