September-November 1950prev home
The Apocalypse391
(Revelation 1:4) “He who is” is the ancient Name of God, the one with which God named Himself for Moses on the mountain, the one taught by Moses to his People so that it could call upon God. All of God’s eternity, power, and wisdom flashes forth in this name.
He who is: eternity. God has no past. He will have no future. He is. The eternal present.
If the human intellect, even the most powerful of human intellects, or a powerful person, even the most powerful among human beings, with a pure desire and pure thought devoid of human pride, meditates on this eternity of God, he senses - as no lesson, meditation, or contemplation of God could serve to make him sense - what God is and what he is: the All and nothingness; the Eternal and the transitory; the Immutable and the mutable; the Immense and the limited. Humility arises, along with the worship due the Divine Being to whom adoration should be tributed. Trust arises because man, nothingness, a speck of dust compared to the All and everything created by the All, feels he is under the protecting ray of Him who, existing from all eternity, wanted men to exist, to give them his infinite love.
He who is: infinite power.
What thing or person could be through itself? None. Without combustion or fusion of particles scattered through the firmaments a new star is not formed, just as mold does not form spontaneously. For the star, bigger than the earth, or for microscopic mold, pre-existing matter is needed and special environmental conditions suitable for the formation of a new body, whether it be very large or microscopic. But who gave the star and mold the chance to be formed? He who created all that is, for He had always been and had always been powerful.
There was, then, for everything that is a creating Principle that either directly created (the first creation) or maintained and fostered the perpetuation and renewal of creation. But who created Him? No one. He is. Through Himself. He does not owe his Being to any person or thing. He is. He did not need another being in order to be, just as no other being hostile to Him, though created by Him - for every spirit or flesh or creature in the perceptible nonrational world is created by God - can take Him into nonbeing. And if all that is, in the spiritual Heaven, in the perceptible Creation, or in the netherworld, is already a witness to his immense power, his being, which has received no beginning from any other being or thing, is the immense witness to his immense power.
He who is: most perfect wisdom, uncreated, which has not needed self-training or training by teachers in order to be. Wisdom that, in creating the all, which was not, did not commit any error, creating and willing perfectly.
What inventor or innovator or thinker, even if moved by a proper desire to investigate, know, and explain supreme and natural mysteries, does not fall into some errors and turn his intellect into the cause of harm to himself and others? Doesn’t the root of harm to all mankind originate in the First Parents’ desire to know and penetrate the domains of God? At once seduced by the Enemy’s false promise, they wanted to know... and fell into error, as thinkers, scientists, and men in general fall.
But He who is, and who is Most Perfect Wisdom, did not commit an error and does not, nor should the evil and pain which have made what was created perfect imperfect ever be said to come from the All-Knowing One, but from those who wanted and want to depart from that orderly law which God has given to all things and living beings. A perfect spiritual, moral, and physical order which, if respected, would have kept the earth in the state of the earthly paradise and the men inhabiting it in the happy condition of Adam and Eve before sin.
“He who is,” the ancient name of God (through excessive veneration, arising spontaneously in the selfhood of men aware of their condition as being fallen from Grace and deserving of God’s severity - that was the time when for men God was the terrible God of Sinai, the Judge prepared to avenge) was soon replaced by the other: Adonai. And this one - both because of different pronunciations, as observed in every nation at all times, from one region to another, and because it was used too rarely for the command ‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain’ to be applied integrally - provoked an alteration of the first pronunciation, “Yahweh.” But in Galilee, in which Emmanuel would spent almost all his life as God among men, in keeping with his prophetic name of Emanuel, and from which He would move to spread the Good News - He, who was the Word of God made Man - and to begin his mission as Savior and Redeemer, which would end on Golgotha - that name, taught by the Eternal to Moses, kept its initial sound: Yahweh.
And in the name of the Son of God made Man, in the name which God Himself imposed on his Incarnate Son and which the Angel of the glad tidings had communicated to the Immaculate Virgin, for those able to read and understand there is an echo of that name, and the Word who bore it taught his followers again the true word – Yahweh - to name God, to name his Most Holy Father, from whom the Son is begotten and from the two of whom the Holy Spirit proceeds. And He proceeded at the proper time to beget Christ the Savior in the womb of the Virgin.
The Son of God and of the Woman, Jesus. He who, in addition to being the promised Messiah and Redeemer, is the truest witness to the Father and his Will, the witness to Truth, Charity, and the Kingdom of God.
The Father and the Son - always One, though the Son had temporarily taken on a human Person, without thereby losing his eternal Divine Person, always One through the perfect Love uniting Them - bore witness to one another. The Father witnessed to the Son, in the Baptism at the Jordan, on Tabor, at the Transfiguration, and at the Temple for the last Passover, also in the sight of the Gentiles who had come to meet Jesus (John 12:28). But to this threefold perceptible witness there should be added the testimony of the greatest miracles worked by Christ almost always after calling upon the Father. It may truly be stated that the invisible presence of the Father, who is eternal, most pure Spirit, shone forth like a ray of uncontainable light which no obstacle could imprison in every manifestation of Christ, whether as a Teacher or as a worker of miracles and divine actions.
God the Father had created man from dust and had infused into him the breath of life and the spirit, a divine, immortal breath. The Father, whether or not He was manifestly called upon by the Son, along with Him also restored life to mortal flesh and, together with life, the soul and the reconstruction of the flesh, which, by death (Lazarus) or by disease (leprosy), had already been dissolved or destroyed, and, converting the sinner, He reconstructed the moral law in him and recreated the spirit, which had fallen into sin, as far as the great recreation unto Grace, through the sacrifice of Christ, for all those who believe in Him and accept his Doctrine, coming to form part of his Church.
The Son, moreover - to the world which did not know the Father and also to the little world of Israel, which, though not unaware of Him, did not know the truth of his love, mercy, and justice, tempered by the charity which is his Nature - revealed the Father. “Whoever sees Me sees the Father. My doctrine is not mine, but of Him who sent Me. You do not know the Truth who sent Me, his Word, but I know Him, for He begot Me. The Father who sent Me has not left his Son alone; He is with Me. The Father and I are one.” And He revealed the Holy Spirit, the eternal mutual love, embrace, and kiss of the Father and the Son, Spirit of the Spirit of God, Spirit of truth, Spirit of consolation, and Spirit of wisdom, who would confirm believers in Faith and teach them in Wisdom - He, the Theologian of theologians, Light of the mystics, Eye of the contemplators, and Fire of the lovers of God.
All of the teaching and all the works of Christ are a witness to the Father and a revelation of the incomprehensible mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. