The Notebooks 1944 by Maria Valtorta.
January 11, 1944.
12:15 a.m.
John says:
“Instructed as I was, penetrated by and made one with the Master, in my Gospel there lives the Word just as it was spoken, for, on account of my union, I was able to repeat it without modifications. It is Christ who speaks. John is nothing but the instrument who writes. Just like you.
“Ours is a great destiny, to which one must be faithful even in the smallest details so as not to contaminate divine doctrine with ourselves as creatures, and for the sake of this destiny we must lead a chaste life so that the Word may descend where there is nothing impure, not even the shadow of a thought.
“To receive the Word of God is like receiving the Bread of Heaven. He is the Bread of Heaven who becomes a Word for us so as to become Bread in the spirits of our brothers and sisters. He is the Eucharist of the Word, no less holy than the Eucharist of the altar, for, on coming into us, the Eucharistic Christ brings us his Word, which is heard more or less clearly to the extent that the life of the spirit is in us, and, on coming into us, Christ the Master brings us his nourishment, which renders us increasingly capable of making the Eucharist the Food of eternal life.
“He, my Master and yours, said so: ‘Blessed are those who keep the Word of God in their hearts.’ And He also said, ‘Whoever listens to my Word has eternal life,’ and ‘I am the living Bread descending from Heaven. Whoever feeds on Me will not die, and I will raise him up on the last day.’41 The Master, then, gives a single destiny to whoever feeds on Him - the Word of the Father and the Bread of Heaven.
“But I am not speaking so much to you for your sake, disciple who are in the light. I - a light of Christ, of Christ, the Light of the world - am speaking to the ones in darkness, who, like those with scales over their pupils, go groping in the dark and are unable to get onto the path where the Master is passing by; they don’t want to get onto it and cry out, ‘Jesus, save us! Give us your Light!’
“If they called Him, He would come to them; He would stay in them and give them the blessed destiny of becoming children of God, born a second time - the only time people can be reborn, not in the flesh, which, when lifeless, will never again clothe the spirit that has had it as a robe, except on the last day, when the spirit will go with it to glory or damnation, but in the spirit, which is regenerated by becoming inserted into Christ, for Christ, on possessing it in Himself, as part of his most holy Being, joins it to the Spirit of God, who is the One who enables us to be reborn, no longer as men, but as children of God - and they would know the Light and separate themselves from Darkness and Deceit, for Christ is Truth and Christ is Light, and the Paraclete, whom Christ gives to those who are ‘his,’ is Light and Truth, and whoever has Christ has the Truth and the Light of the Triune Divinity in himself.
“Leave the eternal Killer, who perished and leads others to perish, for he did not persevere in the truth which, in his fortunate angelic destiny, he had possessed from the first instant of his creation. Believe in Christ, who cannot lie, for He is God and has God’s Perfection.
“He tells you over and over again: ‘I will raise you up.’ Could He say an improper word - He, Perfect in Knowledge and Intelligence? He says, ‘I will raise you up’; He does not say, ‘I will reincarnate you.’ And He specifies ‘on the last day’ and further states, ‘As the Father raises the dead and restores them to life, so, too, the Son gives life to whoever He wills.... Whoever listens to my word and believes in the One who sent me has eternal life and does not undergo condemnation, but passes from death to life.... The time is coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and whoever has heard it will live. The time is coming when all those in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God and come out - those who did good, to the resurrection of life; those who did evil, to the resurrection of death.’42
“Therefore, He who is Truth and Knowledge states, repeats, insists, and swears regarding one life, one alone, of the flesh, and one life, one alone, of the spirit. This life is led in our one day as man and then, only on the last day, at the command of the God Jesus, the flesh rises again to clothe the spirit whose robe it was. This eternal life is obtained only by means of our one day, and if during it we have slain the spirit once, never again can it become reincarnated to pass from death to life through successive stages.
“No. The power of God the Father, of God the Son, Jesus, and of God the Spirit Paraclete can give you the resurrection of the spirit on earth through a miracle of grace, or through the intercession of a ‘saint,’ on earth or in Heaven, or through your desire to rise again as well. But this happens here, on Earth, in your one day. Once dusk has come for you and you have entered into the sleep of the human night, there is no longer a possible resurrection through new stages of life. If you are among the spiritually dead, there is only death.
“I, a disciple of Christ, I, who have seen the future life beyond life and the final resurrection, swear to you that this is true.
