December 25, 1946prev home next
Jesus says:
“I come and hold out my arms, as with my shepherds, who were the first ones I loved on earth and whom I continued to love because they continued to love Me with their simple hearts of that night. I give them to you as a model because I want you to love Me along the easiest and safest way. The way of simplicity. It is also the way of ‘our’ Thérèse of the Child Jesus. It is the way of those who, possessing Wisdom, intuit that arduous ways are dangerous even for the strong, whereas simple ways are the safest. Man must never trust in his strength. Today, very strong, tomorrow more fragile than a rush - and sometimes more than a broken rush. The weight that can break is precisely to desire great, complicated things full of formulas and programs, the hyperbolic methods of a difficult ascent which man on his own cannot undertake.
“No. That is not the way people are easily saved. It is by wanting to love, simply this. What even a child is able to do. What even a shepherd is able to do. I can readily plunge down and carry off someone who loves Me in simple fashion to the dizzying heights of amazing acts of heroism. But do you think this joy, the blissful joy of possessing Me in Heaven, is greater than the joy of those who have sanctified themselves humbly in the simplicity of their actions, all of them performed out of love for Me?
“Do you think that my humble shepherds, including those who died before I became the Master - and who thus worshipped Me only on that night with their entire selves, bending over before my manger and my cradle, and then with their entire spirit, for a few days or years, until death, after Herod’s ferocity separated Me from them - do you think that my humble shepherds, all of them, have a glory and a joy in Heaven which are less than those of the three Wise Men of the East, founders of the lineage of the wise and powerful who would love Me, through knowledge, in the course of centuries? No. On the contrary, I tell you that whereas many learned people, after having loved Me, either were lost because they wanted to know Me with excessive knowledge, or are still purging their scientific, complicated worship of Me - their worship assailed by frozen gusts of science - in the purgative fire teaching them to love without wanting to analyze love and the Object of love, all my shepherds who served Me as disciples passed from death into Life and those among them who expired before I rose to the Father passed from death to peacefully waiting for Me in Limbo.
“Indeed, I tell you that, whereas one of the twelve apostles was lost, not one of the twelve shepherds was left deprived of the halo of the blessed. And that was because, in their simplicity, they were fulfilled and pervaded by my simplicity as a Child. They saw and loved only the Son born to the People of Israel, the Child Savior, ‘wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger,’271 whom they later saw sucking milk and growing, like all children; nor did his poverty and exiguousness as a baby invalidate their faith in the divine origin of the Little Child born in Bethlehem of Judah; nor did they calculate the benefits they could obtain from Him, whom most in Israel dreamed of as a king and avenger rather than a spiritual Savior of his people and the world. They loved. Always. Even those who later saw and served Me in the midst of the acclaim of the crowds loved. They were able to love the Savior alone. They were able to follow the Savior alone. They were able to follow Jesus only to possess the kingdom of heaven. They did not dream or fall into disappointment, incredulity, hatred, or revenge, like Judas Iscariot, who, disappointed in his dream of power, arrived at deicide.
“Be simple. There are two books which all those with good will can read and understand, even if illiterate. It is enough for them to have the simple sight of my shepherds. The manger in Bethlehem, the cross on Golgotha. Those two books speak. They say eternal words. They utter teachings in comparison to which the wisdom of all the wise, from Solomon until the last one to come, is something quite limited. My Birth in indigence, to teach you detachment from wealth and honors, to extinguish your thirst for these human honors; my Death in pain, to teach you that it is with pain that the Kingdom is conquered for oneself and one’s neighbor and that one must always love.
“Love one another and love Me, and my peace be with you.”
Mary says:
“I am your Mother. You are my daughters. But daughters must generate as their Mother did. Virginity is not an obstacle to generating Emmanuel. As a virgin and consecrated person, I also said, ‘And how can this happen if I do not know man?’ And the angel replied, ‘The Holy Spirit will descend into you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you,”272 and there was Emmanuel. The Holy Spirit descends into the souls that my Son has redeemed and that are capable of living in justice and makes his dwelling there, and the souls become bearers of God. That is why virginity is not an obstacle, but, rather, a help to bearing Christ in you and giving Him to the world with the light of your works. Come to the fruitful virginity which gives birth to the Light of the world for the world of darkness.
“I want to teach you what is required so that Christ will dwell in your virgin hearts.
“Complete obedience, to the point of renouncing the holiest desires to follow God’s will.
“Perfect discretion concerning the mysteries of God’s indwelling within you.
“Unalterable humility in spite of the miracle of his indwelling. Remember that Satan probes to discover Christ wherever He is, and it is necessary to defend Christ from Satan’s poison. He would not die - He is God. He would not be stricken - He is God. But you would. And Christ could not remain where there is thoughtlessness lifting the veils before God’s mysteries and where there is the stench of self-complacency. In alliance with Satan, you would thus oblige Christ to withdraw to a place where there is no diabolical disturbance.
“Perfect trust in the help God gives in every circumstance to the women bearing his Word.
“Purity of desire. To bear Him not in order to boast of bearing Him, but to give Him to men.
“Innocence in soul and thought, for Jesus remains only in innocence.
“Seraphic charity. It is in fire that the Divine Fire becomes concrete in Jesus-Light, Jesus-Wisdom, Jesus-Peace, and Jesus the Savior. Charity towards God, who knows and comprehends everything. Charity towards one’s neighbor, who does not know, does not want to know, and does not comprehend because he does not want to comprehend. Men do not know the Light. Let the women bearing the Light take men, through charity, to knowledge of Light, Charity, and Salvation - of God.
“With these seven practices you become living cradles for the Savior and imitate me, who am your Mother and love you”273
271 Luke 2:8-12
272 Luke 1:34-35.
273 We omit eight handwritten pages, dated December 29, 1946, containing Azariah’s commentary on the Mass for the Sunday in the octave of Christmas.