The excerpts presented here are translated from the critical Italian edition of the IL Quaderni del 1943 ...1944 ("Notebooks for 1943 ...1944" ) of the great contemporary Italian mystic, Maria Valtorta (1961†). This collection of mystical revelations Valtorta attests were given her by Christ in the form of interior Locutions or direct Dictations and Visions. Amid her many sufferings she was given them for her own spiritual consolation and growth, as well as for the guidance of the Church today. These revelations, moreover, pre-date by only a few months similar Visions and Locutions which  Valtorta would soon begin to record in a separate series of ordinary school notebook pads, while propped up as an invalid in her sick-bed the last 26 years of her life. That separate series of subsequent revelations would constitute her major 10-volume (in Italian) spiritual masterpiece: The Poem of the Man-God.1 It is especially for this latter Work that Valtorta is becoming best known and acclaimed, a Work which not a few notable personages have read and recommended for publication. Among these are: Pope Pius XII, as well as the eminent Scripture scholars, Augustine Cardinal Bea, S.J., and Fr. Gabriel Allegra, O.F.M. 

The occasion and context of the Locutions presented here was the death of Valtorta's mother, Madame Iside, October 4th, 1943, just a couple of weeks prior to these revelations. Her father being already dead, Valtorta felt herself "orphaned," as she said, and was utterly disconsolate in her bereavement. Madame Iside was a very  irreligious, self-centered, heartlessly overbearing and tyrannical woman, whose abusive treatment of her daughter was the source of much mental and emotional anguish and suffering to Valtorta during the latter's many years as a bed-ridden invalid. Still, Valtorta loved her mother, and part of her distress over her mother's death was, understandably, her fear for the state and eternal salvation of her mother's soul in the Beyond. These Locutions in the form of Dictations given Valtorta by her Master were, then, both to allay her fears and to console her, as well as for the instruction of the Church and faithful of today: namely, to correct prevalent misconceptions about the principal subject matter of these instructions. That subject matter is, as heralded in the title of this document, what the Christ refers to as "The Second Kingdom," and what Tradition has called "Purgatory" — a term alternately used also by Christ in the original Italian. (The extensively italicized passages in the text are also italicized in the original Italian and doubtless indicate emphases requested by Christ Himself.) 

Despite the "De Fide" nature of this essential doctrine of Purgatory in the Christian Faith, it is not uncommon today to hear soft snickers or derisive chuckles from those more "enlightened" by modern rationalistic and scientistic theologies. Or to observe some paternalistic and condescending smiles, or slight embarrassment toward the naive credulity of those who would still blunderingly mention so passé a topic as "Purgatory" in our more theologically "enlightened" age. 

Consequently, the doctrine as herein explained will clash, alas, with these more "illumined" views of the Beyond which such modern theologies dubiously afford us today. Indeed, it is lamentably clear that Christ, not having benefited Himself by modern man's superior theological science in such matters, also shares that naive credulity concerning this doctrine. 

To avoid the clear challenge of a "metanoia" — change of mind or heart — implicit in this and other works of Valtorta, adherents of these modern theologies will surely resort to their usual subterfuge, and shout: "Prudence! How much is from Valtorta's own imagination? How much stems from her own psychology and interpretation?"  Or they may retort with the old saw: "Faith in the Gospels is sufficient," or "Faith is preferable to seeking visions," etc., etc. —Undeniable truths, certainly, but easily turned into half-truths when usurped to evade other truths equally valid.  

Prudence, however, when excessive, can be imprudence, and hypercritical dissecting of a

Visionary's psychology, interpretation and human imagination, from the purely Divine revelation incarnated in them, contradicts the theological implications of the Incarnation itself. In addition, logic and honesty would require such hypercritical dissecting to be applied equally to the Gospels and to all of Scripture. For in Scripture too man's imagination, psychology and interpretation are intimately bound up with the Divine inspiration and "private revelations" incarnated in the human medium of the sacred authors. 

So, too, a "faith-in-the-Gospels-only" can become a faith so myopic and closed as to mask what has been justifiably called the "heresy of ecclesiological deism."2 It thus conceals a basic lack of faith in a Christ who is the same yesterday, today and forever: a loving, caring Lord who — as He has done throughout all Tradition in the past — can and still continues to reveal Himself and His mysteries to His faithful followers today: 

I AM THE GOOD SHEPHERD  I KNOW MY OWN   AND MINE KNOW ME.  

