The Notebooks 1944 by Maria Valtorta.
January 15, 1944.
Jesus says:
“Once I had you see the Monster of the abyss.66 Today I shall speak to you about his kingdom. I can’t always keep you in Paradise. Remember that your mission is to recall certain truths for your brothers and sisters who have forgotten them excessively. And from this forgetfulness, which is really disdain for eternal truths, many evils come to men.
“Write down this painful page, then. Afterwards you will be comforted. It is the night of Friday. Write while looking at your Jesus, who died on the cross amidst such torments that they are comparable to those of hell and who wanted that death to save men from Death.
“The men of this time no longer believe in the existence of Hell. They have invented an afterlife according to their taste, such as to be less terrorizing for their conscience, deserving of great punishment. More or less faithful disciples of the Spirit of Evil, they know that their conscience would draw back from certain misdeeds if it really believed in Hell just the way Faith teaches that it is; they know that their conscience, after committing the misdeed, would turn back upon itself and find repentance in remorse and, with repentance, the way to return to Me.
“Their malice, instructed by Satan, whose servants or slaves they are (according to their degree of adherence to the desires and suggestions of the Evil One), does not want these acts of withdrawal and turning back upon themselves. It thus cancels out faith in Hell as it really is and manufactures another one - if it goes so far as to manufacture it - which is nothing but a pause to make a dash for other, future elevations.
“It pushes this opinion to the point of believing sacrilegiously that the greatest of all the sinners of mankind, the favorite son of Satan, the one who was a thief, as stated in the Gospel,67 who was lascivious and anxious for human glory, as I state, the Iscariot, who through the hunger of the threefold concupiscence became a merchant of the Son of God and for thirty coins and with the sign of a kiss - a ridiculous monetary value and an infinite emotional value - placed me in the hands of the executioners,68 can be redeemed and arrive at Me by passing through successive stages.
“No. If he was the sacrilegious one par excellence, I am not. If he was the unjust one par excellence, I am not. If he was the one who shed my Blood with disdain, I am not. And to forgive Judas would be sacrilege for my Divinity, betrayed by him; it would be injustice towards all other men, who are always less blameworthy than he and are still punished for their sins; it would be disdain for my Blood; finally, it would be to neglect my laws.
“I said69 - I, the Triune God - that what is destined for Hell endures in it for eternity, for people do not emerge from that death to a new resurrection. I said that fire is eternal and that all the scandalous and workers of iniquity shall be gathered together in it. And do not think, either, that this will be until the moment of the end of the world. No, because, on the contrary, after the tremendous review, that dwelling of weeping and torment will become even more atrocious, since what is still granted to its lodgers for their amusement - to be able to harm the living and to see new damned ones plummeting into the abyss - will no longer exist, and the gate of Satan’s iniquitous kingdom shall be riveted shut, bolted by my angels, forever, forever, forever - a forever whose number of years has no number and compared to which the grains of sand of all the earth’s oceans, if they were to become years, would be less than a day of this immeasurable eternity of mine, made of light and glory on high for the blessed, made of darkness and horror in the depths for the accursed.
“I told you70 that Purgatory is a fire of love. Hell is a fire of severity.
“Purgatory is a place where, while thinking of God, whose Essence has shone for you in the instant of the private judgment and has filled you with a wish to possess it, you expiate the acts involving a lack of love for the Lord your God. Through love you conquer Love, and, by degrees of increasingly inflamed charity, you wash your robe until making it white and glistening to enter into the kingdom of Light, whose splendors I showed you a few days ago.71
“Hell is a place where the thought of God, the memory of God, glimpsed in the private judgment, is not, as for those being purged, a holy desire, a grieved, but hope-filled longing, a hope full of tranquil expectation, of secure peace which shall reach perfection when it becomes the conquest of God, but which already gives the spirits being purged a cheerful activity in purgation because every affliction, every instant of affliction, draws them closer to God, their love; but it is remorse, anger, damnation, and hatred. Hatred for Satan, hatred for men, hatred for themselves.
“After having adored Satan in life, in place of Me, now that they possess him and see his true appearance, no longer hidden behind the bewitching smile of flesh, behind the shining brightness of gold, behind the powerful sign of supremacy, they hate him since he is the cause of their torment.
“After - forgetting their dignity as children of God - having adored men to the point of becoming killers, thieves, swindlers, and merchants of filth for their sake, now that they re-encounter their bosses, for whom they have killed, robbed, deceived, and sold their honor and the honor of so many unfortunate, weak, defenseless creatures, making them an instrument for the vice which beasts are not familiar with - for lust, the attribute of man poisoned by Satan - now they hate them since they are the cause of their torment.
“After having adored themselves, giving flesh, blood, and the seven appetites of their flesh and their blood all satisfactions, trampling on the Law of God and the law of morality, now they hate themselves since they see themselves to be the cause of their torment.
“The word ‘Hatred’ covers that boundless kingdom; it roars in those flames; it howls in the cackling laughter of the demons; it sobs and barks in the laments of the damned; it rings and rings and rings like an eternal hammering bell; it blares like an eternal bugle of death; it fills the recesses of that jail with itself; it is in itself torment because, with each of its sounds, it renews the memory of Love lost forever, remorse over having wanted to lose it, and rage over never being able to see it again.
