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Isaiah 38:5, 7,15,16,17,18,19
Jesus says:
“You men, when you recover health after a life-threatening illness, think only - when you think of it at all - of thanking Me for the recovery of your physical health. You never reflect that I have given you that trial to make you reflect that an end awaits you beyond which there is a beginning, just as the sun, when setting in the evening, at its low point signals that the cycle is beginning whereby a new dawn will come. But your dawn in the hereafter is not the beginning of a day lasting a few hours. It is the beginning of an eternal day.
“Illness seeks to make you reflect on this, and you should direct your recovered health towards this end. To make provision for giving what does not die a day of peace.
“If you were able to reflect on this, how many quarries hell would lose! But you usually make poor use of the health I grant you and the years I add to your existence for this purpose. In illness you become impatient, get discouraged, and often cease to pray, saying, ‘It is useless for me to do so. It was God who sent it to me, anyway, and what’s the use of asking Him to take it away from me?’ Once healed, you haven’t a thought for Him who has restored you to health. By your inconsistency and disrespectful ingratitude you blame God for sending you illnesses, but you do not give Him credit for removing them.
“If you think He dispenses evil, why don’t you think He ought to dispense good? It is, rather, the opposite, children. Ninety-nine percent of evil, of whatever kind, originates in yourselves, and good has a single source: God. God, who inspires and illuminates those who look after you; God, who lengthens your days to give time for medicines to act and increases resistance to give the body the chance to react; God, who by an instant will can make you rise up, healed, surpassing all hope and aside from all other assistance, for the sake of an inscrutable motive of his.
“But before being elated at the joy of being healed, you ought to rejoice over the chance God gives you to make amends for the errors preceding the illness and work to deserve the life which does not die.
“I work to free your souls from perdition and with my love cancel out your sins, ever hoping in you. And you - what do you do? Return love for the love you receive and ‘alive.’
“To be ‘alive’ does not mean to belong to this world: it means to be in the Lord. It means to possess Grace and to have a right to Heaven. Those who breathe, eat, and sleep with their souls dead are not alive: they are sloughs already putrefying, close to falling, like a rotten fig on the branch, into the pit whose bottom is hell. Those who, even if agonizing in the flesh, possess ‘Life’ are alive, and, indeed, in the measure in which earthly vitality ceases, ‘true Life’ approaches and grows in them. Those who, as they expire, already arpeggio the praises which they will eternally sing to the Lord and, as the darkness descends on their pupils see the face of the Father ever more clearly with the eyes of their spirits are alive.
“Those who, when healed of a human illness, feel rescued by their Lord and dedicate every movement of theirs to Him are alive.
“Those who know the Truth and above all human joys and human wealth want this Joy and this Wealth - the Truth - are alive. And throughout their days they devote themselves to possessing it, for the knowledge of it has placed in them the holy thirst for conquering it.”
The Same Day, November 21 (Later On)
Jesus says:
“This, Maria, is for you. And for the souls in love, as you are.
“Luke, when narrating the banquet in the house of Simon, tells of what the redeemed woman in love used to show Me her love. Tears, hair, perfume.
“Simon was scandalized because she was touching Me. But one who was a scandal and spattered his murky interior over everything he saw could be scandalized. A pure one saw nothing capable of scandalizing.
“Not the water, but the tears, drops of the heart, a humor not polluted by impure germs, but filtered by love and repentance, made worthy of God and judged to be precious by God because they were the sign of a spirit that had understood the Truth. Not the linen, but the hair, living silk, which woman turns into seduction and a cult for herself and which the one regenerated by Grace humbled to become a towel for the soles of her Savior’s feet. The perfume: one of the instruments taught by Satan to woman, which the woman who had returned to God destroyed to make it a balm for her Lord.
“I saw and remained silent, and not one of those warm, contrite tears, not one of those caresses by locks - which did not put the already impure flesh into contact with the Flesh which had known no stain, but placed a veil between the former and the latter which could not be disdained by God - and not one of those drops of lavender - less, much less scented than the love of the one sprinkling them - passed uncounted. And each one - for each was a profession of love and a confession of error - received forgiveness and blessing.
“And while the disdainful wonder of the Pharisee - who I would have had a great deal to reproach for - mortified the repentant woman with the words of a scandalized and insincere reflection for this voluntary, courageous, and humble profession by her of repentance and love, I was giving her complete absolution of the entire past.
“I was washed by her weeping. Her darkness was overcome by the Light of love, and her coldness was overcome. Mary was the beloved one because of her generosity and trust. Her heart had been for her an instrument for evil, but in her heart itself she had found the way of Goodness. And the heart had been her teacher to conquer a place in Life and in the Master’s Heart.
“I loved her greatly because she loved greatly; she loved Me greatly because I forgave her for everything. Everything, Maria. I forgive those who love Me with their whole self for everything.”