— Translator

  

 [August 7, 1943]3

 The Three Abodes of the Beyond

   

 JESUS :

"Souls, separated from their bodies, have three abodes. And they will have these until after the Judgment — which will not err — when there will remain but two. The blessed rejoice immediately in Eternal rest. The repentant actively complete their expiation, thinking of the hour of their liberation in God. The damned are driven to rage by the good they lost — indeed, the more impious they have been, so much the less do they find rest in their terrible torture."

   [October 19, 1943]4

 Complete Your Metamorphosis in Me Now

  

JESUS : 

"Flee the distractions of the earth, isolated with Me. When one is going to enter a strange land to dwell there, its language is learned in order that one be not incapable of living there; at least one seeks to grasp the first rudiments of that language, and imprudent is he who goes [there] without learning even a word of it. He will have much toil the first time [there].

In the eternal dwelling, Wisdom makes you learned in the first moment, it is true. But see, My soul, the last times of the earth are preparations for Heaven. When My Goodness gives all the signals and all the time for preparing oneself for Life, when not only through the work of My Mercy, but through that even of human will, there is given a means of providing for the last arrangements for your coming to that Life, then blessed is he who prepares himself there with care — which is never excessive.

If you took this care, all of you whom age or a long sickness, or the ruthless contingency of war, place in the almost certain lot of dying, there would not be for you so many painful stops in Purgatory. You would complete your metamorphosis in Me with love for Me, with a true repentance for having grieved Me, with true generosity, with true resignation, with all the virtues practiced with good will, and you would not have to complete such work which makes of a man, a dough kneaded of flesh and blood in which the spirit has reigned little — which makes of him a spirit that has known the true Truth: that is, that God is the only Thing that merits all the movements of one's being."

 [October 11, 1944]5

  Suffer Here Rather Than There

  

JESUS : 

"...[If you are all suffering], do you believe you have not deserved to suffer this from which you now suffer?6 Would you perhaps be perfect monsters of pride, so perfect as to proclaim yourselves without faults to expiate? Look within you, at your past.... Oh! no one is without faults to expiate. Well, then, if I am pleased with the chastisement  which I wanted to give you here, on earth, and which is a chastisement of love, because I do not want to punish you There where the chastisement is measured in centuries or an eternity, while here it is ever [but] a crumb of time, months or years as they may be — why do you immediately want to reactivate My strictness by disobeying and showing Me a heart angered by impatience?  Make God your Friend, and God will be with you against the enemies — which are the things of life: the consequences of the tragedy provoked by you through [your] culpable fickleness, in leaving Satan and his lesser satans free to torture the human race.

But if, with the ancient pride of the human race, you want to do what you please, deaf to the Heavenly voices which want your good, if you want to do it, deaf to the voices of charity and moved by the thought of egoism which I abhor, then lo, I say to all of you: 'Do it. But you will not avoid that which, by submitting to Me, you would have avoided. And then it will be useless to call on God.' "  

 [October 17, 1943]7

  The Purifying Flames

  

JESUS :

 "I want to explain to you what Purgatory is and in what it consists. And I explain it Myself, with a form that will clash with so many who believe themselves to be trustees of  knowledge of the Beyond — and are not.

The souls immersed in those flames suffer only from love.

Not undeserving of possessing the Light, but not yet worthy of entering immediately into that Kingdom of Light, these souls, upon presenting themselves to God,8 become clothed with the Light. It is a brief, anticipated bliss, which makes them certain of their salvation, and makes known to them what their eternity will be. It makes them experience what they had committed toward their soul; thus defrauding it of years of the blessed possession of God. Immersed thereafter in the Place of Purgation, they are clothed with the expiatory flames.

In this matter, those who talk of 'Purgatory' speak rightly. But where they are not right is in wanting to apply various names to those flames.

These flames are a conflagration of Love. They purify by enkindling souls with love. They give Love because, when the soul has reached in them that love which it did not reach on earth, it is liberated and joined to Love in Heaven.

This seems to you a different doctrine than what is known  — true? But reflect.

What does God, One and Triune, want for the souls created by Him? The Good.

He Who wants the Good for a creature, what sentiments does He have for that creature? Sentiments of Love.

What are the first and the second commandments, the two most important? Those of which I have said there are no greater, and in which are the keys for reaching Eternal Life? They are a commandment of love: 'Love God with all your strength, love your neighbor as yourself.'9

Through My own mouth and by the prophets and the saints, what have I said to you an infinite number of times? That Charity is the greatest of absolutions. Charity consumes the faults and the weaknesses of man, because he who loves lives in God, and by living in God he sins little; and if he sins he at once repents, and for him who is repentant there is the forgiveness of the Most High.

