May 16, 1946prev home
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4:45 a.m.
My Mother.
My Mother! Gently sad. With a pacified face, no longer ashen, as in the early apparitions, the face of her best hours and also more peaceful, as if softened by a reflection of her soul, nourished by peace.... But she was sad. She was looking at me with loving compassion. The kind of look I would often have wished for from her while she was my mother on earth and which I received so rarely and always weaker than this look now. She looked at me.... She seemed to be suffering.... But she was no longer far away from me, in ultramundane regions, as in the first apparitions. She was right here with me, towards the foot of my bed, and looked around her - I don’t whether it was out of curiosity or to greet her things, which she was seeing again around me. She smiled at her portrait, placed closed to me, smiled more luminously at her Our Lady of Sorrows and at my miniature, and then looked at the Jesus I had at the head of the bed, and her gaze was so hard to characterize that I am unable to describe it. She seemed to be praying and venerating and to be humbling herself, asking for forgiveness.... She seemed to be suffering.
I thought she was sad because for two months I had been unable to have a Mass said for her. Previously, from December to March, she had grown calm - or so she seemed to me, for I no longer saw her - as if the monthly Holy Mass brought her relief. I said so to her, “You are right, Mom. But if you only knew the state I’m in! At times they no longer pay attention to me....”
She shook her head in denial.
I went on, “I don’t know who to turn to in order to be sure they are relieving you with the Holy Sacrifice....”
She replied, “I know. Here, we know. But it is not for myself that I am suffering. It’s for you. Poor Maria! Never understood, never loved, never happy.... Not even now, when you are so sick and so deserving of help. How wrong all of us were about you!”
“Do not suffer, Mom. You know I am used to this state....” And I say no more, understanding that my words would be numerous rebukes arising from recollection of the past - of her and my past....
She answered, “I can’t help suffering. Because now I understand. Immersed as we are in a burning, luminous bath of expiatory love, we see, know, and learn now, here, to love our God and our neighbor, whom we loved only slightly and poorly while living. And the sufferings of our neighbors increase our expiation because, once selfishness has fallen away, we are able to love and suffer with them and for them. Bùt do not be afflicted for this reason. It helps us to enter Paradise sooner. Be patient, Maria. Only God loves you. Why, He loves you immensely. And now your mother, too, loves you immensely, though she cannot yet give you all she would like to in order to make reparation. The time of remorse is over, the first time... and I am in active love. But I still cannot do anything but pray for you. Be calm, though. You are already able to love and are thus protected by Love. I am learning to know, instant by instant in eternity. In knowing more and more, I am learning to love more and more. When I am able to love as we were commanded to, expiation will come to an end, and I will then be able to do much more. Paradise and power, on earth and here, are obtained by loving. Do not weep, my tot [a term of endearment Mother applied to me when I was a child which meant ‘my little one’ and which she went on using even when I was a grown woman in her very rare moments of expansiveness]. The others are being harmed. They must weep, for they are causing harm. Oh, if you only knew how much expiation there is here for what one’s neighbor is made to suffer! And they will all suffer it. And it will be just because they show no mercy to either the creature or the means used by God. How good we ought to be as long as we can! Be patient and offer God your patience in reparation for your mother. The best of offerings precisely because it is presented by you, by you alone. It is your offerings, your sacrifices that bring me relief because I have failed to show love mainly towards you, towards you among all the living.... Peppino is no longer among the living.... Good-bye, Mario...” (another name Mother applied to me, since she would have preferred a boy to a girl, and she called me “Mario” almost as a consolation for having brought a female into the world...). And a fresh kiss grazed my cheek as the vision dimmed... and slowly disappeared.
I called out, “Mom! Mom! Tell me...! Are you more purified now, when you are speaking, whereas before you could not? Tell me...! “ But she went off without answering. I also wanted to ask, “When you were in such agony in December and called to me with that tearful voice, was it because you saw what was ahead for me?” And I also wanted to ask, “Why doesn’t Dad ever come? Is he perhaps not at peace, or is he so at peace that he acts from Paradise without coming?” But I didn’t have time to. I remained curious, but with a sense of placid comfort....
(Note at 10 a.m.) To the point where, after a night of continuous suffering which kept me from sleeping, I gently dropped off with the rosary in my hands, since, having said the one hundred Requiems for Mother, I had begun the Rosary.233
233 We omit almost thirteen handwritten pages, dated May 19, 1946, containing Azariah’s commentary on the Mass for the Fourth Sunday after Easter, as well as slightly over six pages, dated May 20, 1946, containing the episode entitled “Gratitude Must Be Shown to Those Who Have Done Us Favors” from The Third Year of the Public Life and two pages, dated May 21, containing the first part of the episode entitled “A New Sabbath in Nazareth,” also from The Third Year of the Public Life.