Jesus says:
“Today I want to talk about a sentence spoken by Me on the cross. It may seem to be a break at variance with the topic I am speaking to you about in these days. But it is not.
“Everything I am saying refers to the gem which is in you: the spirit. For the spirit is the lord of your being. You often turn it into a slave, but that is a sin you will answer for. The fact that you oppress and kill it does not change its characteristic as lord of your being.
“I want to call your attention to a sentence spoken by Me on the Cross. You, too, are on the cross, Maria. And your now customary cross has at this time become heavier and harsher with the present pain consuming your flesh and blood and oppressing you to the point of breaking your morale. If it were only because of death, you would suffer less. But to the pain of the death of your mother there is joined the other pain over the way your mother left you, without a word. You’ve got a lump of tears in your heart because of your unfulfilled hunger for caresses, which has accompanied you throughout your life as a daughter and will accompany you throughout your life as an orphan.
“Give Me this sacrifice, too. There are so many motherless children. Motherless, because their mother does not love them and also because their mother has rejected them.
“Do you think that the children of sin, when they emerge from the mists of childhood and begin to reflect, do not suffer over this condition of theirs? Human charity gives them bread and a roof - oh, not much more! - and often less than what is given to a stray puppy or an abandoned animal. But if the puppy and the animal are happy just to have food, shelter, and a caress, the children of woman whom woman has repudiated because they represent for her a witness to her sin have a mentality superior to that of the puppy and the animal; they have a soul that suffers and that, in their suffering as illegitimate children dispersed outside the nest where they were born, cast out of the nest, may make them become unjust and wicked. Unjust to Me and wicked to men, to the fellow beings of those who have generated them to condemn them to a shameful fate.
“Only I, I that am the One for whom no tear of man escapes and not even the need of the hungry sparrow goes unobserved. Only I know the tears and acts of rebellion of these poor creatures of mine, who have not had even that minimum of a family which is constituted by the memory of deceased parents. And my Love gathers in the tears, and my Mercy takes pity on the acts of rebellion. Justice is not severe to these poor children generated to tears and shame, but goes with a severe countenance to judge those who have generated them for such a fate.
“But it is not this that I want to talk to you about. I therefore ask you only for your suffering as a daughter who has not experienced the comfort of her mother’s farewell. You have Me as few do. They are unable to see Me and hear Me; I would otherwise be with everyone as I am with you. Give Me your pain as a daughter so that they will feel that they have a Father, that they are not spurious, that there is someone who loves them. And He loves them as no parent on earth is able or knows how to love. One must be able to apply one’s individual pain to relieving the pains of others. And you, that are familiar with the bitterness of certain situations, the desolation of the heart, and the comfort which comes only from God, suffer with good will to prevent this despair, which is one of the bitterest, most desolate, and most dangerous forms of despair.
“And now let us talk about the sentence spoken by Me on the cross.
“If in the words of Wisdom there is not one which is useless in regard to the spirit, what must the case be with the words spoken by Me, Divine Wisdom? On the cross I completed my mission as Redeemer, but also as Master.
“I taught you forgiveness by forgiving those who killed Me and those who offended Me as God and as a dying person. I taught you to have faith in the Mercy granted to whoever repents by promising Paradise to Disma. I taught you who to go to so as not to feel alone: to Mary, who is your Mother. I taught you to ask humbly and suffer bodily needs as well patiently by asking for a sip for my lips. I taught you not to complain if that sip is vinegar and bile - vinegar and bile, Maria, which are given not only to the lips, but often to the heart which asks to love and receives rejection and offenses. Remember that your Jesus’ Heart was saturated with this most bitter, truer mixture.
“I taught you who to invoke in the hours when pain rushes upon you and it seems to you that everyone, including God, has abandoned you. Because of the needs of Redemption, I was really abandoned by the Father, but I invoked Him just the same. One must act like this, O children, in the hours of trial and pain. Even if God seems to you to be distant, call to Him for help just the same. Always give Him filial love. He will give you his gifts. They may not be the ones you were requesting. They will be others even more useful to you. Trust your Lord and Father. He loves you and provides for you. Always believe this. God rewards those who believe in his Goodness.
“But before pronouncing the final word, in which to the joy of having conquered Life for you was joined the distressing pain of that death, I uttered the sentence I want to talk to you about: ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’
“Do you see, O dear children, what value the spirit has? My final thought turns to it, to commend it into the hands of the Father. The immeasurable value of our living as men is the spirit; I say ‘our,’ for the one who was dying on the cross was true Man as well as true God, like you, therefore, in humanity. My last request turns to this spirit of mine about to be freed from the flesh to return to the Origin it had come from.
“The spirit of the Christ had no need of divine mercy. It was the divine, innocent spirit of the Son of the Father and of the Immaculate One. But I wanted to teach you that one single thing is valuable in life and valuable after life: the spirit. must receive all your care during existence and your prudence in the hour of death.
“All you possess on earth is something that dies with the flesh. Nothing follows you into the other life. But the spirit remains. The spirit precedes you. is that which presents itself to the Judge and receives the first sentence. It is that which will draw to itself the flesh in the hour of the last Judgment and will make it alive again to hear the decree which will render it blessed with that spirit or accursed with that spirit. The flesh will undergo centuries or seconds of death before its resurrection, but the spirit undergoes only one death and does not rise again from it.
“Woe to those dead spirits that will infuse death into the flesh they inhabited! The ‘second death,’ which knows no resurrection and which is the one that you must fear for this body which you love more than the spirit, O foolish men who overturn the values of things.
“Try to have mercy on yourselves, not from a human, but a supernatural standpoint. Mercy on what does not die like flesh, but which can die only as spirit by losing the Light of God here below and the vision and possession of God in my heaven.
“Try. And since you are weak on account of the flesh, which tempts you, caught as it is in the seduction of Satan, in life and death entrust your spirits to the Powerful, Holy, and Merciful God.
“When I taught you to say, ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,’ wasn’t I already teaching you to entrust your spirits to the Father, who created you and does not repudiate his paternity as you, on the other hand, repudiate your status as sons and daughters?
“Satan can do little harm on earth to the spirit that entrusts itself to God; the terrors which the Beast arouses as a final revenge will be spared the spirit that invokes God in its agony; God will open his Heart to the spirit expiring in God, and from death it will pass into eternal, holy, blessed life.”