What is lacking to souls? Love. If they had loved much, they would have committed few and light sins, connected with your weakness and imperfections. But they would never have reached a conscious obstinacy in faults, even venial ones. If they would have striven not to grieve their Love, Love also, seeing their good will, would have absolved them even of the venial transgressions they committed.

How does one repair, even on earth, a fault? By expiating it — even if only with difficulty — through the means with which it was committed. He who has damaged something, by restoring whatever he has taken away with his insolence. He who has calumniated, by retracting the calumny, and so on.

Now: if poor human justice wants this, will not the holy Justice of God want it? And what means will God use to obtain reparation? Himself, that is, Love, and by exacting love.

All pivots on love, Maria, except for the truly 'dead': the damned. For these 'dead,' even Love is dead. But for the three Kingdoms — that of the heaviest: the Earth; that in which the weight of matter is abolished, but not of the soul burdened by sin: Purgatory; and finally that in which its inhabitants share with their Father the spiritual nature which frees them from every duty — for all three the motor is Love. It is by loving on earth that you work for Heaven. It is by loving in Purgatory that you conquer Heaven which in life you had not known how to merit. It is by loving in Paradise that you enjoy Heaven.

When a soul is in Purgatory it does not do anything but love, reflect, repent in the light of Love which has kindled for it these flames — which already are God, but which hide God from it for its punishment.

Behold the torment. The soul remembers the vision of God it had in its particular judgment. That memory is carried with it and, since to have even but glimpsed God is a joy which surpasses every created thing, the soul thus has anxiety to enjoy again that joy. That memory of God and that ray of light which had clothed it at its appearing before God, thus cause the soul to 'see' in their true essence the failures committed against its Good. And this 'seeing,' together with the thought that it has voluntarily forbidden itself the possession of Heaven and union with God for ages or centuries, constitute its purgative pain.

It is love, and the certainty of having offended Love, which is the torment of those being purged. The more a soul in life has failed, the more it is as if blinded by spiritual cataracts which make more difficult its knowing and reaching that perfect repentance of love which is the first collaboration with its purgation and  its entrance into the Kingdom of God.

Love is weighed down and slowed down the more a soul has oppressed it with guilt.  But as the power of Love cleanses it little by little, its resurrection to love is quickened and, in consequence, so is its conquest of Love — which is completed in the moment in which, having finished its expiation and reached the perfection of love, it is admitted into the City of God.

There is need to pray much so that these souls, who suffer in order to reach Joy, may be swift in reaching the perfect love that absolves them and unites them to Me. Your own prayers, your suffrages, are as so many increases in the fire of love. They increase its ardor, its heat.  But  — oh! blessed torment! — they also increase the capacity to love. They quicken the process of purgation. They raise to ever higher levels the souls immersed in that fire. They bring them to the threshold of Light. And, at last, they open the Gates of Light and introduce the soul into Heaven.

For each of these works provoked by your charity for one who has preceded you into the second life, there is a corresponding jump in charity for you. The Charity of God which thanks you for providing for His repentant children, the charity of the

repentant themselves, who thank you for endeavoring to place them in the Joy of God.

Never do your dear ones love you as they do after their death from the earth, because their love is thereafter infused with the Light of God, and in this Light they understand how you love them and how they should have loved you.

They cannot speak words to you any more which invoked forgiveness and give love.  But they speak them to Me for you, and I bring them to you, these words of your Dead, who now know how to see and love you as they ought. I bring them to you together with their requests of love and with their blessing, already valid inasmuch as from Purgatory, because already infused with that kindled Charity which burns and purifies them. And [it is] perfectly valid, then, from the moment in which, being liberated, they come to meet you upon the threshold of Life, or will be reunited to you in that same Life, if you have already preceded them into the Kingdom of Love.

Trust in Me, Maria. I work for you and for your dearest ones. Lift up your spirit. I come to give you joy. Trust yourself to Me."

___________________________ 

[October 21, 1943]10

  

JUDGMENT:  THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 

JESUS :

"I take up again the subject of souls received into Purgatory. If you, [Maria], have yourself already grasped the complete meaning of My words, no matter. These are pages for all, because all have some dear ones in Purgatory and almost all, with the life they lead, are destined to stay in that abode. For those as for these, continue then [to write].

I have said that souls being purged suffer only through love and expiate with love. Here are the reasons for this system of expiation.