“Get free from these chains. They are the most dangerous ones which Satan hurls at you. Take the first step to say to Christ, ‘I am coming to You,’ and to Satan, ‘Back, in the name of Jesus.’ Receive the first truth.
“You cannot know how sweet the Lord is - the good Master, the holy Shepherd - to those turning to Him. Like a father, He clasps you to his heart and instructs you, cares for you, and feeds you. Do not say that you love Him. You do not love Him in truth and therefore do not love Him.
“The truth is in his Gospel. The Gospel is the one spoken by Him to his disciples and the one He continues to confirm and explain, through his benignity as the Savior. Always the same after so many centuries. There is no other.
“If there were a second life, or several others, He would have said so. are not Parsees or Shintoists - you are ‘Christians.’ Abandon, then, the chimeras, errors, and deceits which Satan prompts to wrest you away from God and believe in what Christ has said.
“Whoever loves believes. Whoever loves little doubts. Whoever does not love accepts a contrary doctrine. The doctrine you follow is contrary to that of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, our Master, the Light of the world. You do not, then, love Christ in truth.”
Mary’s Recollection of Meeting St. Joseph: Praise of Joseph’s Angelic Purity
The Same Day, January 11, 7 a.m.
Mary says:
“The longing of my spirit was to remain as a virgin in the Temple throughout my life, to praise the Lord and pray that Emmanuel would be granted to those who for centuries had been awaiting his coming with Grace.
“Therefore, when the High Priest expressed to me his desire to arrange for my marriage, my interior experienced its first disturbance. The second involved the angel’s announcement.43
“I experienced a moment of bewilderment, of prostration, for, Maria, it seemed to me that the Lord was refusing my offer as a virgin, not finding it to be worthy of his Perfection. I examined myself to discover where I had displeased my Lord, for I of course lacked even a trace of the thought that Divine Justice might have been unjust. But in the humble examination of myself I found the answer and peace.
“The Spirit told me, with his luminous voice of love, that this priestly wish, reflecting the will of God, was not a demotion in the eyes of God, but an advancement in the degrees of the spirit and that, as the will of God, simply accepting it with prompt obedience would bring me blessings and merits and a more intense bond to my holy Lord God.
“Then with cheerful obedience I said to God, through his priest, ‘Here I am, O Lord, to do your will and not mine.’ The words of my Son44 flourished many years before on the lips and in the heart of his Mother.
“In exchange for my obedience, I asked only that God grant his servant the kind of husband who would not represent a perturbing violence for my virginity, sacred to the Lord, or a scornful mockery, but a respectful, holy companion in whose heart the fear and love of God would be a light to comprehend the soul of his Wife. I asked for nothing else. Attractiveness, youth, social position, and wealth were so negligible for me that they did not warrant even a fleeting thought. I asked for the ‘sanctity’ of my future husband. And did not concern myself about anything else.
“The first condition - excessively overlooked in your present marriages - is to turn to God to ask for a mate in keeping with your character and your position and, above all, a companion who is ‘just’ in his sight. You don’t ask God for anything in this decisive hour of a woman’s life and do not look at either your spirit or that of your mate. It is enough for you that he should be handsome, rich, and influential in the world. Everything else has no weight when it is time to choose. But, unfortunately, it takes on full weight after marriage, and many marriages are a disappointment limited to being such only if the wife is a woman with Christian sentiments. If even these are lacking in her, the marriage becomes a disaster whose expiatory victims are the innocent and often ends in double adultery. You place your souls at risk and frequently lead them to death because you consider only human ends in marriage and do not turn to the Father in Heaven in that solemn hour.
“When I saw Joseph, all my natural anxiety fell like a cloud dissolving into a rainbow. It was enough for me to look into his eyes to read in them that he was an honest, faithful, pure, just man. His age, more than twice my own, had left him with the clear gaze of a child, for Evil had risen up around him as he lived in the world, but had been unable to penetrate into his heart, filled with the love of God.
“With what trust I placed my hand in his, sensing that I had found in him a loving father, a faithful spouse, and a chaste companion who would be like olive and fig trees shading a small house and defending it from winds and the heat, providing the refreshment and comfort of sweetness and nourishment!
“My sweet spouse who did not disappoint me! Who, since he really loved me, believed in me, even going against appearances;45 who concealed his tears from me so as not to disturb me; who had only smiles and help for me; who guided me as his first putative daughter, holding my hand to make me feel he was close by with his love, avoiding obstacles for me, and anticipating my needs - patient, silent, and chaste, chaste as only an angel can be.