“The dead soul, in the midst of those flames, like the bodies thrown onto pyres or into a crematory furnace, twists and shrieks, as if animated again by living movement and reawakens to understand its error, and dies and is reborn in every instant with atrocious sufferings, for remorse kills it in a curse, and killing brings it back to life again for a new torment. The whole crime of having betrayed God in time stands before the soul in eternity; the whole error of having refused God in time remains present for it forever for its torment.
“In the fire the flames simulate the specters of what they adored in life; the passions are painted with burning brushstrokes with the most appealing appearance, and they shriek and shriek their memento: ‘You wanted the fire of the passions. Now receive the fire set aflame by God, whose holy Fire you derided.’
“Fire responds to fire. In Paradise it is the fire of perfect love. In Purgatory it is the fire of purifying love. In Hell it is the fire of offended love. Since the elect loved to perfection, Love gives itself to them in its Perfection. Since those being purged loved in lukewarm fashion, Love becomes a flame to take them to Perfection. Since the accursed burned with all fires - except with the Fire of God - the Fire of God’s wrath burns them eternally. And in the fire there is ice.
“Oh, you cannot imagine what Hell is! Take everything that is man’s torment on earth - fire, flame, ice, submerging waters, hunger, sleeplessness, thirst, wounds, illnesses, sores, and death - sum it up into a single amount and multiply it millions of times. You will have only a shadow of that tremendous truth.
“Sidereal cold will be mixed with the unbearable burning. The damned burned with all human fires, having only spiritual iciness for their Lord God. And ice awaits them to freeze them after fire has salted them like fish set upon a flame to roast. A torment in the torment is this passing from the burning which dissolves to the cold which condenses.
“Oh, this is not metaphorical language! For God can make souls, burdened by the sins committed, have a sensitivity equal to that of flesh, even before they take on that flesh. You not know and do not believe. But in truth I tell you that it would be better for you to undergo all the torments of my martyrs rather than one hour of those infernal tortures.
“Darkness will be the third torment. Material darkness and spiritual darkness. To be in darkness forever after having seen the light of paradise and to be in the embrace of Darkness after having seen the Light that is God! To writhe in that dark horror where, in the glare of the burnt spirit, there is illuminated only the name of the sin for which they are nailed to that horror! To find no other support in that continuous agitation of spirits hating and harming each other but the desperation making them crazed and increasingly accursed. To feed on it, base themselves on it, and kill themselves with it. It is said that death will nourish death.72 Despair is death and shall nourish these dead ones in eternity.
“Even I, who created that place, tell you that when I descended into it to bring out of Limbo those who awaited my coming, I, God, experienced horror at that horror; and if something made by God were not immutable, on account of being perfect, I would have wanted to make it less atrocious, for I am Love, and I was pained by that horror.
“And you want to go there.
“Meditate, O children, on these words of mine. The sick are given bitter medicine; the diseased areas of cancer patients are cauterized and cut out. For you, sick and suffering from cancer, this is a surgeon’s medicine and cauterization. Do not refuse it. Use it to heal yourselves. The duration of life is not these few days on earth. Life begins when it seems to you to be ending, and it no longer has an end.
“Have it flow on for you in the place where God’s light and joy make eternity beautiful and not where Satan is the eternal Torturer.”
Consolation from St. John
John says:
“I will be the comfort, little sister.
“Yesterday morning you complained a bit to our Good Jesus. It seemed to you that He was placing you after the last person who set to work,73 the victim immolated at once, while you, that have been on the altar for years and were the first to pronounce the prayer given by the Master,74 never see your sacrifice being consummated.
“You are my sister, Maria. I was the first disciple of Jesus. I was the one who was more like Him than all the others. I made his words, his affections, and his desires my own. I had the same longing as He did to die in order to redeem. And I saw the others go to God before me. Even Paul, the apostle who was a late-comer, preceded me. And Stephen was the first to fall - the one who came after the Master. And I remained.
“I experienced the pain of separation from the Master, the longing of expectation, persecutions, martyrdom, and exile. But not the swift consummation of the sacrifice. I, who was hungry for my Jesus, had to watch the years go by until the most advanced old age before being able to reach Him.
“And what of it? Was my martyrdom of love and desire less of a martyrdom than that of the others? Or less fruitful? No, little sister. There are some who are received immediately and others who ‘must remain as long as He wants them to remain,’75 for their task is to be God’s voice for their brothers and sisters.
“But, sister in Christ’s love, believe that your wait is Jesus’ predilection. He leaves you because you are his little John,76 and you must preach love to your brothers and sisters with the words the Master gives you. It is the sweetest mission.
“Peace be with you always.”
66 See the entry for July 18 in The Notebooks 1943.
67 John 12:4-6.
68 Matthew 26:14-16,47-50; Mark 14:10-11,43-46; Luke 22:3-6,47-48; John 18:1-3.
69 See January 7.
70 See the entries for October 17 and 21, in The Notebooks. 1943.
71 On January 10.
72 Though not expressed literally, this notion is often found in the Bible, especially in Revelation.
73 Matthew 20:1-16.
74 Matthew 26:39-44; Mark 14:35-39; Luke 22:41-42.
75 John 21:23.
76 Throughout the volume the writer is often called “little John,” since, in both spirituality and mission, she is compared to the great John, Apostle and Evangelist. See the entries for February 8, March 6, June 15, and October 20. Readers should also note that the masculine pronoun is sometimes used when referring to her as the “spokesman.”