If you, unreflecting men, consider attentively My Laws in their counsels and in their commands, you see that it all pivots on love. Love toward God, love toward your neighbor.  

'I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD....YOU SHALL NOT HAVE STRANGE GODS BEFORE ME.'

In the first commandment I, God, impose Myself on your reverential love with all the solemnity which is worthy of My Nature in respect to your nothingness: 'I am the Lord your God.'

Too many times you forget this, O men, who believe yourselves to be gods and, if you do not have in you a spirit vivified by grace, you are nothing else than dust and rottenness: animals who unite to your animality the cunning of an intelligence possessed by the Beast, which makes you commit works of beasts — worse than beasts: those of demons.

Say it to yourselves morning and evening, say it to yourselves at noon and at midnight, say it to yourselves when you eat, when you drink, when you go to sleep, when you wake, when you work, when you rest, say it to yourselves when you love, say it to yourselves when you contract friendships, say it to yourselves when you command and when you obey, say it to yourselves always: 'I am not God. The food, drink, sleep, are not God. The work, rest, occupations, the works of genius, are not God. A woman, or worse: women, are not God. Friendships are not God. Superiors are not God. One alone is God: He is my Lord Who has given me this life so that with it I may deserve the Life which does not die, Who has given me clothing, food, dwellings, Who has given me work so that I may gain a livelihood, genius so that I may witness to being the king of the earth, Who has given me the capacity to love and creatures to love with holiness, and not with lust, Who has given me power, authority, so that I may make of them a means of holiness and not of damnation. I can become like Him since He has said: "You are gods," but only if I live His life, that is, His laws; only if I live His Life, that is, His Love. One alone is God: Him. I am His son and subject, the heir of His Kingdom. But if I desert and betray, if I create my own kingdom in which I want humanly to be king and god, then I lose the true Kingdom and my lot of a son of God falls and is degraded to that of a son of Satan, since egoism and love cannot be served simultaneously, and he who serves the first serves the Enemy of God and loses Love, that is, loses God.'

Take from your mind and from your heart all the false gods which you have put there, beginning with the god of mud which you yourselves are when you do not live in Me. Remember what you owe Me for all that I have given you — and more would I have given you if you had not tied the hands of your God with your manner of life — remember what you owe Me for what I have given you for the life of each day and for Eternal Life. For this, God has given you His own Son, so that He might be immolated as a lamb without spot and might wash away with His Blood your debts and thus not cause, as in the Mosaic temple, the iniquities of the fathers to fall back upon their sons unto the fourth generation of sinners, who are 'those who hate Me,' since sin is an offense to God and he who offends, hates

Do not raise up other altars to untrue gods. Have — not only upon altars of stone, but upon the living altar of your heart — have the sole and only Lord your God. Serve Him, and to Him tender the true worship of love, of love, of love, O sons who know not how to love; you who say, and say, and say words of prayer —words only, but who do not make of love your prayer, the only one that pleases God.

Remember that one throb of true love which rises like a cloud of incense from the flames of your heart in love with Me, has for Me a value infinite times greater than thousands and thousands of prayers and ceremonies made with a lukewarm or cold heart. Attract My Mercy with your love. If you knew how active and great is My Mercy with him who loves Me! It is a wave that passes and washes however much in you constitutes stain. Give yourselves a white robe in order to enter into the holy City

of Heaven, in which there shines like the sun the Charity of the Lamb Who has immolated Himself for you.

'YOU SHALL NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD YOUR GOD IN VAIN'

Do not use the holy Name from habit or in order to give force to your anger, to vent your impatience, to strengthen your curses. And above all do not apply the term 'god' to a human creature whom you love through the hunger of the senses or through the worship of the mind. To One only should be spoken that Name. To Me. And to Me it should be said with love, with faith, with hope. Then that Name will be your strength and your defense. The worship of this Name will justify you, because he who works by setting My Name to the seal of his actions, cannot commit evil actions. I am talking of one who works with truth, not of liars who seek to cover themselves and their works with the splendor of My Name — thrice holy. And whom do they seek to deceive? I am not subject to deception. And men themselves — at least if they are not sick of mind  — in confronting the works of these liars with what they say, understand that they are counterfeits, and so experience outrage and disgust toward them.

 'REMEMBER TO KEEP HOLY THE SABBATH DAY'

You who know not how to love anything but yourselves and your money, and to whom any hour seems lost to you that is not dedicated to satisfying your flesh or fattening your purse: in your enjoyment of work as gluttons and brute beasts, know how to put a stop to [those pursuits], such as may give you a means of thinking of God, of His goodness, of His patience, of His love. You should, I repeat, have Me always present in whatever you do; but since you do not know how to work by preserving your spirit fixed in God, cease from working, one time in the week, in order to think only of God.