“Oh, yes! Blessed be the Lord for this! I, whom the Eternal had destined to be the Queen of his angels, had two angels as my subjects, beginning on earth: my Guardian Angel, whose invisible presence I felt stirring at my side continually, with flashes of light and heavenly perfume, and my angelic consort, whose flesh, not darkened by the desire of blood, lived close to mine - like that of two lilies blossoming in the same flowerbed scenting each other and blooming for the Lord, each an example for the other in rising ever higher, towards God, in perfuming more intensely out of charity for God and one’s companion, but never joining their flowering mouths in a kiss which would sully with pollen the angelic silk of their robes of purity.
“My holy and blessed Joseph! My heart does not cease to thank its Lord for having given him to me as a consort, for as a holy Father He provided for his Servant and created this living defense for my virginity, drawn out of the Temple, and the world’s breath thus broke against Joseph, so that the din and stench of human baseness did not penetrate where the eternal Virgin continued to praise the Lord as if she were assigned to the service of the altar, beyond the Holy of Holies, where the glory of the Eternal God was shining.”
This morning my awakening was blessed. I had written from midnight until 2 a.m. Continuing to remain under the light of the golden Dove and in Mary’s embrace, for the vision,46 which had become obscured during the day, presented itself again last night in all its magnificence before sleep set in, and then returned in its initial stages, as it abided without interruption from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., with the Holy Spirit and Mary.47 After writing, I lay back, while praying, and towards morning fell asleep, in spite of the sharp pains shaking me out of slumber at every instant.
The last time they woke me up, the clock was striking 6 a.m. Together with the piercing pain of that agony, I felt a light kiss on my brow and heard the sweet voice of Mary, unmistakable, saying to me with all its softness, “May the Lord’s grace always be with you.” I replied at once, for I could not be wrong: “Blessed art thou among women.” And I cuddled up in the silence and warmth, feeling watched over by the Mother, who had given me the most beautiful “Good morning” that can be given.
I wanted to write this for you at once. But at 7:30 Mary began to speak about her marriage, and I wrote later. I shall now add some pages, for I am told that there is a dictation to be appended here which belongs to the series of the preceding ones.48
St. Paul Inveighs Against Reincarnation
Still January 11, 10 a.m.
The Apostle Paul says:49
“The ancient pagans for whom I broke the bread of the Faith seem to be alive still - indeed, to have returned, according to your belief, to be reincarnated with their ancient theories regarding the resurrection and the second life - to such an extent the theory of reincarnation is still incarnate - and now more than ever - and ingrown in your minds, after twenty centuries of preaching the Gospel.
“The only thing that is reincarnated is this theory of yours, which flourishes again like mold in alternating periods of spiritual obscurity. For -realize this, O you that think you are the most spiritually evolved - this is the sign of a spiritual decline and not of a dawn of the spirit. The lower the Sun of God is in your spirits; the more there are formed larvae in the rising shadow, and fevers stagnate, and the bearers of death swarm, and the spores that eat into, corrode, absorb, and destroy the life of your spirits germinate, as in hyperborean woods where the night lasts for six months and turns the thickets - filled with vegetable and animal life - into dead areas like those of a world without life.
“Fools! The dead do not come back. With any new body. There is just one resurrection: the last one.
“You are not - you that are made in the image and likeness of God - no, you are not seeds that in alternating cycles sprout and become stems, flowers, fruits, and seeds, and, starting from the seeds, stems, flowers, and fruit. You are men, not grass in the field. You are destined for Heaven, not to a horse’s stall. You possess the spirit of God, that spirit which God infuses into you through his continuous spiritual generation, which responds to human generation of new flesh.
“And what do you think? That God, our almighty, unlimited, eternal God, has a limit in his generating? A limit which dictates that He create a given number of spirits and no more, so that, to continue the life of men on earth, like a sales clerk in a department store, He has to go to the shelves and search among the spirits heaped up there for one to be reused for that specific merchandise; or, even better, do you think He is like a scribe who exhumes a certain document and looks for a given scroll because the time has come to record an event?
“O fools, fools, fools! You are not merchandise, parchment, or seeds. You are men.
