March 13, 1946186prev home next
Jesus’ perfect tact, even with children, brings Him to act like this,187 so as not to mortify or disappoint them! He possesses the art and the charm to improve them and cause Himself to be loved with what are, in appearance, trifles, but are, in reality, the perfection of love adapted to the littleness of the child....
As with me. Oh, He really always treated me as a “child” to improve my wretchedness, to bring Himself to be loved! Afterwards, when I loved Him with my whole self, He brought pressure to bear and treated me as an adult, deaf to my entreaties: “But don’ t You see that I’m good for nothing?” He smiled and forced me to do the works of adults.... Oh, only when poor Maria is really completely afflicted does He once again become the Jesus of children for my poor soul, which is so incapable, and content Himself with my beetles, pebbles, and little flowers - what I am able to give Him - and shows me that He finds them beautiful... and loves me because I am “the nonentity that entrusts and loses itself in the All.”
My dear Jesus! Loved, loved to the point of madness! Loved with my whole self! Yes, I can proclaim it! On the eve of my forty-ninth year, on examining myself carefully, on the eve of the human sentence concerning my work as a spokesman, on scrutinizing my spirit and my whole self diligently, to decipher the true words that are in me, I can say that I now love, I understand that I love my God with my whole self. I have devoted fortyeight years to arriving at this total love, so total that I have no thought of personal fear in anticipation of a condemnation, but only agony over the repercussions it might have on the souls that I have led to God, that I am convinced have been redeemed by Jesus living in me and that would separate from the Church, the connecting link between humanity and God.
Some will say, “Aren’t you ashamed to have wanted this so much?” No, not at all. I was so weak, so much of a nothing, that I have so desired all this time. And, besides, I am convinced that I have desired this for exactly the time Jesus has willed. Not a minute more, not a minute less, for - I can say this - since I began to understand what God is, I have never refused God anything.188 Since, at age four, I felt Him to be so omnipresent that I even believed He was in the wood of the back of the chair I sat on, and I apologized for turning my back to Him and leaning on Him; since, also at age four, even in sleep I considered that our sins had wounded and killed Him, and I would get to my feet on the bed in prayer, in my pajamas, without looking at any religious painting, but turning directly to my Beloved, slain for our sake, begging, “Not me! Not me! Have me die, but don’t tell me that I have wounded You!” And on and on....
O my Love, You know my moments of fervor. Not one is unknown to You.... You know that a mere flash of a proposal by You at once became acceptance for your Maria. Even if You proposed that I give You my love as a fiancée - indeed, precisely then, during Christmas of 1921, my love for You was confirmed - the love of relatives, life, health, prosperity... and increasingly becoming a “nobody” in social life, a wreck that the world observed with pity or mockery, a woman who cannot take a glass of water if she is thirsty and has no one to offer it to her, a woman nailed down, like You, like You, and as I so desired to be, and as I would like to go back to being at once if You were to heal me. Everything! The nonentity has given all, her all as a creature.... Well then, even now, even now that I can be judged negatively and interdicted and stricken, what shall I say to You? “Leave me Yourself, your Grace. All the rest is nothing. I ask only that You not take your love and not allow the ones I have given You to fall back into darkness.”
But where have I gone, O my Sun, while You wander among the rose beds? Where my heart, which has striven to love You, takes me. And it beats and sets the blood in my veins aflame. And people will say, “She’s got fever and palpitation of the heart.” No, the fact is that this morning You are pouring Yourself into me with the power of a divine hurricane of love, and I... and I annul myself in You, penetrating me, and I think no longer as a creature, but experience what must be the life of the seraphim... and I burn and am delirious and love You, love You, love You.
Have mercy, in you’r love! Have mercy, if You want me to go on living to serve You, O Divine, Eternal Love, O Love Most Sweet, O Love of the Heavens and Creation, God, God, God.... But no! No mercy! On the contrary, even more! Even more! Until death on the pyre of love! Let us fuse! Let us love each other! So that we may be in the Father, as You said when praying for us: “May [those who love Me] be where We are. [May they be] one.” One! This is one of the phrases in the Gospel which have always made me plunge into an abyss of loving worship. What did You request for us, O my Divine Master and Redeemer! What did You ask for, O my Divine Madman of Love! That we may be one with You, the Father, and the Holy Spirit, since whoever is in One is in the Three, O inseparable and yet free Trinity of the Triune God! Blessed! Blessed! Blessed with every beat of my heart and breath...!189
My Jesus divinely comforts his violet. I possess the divine presence almost continuously. And this morning at Holy Communion He moved and went to Father’s side.... And afterwards, as I ardently prayed (and I had even knelt down, the way I am able to - that is, completely bent over, leaning, falling back on my heals and on the pillows, feeling mortal pains from the posture adopted), saying, “You see, Lord! You see! My fear is that Giuseppe, Paola, Marta, and others will become disgusted with the Church.... And, in addition.... If I were to fall into dejection, into doubt concerning the truthfulness of the Voice? I could be lost, lose You....” He replied to me, “Victim souls are never lost.” I am living with this pearl in my heart... and waves of peace and joy emerge from the divine pearl, envelop me entirely, and fill me....
Later on the mail brought me from a Carmel a relic of St. Theresa of Avila and a photograph of Pope Pius X, the Pope who spoke to me and encouraged me to continue on my way, which was “pleasing to the Lord.”190 I was moved by both items. St. Theresa of Avila can understand me, and the holy Pope can protect me, down there, in Rome.... I put the relic under my pillow and the Pope on my bed table. For protection.191
186 About one page is omitted here, containing the beginning of the episode “Jesus with Peter and Bartholomew at Bether” from The Third Year of the Public Life.
187 This loving observation by the writer is included in a description of Jesus’ affectionate encounter with some children in a rose garden, the episode referred to the previous note.
188 Some of the events the writer is about to cite are narrated in The Autobiography.
189 We pass over four-and-a-half handwritten pages containing the conclusion of the episode mentioned for March 13, 1946.
190 See the entry for February 8, 1946.
191 The writer adds that this text was also included in the notebook containing spiritual instructions. Eleven pages are here passed over, dated March 16, 1946, containing the episode “Farewell to Bether” from The Third Year of the Public Life.