This, which could seem to you a servile law, is instead a proof of how God loves you. Your good Father knows that you are fragile machines which are in continual use, and He has provided for your flesh — even for that since it is also His work — by giving you a command to make it rest one day out of seven in order to give it a just relief. God does not want your sickness. Had you remained His sons,  His very own, from Adam onward,  you would not have known sickness. Sickness is the fruit of your disobedience to God, together with sorrow and death; and like mushrooms, they are born and hidden upon the roots of the first disobedience: that of Adam, and they sprout each from the other, a tragic chain, from the germ which has remained in your heart, from the poison of the accursed Serpent which gives you fevers of lust, of avarice, of greed, of sloth, of culpable imprudence.

It is culpable imprudence to want to force your being to continue to work for gain, as is that of wanting an over-enjoyment of the belly or the senses without contenting yourselves with the food necessary for life and the companion who is necessary for the continuation of the species, but glutting yourselves beyond measure like animals from a swamp, and exhausting and defiling yourselves like — or rather, not like brute animals which are not like you, but are superior to you in their unions to which they go by obeying laws of order — but rather defiling yourselves worse than brute beasts: like demons who disobey the holy laws of right instinct, of reason and of God.

You yourselves have corrupted your instinct and it now leads you to prefer corrupt meals, formed of lusts in which you profane your body: My work; and your soul: My masterwork. And you kill the embryos of life by denying them to life, because you suppress them willingly before time, or through your leprosies which are deadly poison to a rising life.

How many are the souls whom a sensual appetite of yours calls from heaven and to which you then close the gates of life? How many those who have hardly reached their term, and come into the light dying or already dead, and to whom you bar Heaven? How many those on whom you impose a weight of sorrow, which they cannot always carry, with a sick existence, marked by sorrowful and shameful diseases? How many those who cannot stand this lot of an unwanted martyrdom affixed by you as a firebrand upon their flesh — which you have begotten without reflecting that, when one is corrupted like graves full of rottenness, it is no longer permitted to beget children so as to condemn them to the sorrow and the disgust of society? How many are those who, being unable to stand this lot, commit suicide?

But what do you think? That I will damn them for this their crime against God and themselves? No. Before their sin against two [God and themselves], there are you yourselves who sin against three: against God, against yourselves, and against the innocent whom you beget so as to bring them to despair. Think on that. Think well on that. God is just, and if He weighs the fault, He also weighs the cause of the fault. And in this case the weight of the fault lightens the condemnation of suicide, but loads the condemnation on you, true homicides of your despairing offspring.

In that day of rest, then, which God has put in the week — and has given you as His example of rest — think of Him: the infinite Agent, the Begetter Who is continually begotten from Himself; He has shown you the need of rest, He has done it for you, so as to be your Master in life. And you, [such] negligible powers, you do not want to take account of it, as if you were more powerful than God! — In that day of rest for your flesh, broken under excessive fatigue, know how to occupy yourselves with the rights and duties of your soul. Its rights: to true Life. The soul dies if it is kept separated from God. Give Sunday to your soul — since you know not how to do it on all other days and at all hours — so that on Sunday itself your soul is nourished with the Word of God, it is filled with God so as to have a lasting vitality for the other work days. For a son whom work has kept far away throughout the whole week, how sweet is rest in the house of his father! And why do you not give this sweetness to your soul? Why sully this day with debaucheries and lust, instead of making it a clear light for your bliss now and hereafter?  

'HONOR YOUR FATHER AND YOUR MOTHER'

And after love for Him who has created you: love for the one who has begotten you, and for him who is your brother. If God is Charity, how can you say that you are in God if you do not seek to be like Him in charity? And can you say that you are like Him if you only love Him, and not others created by Him? Yes, God should be loved more than all, but one cannot say he loves God who disdains to love those whom God loves.

Love first of all, then, those who, through having begotten you, are the second creators of your being on earth. The supreme Creator is the Lord God Who forms your souls and, Proprietor as He is of Life and of Death, permits your coming to life. But second creators are those who, from two different flesh and bloodlines, make a new flesh, a new son of God, a new future inhabitant of Heaven. Because it is for Heaven that you are created, it is for Heaven that you should live on earth.

