Jesus says:
“Last night your cousin120 was amazed and grieved because while you write your sufferings do not cease.
“Why should they cease? Missions are always painful for human nature. The flesh suffers in serving God. But the more it suffers, the more the work of the spirit becomes fruitful.
“When did I fulfill my mission to the greatest degree? In the hours of greatest suffering. And I did not then have the good which you have, for in those hours I was abandoned by the Father. You, however, are not abandoned by Me.
“Isn’t this more than enough to pay back the suffering of a handful of ashes, which your flesh is? It certainly is. It would be enough to feel Me near. But I have granted you not only my nearness, but my caress, the sight of Me, and my word.
“The cross, when borne that way, is no longer a cross for the soul. It remains such for the flesh and blood. But you have given them to Me in a complete offering, and it is good that they should be consumed, for in sacrifice their sins are canceled out, concerning which - you are convinced - it is unnecessary for Me to speak to you so as to remind you of them. But you have given them to Me for yourself and for ‘many things.’ Let them thus carry the cross of complete suffering, for it is right that this should happen.
“Do you know what you are doing by writing? My Will. The will for the mission I want you to perform. Even if a single soul, one alone, were to find the way, through this effort of yours, willed by Me, the exertion, which to human sight seems inhuman, would be justified.
“Struggling against the anguish of agony, I fulfilled my mission as Master and Redeemer to the very end. Remember Caiaphas, Pilate, the women of Jerusalem, and Disma. To the very end, to the very end I comforted, taught, and saved. And I alone know what my suffering was like! Yours is nothing, by comparison.
“No disciple is greater than his Master, in any respect, and if your Master suffered so much to redeem men, do you, that are following in your Master’s footsteps, want to suffer less?
“Besides, I know the extent to which I should be hard on you. And if I am very hard, it is a sign that I am giving you the capacity to endure the increased burden and that there is an infinite need for suffering because of the terrible hour which is upon you. The suffering of holocausts is what prevents not material ruin, but spiritual ruin, which, like a cloud laden with mist, is about to blind spirits and lead them to ruin - materially and increasingly - what still remains safe.”
Continuing to respond to a complaint by me over the painful prospects about which He is enlightening me (concerning our future), He later says:
“But, Maria, it is not granted to the little friends of Jesus to escape affliction.
“Your poor Jesus, when He was in his Passion, received his sole comfort from the presence of his Mother. Mary did not miss a single moan by Me; not a single tear of mine escaped Her, not one wrinkling of my epidermis, not one start of my muscles, one contraction of my face, one sob, one death rattle. They were so many lance thrusts for her heart as a Mother, but She did not escape from them, for She knew that her presence was the only comfort for her Jesus.
“The little Maria must not be different from the great Mary. Even now I suffer; I suffer so much in the face of human obduracy. I repeat121: I would come again to die to save you, O men who fall into the abyss of a thousand sins. I suffer so... I cannot silence my pain. And to speak of it means to lead anyone listening to Me to the vision of a very sad future.
“But it is so sweet to weep together. Don’t take your shoulder away from Me so that there I can rest my Head, into which Mankind rivets crowns of thorns. The same thorns will prick you as well. But consider: our weeping and our blood will be offered together to attempt to arrest the punishment.
“There is need for this, Mary. Other things leave what they find and join new powers of evil to you. But sacrifice saves. If many sacrificial souls were to emerge from the earth, which has become hell...!
“I do not repeat because of a lack of themes; I repeat because in these words is the key to salvation.”
Believe me, Father,122 I am suffering a lot. The insights which come to me are more of a torture for my physical malady and increase it. I confess that, in human terms, I would like to escape from them by death. But, as you see, this, too, falls within the field of pain which God has sown for me and which I must take and eat as my life’s bread.
And so - onward. I am amidst the thorns of every kind, for the good Jesus reveals to me horizons of blood and fire, and Lucifer tries to upset me by pointing out to me that I shall soon be left alone (without the Master) and that He is already tired of me. I let him talk, but of course I suffer.
It’s a good thing that the invisible Presence remains intense, and this gives me everything in my nothingness.
120 Giuseppe Belfanti, cousin of the writer’s mother. Because of the war, he moved from Reggio Calabria to Viareggio with his family and stayed with the writer from July 1943 until November 1944.
121 As in the dictation of April 23.
122 Father Migliorini.