“The body, like a seed, falls, when its cycle is over, into the corruption of the tomb. The spirit returns to its Source to be judged as to whether it is alive or as putrid as the flesh, and, in accordance with its state of being, it goes to its destiny. Nor does it emerge from that destiny any more except to call what was its own to a single resurrection, in which those who were putrid in life become perfectly putrid forever, with that corrupt spirit and that corrupt flesh which they had in their one, unrepeatable life; and those who were ‘just’ in life rise again, glorious and incorruptible, elevating their flesh to the glory of their glorious spirits, spiritualizing it, divinizing it, for through it and with it they have overcome, and it is right that they should triumph with it.
“Here you are rational animals because of the spirit you possess, which obtains life for the flesh it overcomes as well. In the other life you will be spirits vivifying the flesh which has obtained victory by remaining subject to the spirit. The animal nature always comes first. This is the true evolution. But it is single. Then, from animal nature, which has been able to lighten itself through threefold virtue, there comes spiritual nature.
“In accordance with the way you live in this life, such you will be in the second one. If what is heavenly has prevailed in you, you will know the nature of God in yourselves and possess this nature because God will be your eternal possession. If you have had a predominance of the earthly, beyond death you will know dullness, death, cold, horror, and darkness - all that is common to the body which is lowered into the grave, with this difference: the duration of this second, true death is eternal.
“As the heirs of God by God’s will, O brothers and sisters, do not allow yourselves to lose this inheritance by following flesh and blood and mental error.
“I, too, erred and was contrary to Truth; I was a persecutor of Christ. My sin is always before me, even in the glory of this kingdom, whose gates were opened to me by my repentance, my faith, and my martyrdom because I confessed Christ and immortal life. But when the Light cast me down, making itself known, I abandoned error to follow the Light.50
“The Light has made itself known to you by way of twenty centuries of prodigies, undeniable even for the fiercest deniers and the most obstinate. Why, then, do you fortunate ones who have twenty centuries of divine manifestations as witness to that Light wish to remain in error?
“I, a witness to Christ, swear this to you. Neither flesh nor blood can inherit the kingdom of God, but only the spirit can. And, as is stated in the Gospel of Jesus our Lord,51 the children of this age - understand, brothers and sisters, that here ‘age’ signifies those who are in the world, that is, those who are earthly - are not the ones destined to rise again and remarry, possessing a second earthly life. Only those who are worthy of the second age, the eternal one, will rise again - that is, those who will no longer be able to die, having already lived, but who, in having obtained spiritual life and having become like the angels and sons and daughters of the Most High, no longer hunger for human marriage, but with their spirits desire one union alone: union with God as Love; one possession alone: the possession of God; one dwelling alone: the heavenly one; and one life alone: life in Life.
“Amen, amen, amen!
“I say to you: Believe so as to obtain it.”
And St. Paul thus came as well. Good Heavens! What a hurricane! I am not surprised that he swept away even the Athenians, accustomed to their orators, by the forcefulness of his words! If John is a sigh of scented heavenly wind, Paul is a cyclone laden with all the elements capable of bending the proudest peaks.
I think the cycle is complete. And if this whole concert of notes does not penetrate into them ....52 I don’t know what else can penetrate. I had been wishing for one dictation on this subject for months and months. I waited. But I got seven, and if I were in the shoes of certain people, I would feel like a mouse in a trap or a bird in a net. The evidence would close in on me on all sides.
I did not expect that even St. Paul himself would speak.
Now my back is aching, and I am relaxing, gazing with my soul at the golden Divine Dove and sensing Mary at my side. Her words in the morning continue to sing in my heart.
41 Luke11:28; John 6:22-29
42 John 17-47
43 Luke 1:26-38.
44 Matthew 26:39-44; Mark 14:35-36; Luke 22:41-42.
45 Mattew 1:18-19
46 The day before, January 10.
47 The sentence is published just as it was written, though it may seem incomplete and not very clear.
48 The handwritten notebook would, in fact, have ended here if the writer had not added more pages (eight sides), which she sewed on with cotton thread; they contain the dictation which follows and her commentary.
49See Acts 17:22-34 and 1 Corinthians 15 in relation to this dictation.
50 Acts 9:1-22.
51 Matthew 22:23-33; Mark 12:18-27; Luke 20:27-40.
52 The writer omits reference to specific persons, inserting dots into the text. She is referring to one individual in particular (see January 7), but also, in general, to the exponents of the doctrine of reincarnation or metempsychosis, to whom all the dictations from January 7 until the present one are devoted.