Oh! sublime dignity of a father and a mother! Holy Episcopate — I speak with bold words, but true — Holy Episcopate which consecrates a new servant to God with the chrism of one conjugal love, washes him with the tears of her who begets him, clothes him with the work of his father, renders him a bearer of the Light by instilling the knowledge of God into children's minds and the love of God into innocent hearts. Truly I say to you that parents are only a little inferior to God, just by the fact of creating a new Adam. But what then when parents know how to make of the new Adam a new little Christ? —then their dignity is hardly a step lower than that of the Eternal.

With a love only inferior, then, to that which you should have for the Lord your God, love your father and your mother, this double manifestation of God which their conjugal love causes to become one 'unity'. Love this unity because its dignity and its works are most like those of God for you: they are your parents, your earthly creators, and all in you should venerate them as such.

And you, O parents, love your offspring, Remember that to beget a flesh is much, but at the same time it is nothing. Even the animals beget a flesh, and many times they care for it better than any of you. But you beget a citizen of Heaven. With this you should preoccupy yourselves. Do not quench the light in the souls of your children, do not let the pearl of the soul of your children get the habit of the mud. Give love, holy love to your children, not foolish cares for physical beauty, for human culture. No. It is the beauty of their soul, the education of their spirit: that is what you should care for.

The life of parents is sacrifice, as is that of priests and teachers convinced of their mission. All three categories are 'formators' 11 of that which does not die: the spirit, or the psyche, if you prefer. And granted that the spirit stands to the flesh in the proportion of 1000 to 1, consider to what perfection you should attain, O you parents, teachers and priests, in order to be truly what you should be. I say 'perfection'. 'Formation' is not enough. They are to form others, but in order to form them 'un-deformed', they must mold them on a perfect model. And how can they claim to be such, if they are imperfect themselves? And how can they become perfect themselves if they are not molded on the Perfect, which is God? And what can give man the capacity to mold himself on God? Love, always love. You are all but iron, raw and unformed. Love is the furnace which purifies and melts you and makes you fluid to flow through supernatural veins into the form of God. Then you are the 'formators' of others: when you have formed yourselves on the perfection of God.

Children many times exhibit again the spiritual bankruptcy of their parents. Through the children it appears what the parents were worth. For, if it is true that sometimes from holy parents are born depraved children, this is the exception. Generally, at least one of the parents is not holy and, given the fact that it is easier for you to copy evil rather than good, the child copies the less good parent. It is also true that sometimes

from depraved parents a holy child is born. But even there it is difficult for both parents to be depraved. Through the law of compensation the better of the two is good for both, and with prayers, tears and words, completes the work for both by forming the child for Heaven.

In any case, whatever your parents be, O children, I say to you: 'do not judge, love only, forgive only, obey only, except in those things which are contrary to My Law. For you there is the merit of obedience, of love and of forgiveness, forgiveness from you, the children, Maria, which hastens the forgiveness of God for your parents, and hastens it so much the more as your forgiveness is complete;12 for your parents there is — whether in regard to you, or in what concerns God — for them there is the responsibility and the just judgment  of God, the only Judge.  

'YOU SHALL NOT KILL'

It is superfluous to explain that to kill is a lack of love. Of love toward God, from Whom you take the right of life and of death toward a creature of His, and the right of Judge. Only God is Judge, and a holy Judge, and if He has granted to man to create for himself assemblies of justice in order to put on you a bridle, either in crime or in punishment, woe to you if, as you fail in the Justice of God, you fail in the justice of man by setting yourselves up for judges of one like yourselves who has failed you, or whom you believe has failed you.   Think, O poor sons, that an offense, a sorrow, upsets minds and hearts, and that this anger and this very sorrow put a veil upon your intellectual vision:  a veil which bars you from the vision of the true truth, and also of charity as God presents it to you, so that thereby you may know how to regulate even your just outrage, and not make of it  — by too pitiless a condemnation — an injustice also. Be holy even while the offense burns you. Remind yourselves of God then above all.

And you also, judges of the earth: be holy. You have in your hands the most vivid horrors of humanity. Scrutinize them with your eye and mind steeped in God. See the true 'why' of certain 'miseries'. Think that even if they are true 'miseries' of a humanity which is degraded, many are the causes which produce them. In the hand that kills, seek the force that moved it to kill, and remind yourselves that you also are men. Question yourselves: if you — betrayed, abandoned, goaded — would have been better than this man or woman who is before you awaiting sentence. While making a severe examination of yourselves: think if there be now woman who could accuse you of being the true killers of her child which she blocked, because after the hour of play you withdrew yourselves from your pledge of honor. And if you can do that, be yourselves also severe.

But if, after having sinned against the creature born from your intrigue and from your lust, you still want to obtain a pardon from Him Who is not deceived and not forgetful with years and years of correct life — after that incorrectness which you did not want to repair, or after that crime which you had provoked — then at least be operative in preventing the evil, and especially there where feminine fickleness and the misery of the surroundings predispose one for a fall into vice and infanticide.

Remember, O men, that I, the Pure, did not refuse to redeem dishonorable women. And for the honor which they no longer had, I had raised up in their soul , like a flower from profaned ground, the living flower of repentance which redeems. I had given My pitying love to the poor disgraced women whom a so-called 'love' had prostrated in the mud. My true love had saved them from the lust with which that so-called love had infected them. If I had cursed them and fled, I would have lost them forever. I loved them even for the world, which after having enjoyed them, covers them again with hypocritical ridicule and false indignation.  In place of the caresses of sin, I caressed them with the pureness of My Look; in place of delirious words, I had for them words of love; in place of money, shameful price of their kiss, I had the riches of My Truth.

Thus does one do, O men,  in order to pull out of the mud one who has sunk into the mud, and thus one is not clutched by the neck oneself so that both perish. Nor does one throw stones at them to make them sink the more. It is love, it is always love that saves.

  

'YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY'

I have already said what sort of sin adultery is,  and I do not repeat it, for now at least. On this backwash of animality there is so much to say  — and so much you cannot even grasp, because you boast about being betrayers of the hearth — that out of pity for My little disciple [Maria], I keep silent. I do not want to exhaust the strength of this worn out creature and disturb her mind with human crudeness since, being near her goal, she thinks only of Heaven.  

 'YOU SHALL NOT STEAL'

It is obvious that he who steals is failing in love. If he would remember not to do to another that which he would not want done to himself, and if he loved others as himself, he would not take with violence and fraud that which is his neighbor's. He would not fail therefore in love, as instead he is lacking therein by committing a larceny which could be of goods, of money, as well as of an occupation. How many commit theft by stealing a position of a friend, an invention of a companion. You are thieves, thieves three times, for doing that. You are more so than if you stole a portfolio or a gem, because without these one can still live, but without an earning position one dies, and with that stealing of his position his family dies.    

'YOU SHALL NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST YOUR NEIGHBOR' 

I have given you speech as a sign of your elevation above all the other animals of the earth. You should therefore love Me through your speech, My gift. But can I say that you love Me through your speech when, of this gift from Heaven, you make yourselves a weapon in order to ruin your neighbor with a false oath? No, you do not love either Me or your neighbor when you assert what is false, but rather you hate us.

Do you not reflect that speech kills not only the flesh, but the reputation of a man? He who kills, hates; he who hates, does not love.     'YOU SHALL NOT COVET YOUR NEIGHBOR'S WIFE, NOR HIS GOODS...'

 Envy is not charity: it is anti-charity. He who desires immoderately the belongings of another is envious and does not love. Be content with what  you have. Think that under the appearance of joy there are often sorrows which God sees and which are spared you, who are seemingly less happy than those whom you envy. Because if, then, the object desired is the other's wife or the other's husband, then you should know that to the sin of envy you join that of lust and of adultery. You therefore accomplish a triple offense toward the Charity of God and of neighbor.

As you see, if you infringe against the Decalogue,13 you infringe against love. And  it is thus also for the counsels that I have given you, which are the flower of the tree of Charity. Now if by infringing against the Law you infringe against love, it is obvious that a sin is a failure in love. And therefore you must expiate with love.    

PURGATORY:  EXPIATING LOVE

The love which you did not know how to give Me on earth, you must give to Me in Purgatory. Here is why I say that Purgatory is nothing else than a suffering of love.

Through all your life you have loved God little in His Law. You have thrown behind your back the thought of Him, you have lived loving all [else] and loving Him little. It is just, therefore, that neither deserving Hell nor Paradise, you deserve It now by igniting yourselves with charity, burning ardently to the same extent that you were lukewarm on earth. It is just, therefore, that you sigh longingly thousands and thousands of hours with an expiation of love for what  you had thousands and thousands of times failed to sigh for on earth:  God, supreme goal of created intellects. To every time that you have turned your back on Love, there corresponds years and centuries of loving nostalgia. Years or centuries, according to the gravity of your fault.

Now that you have become secure [in Purgatory]  about God, and have known some of the supernal beauty of God through that fleeting encounter of the first judgment,14 the memory of it comes with you so as to render more vivid the anxiety of love: you sigh for Him, you weep over His distance, you regret and repent having been yourselves the cause of such distance, and always render yourselves more penetrable by that fire ignited by Charity for your supreme good.

When, by the prayers of the living who love you, the merits of Christ are thrown like an ardent essence into the holy fire of Purgatory, the incandescence of love penetrates you more strongly and more inwardly; and amid the glowing of the flames, that memory of God seen in the moment of judgment becomes always more lucid.

As in life on earth, the more love grows, the thinner becomes the veil which hides the Divinity from the living: so equally in this Second Kingdom, the more the purification

grows, and therefore love, the nearer and more visible also becomes the Face of God. Already It smiles and shines through the flashes of the holy fire. It is like a Sun which comes ever nearer, and Its light and Its warmth annul always more the light and heat of the purgative fire, until, passing from that deserved and blessed torment of the fire to the conquered and blessed relief of possession, having passed from a flame to The Flame, from a light to The Light, you go up to be light and flame in Him, the eternal Sun, like a spark absorbed by a blazing pyre and like a lamp thrown into a conflagration.

Oh! joy of joys, when you find yourselves raised up to My Glory, having passed from that kingdom of waiting to the Kingdom of Triumph. Oh! perfect knowledge of Perfect Love!

This knowledge, O Maria, is a mystery which by God's Will the mind can know, but cannot describe with human words. Believe that it merits suffering a whole lifetime to possess it at the hour of death. Believe that there is no greater charity than to procure it with prayers for those whom you have loved on earth and who now begin their purification in that love to which in life they closed the doors of their hearts so many, many times.

Courage, blessed one to whom hidden truths have been unveiled. Go on, work and ascend. For yourself and for those you love in the Beyond.

Let the thread of your life be consumed by Love. Pour back your love upon Purgatory in order to open the Gates of  Heaven to those whom you love. Blessed are you if you know how to love even to incinerating what is weak and has sinned. To meet the spirit purified by the immolation of love, there come the Seraphim, and they teach it the eternal "Sanctus" to sing at the foot of My Throne."

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NOTES

1. Maria Valtorta, The Poem of the Man-God, trans., Nicandro Picozzi and Patrick McLaughlin (Centro Editoriale Valtortiano srl, 1986-1990), 5 Volumes, hardbound, $35.00 U.S. Distributed (among others) by Saint Raphael's Publications Inc., 31 King St. W., Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, J1H 1N5, and in select bookstores in the U.S. [Note: Beginning with the Summer of 1993, according to Valtorta's publisher, Emilio Pisani, subsequent Italian editions of The Poem... will be published under the original title: L'Evangelo Come Mi è Stato Rivelato ("The Gospel as It was Revealed to Me"). For more information on this Work, see elsewhere on this Site  "An Introduction to Maria Valtorta and Her Epic Narrative : The Poem of the Man-God "    [ --Trans.] 2. Fidelity, April 1987, p.34. 3. Maria Valtorta, I Quaderni del 1943 ["Notebooks for 1943"] (Edizioni Pisani / Centro Editoriale Valtortiano srl, Via Po 95, 03036 Isola del Liri (FR), Italia,1985),  269-270. 4. Ibid., 469-470. 5. Maria Valtorta, I Quaderni del 1944 ["Notebooks for 1944"] (Edizioni Pisani / Centro Editoriale Valtortiano srl, Via Po 95, 03036 Isola del Liri (FR), Italia,1985), 682-683. 6. Christ is addressing Valtorta's fellow countrymen. The context here is the Second World War then in progress, and His allusion is to their suffering from the devastation of Italy caused by the War. 7. Valtorta, I Quaderni del 1943, 459-463.

8. "...presenting themselves to God": that is, in what the Catholic Church has always taught is the "Particular Judgment" (or "First Judgment") of each soul immediately after death. 9. Matthew 22:34-40. 10. Valtorta, I Quaderni del 1943, 475-486. 11. "Formators": that is, those who guide or oversee the formation of others. 12. The reader is referred again to  Paragraph 2 of the Introduction as a reminder of the context of this revelation and the tyrannical character of Valtorta mother with the resultant sufferings this caused her. These words of Christ concerning the child's forgiveness of the parents have a remarkable implication for John 20:23 — "Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained." 13. "Decalogue": that is, the Ten Commandments. 14. See Note 8 above.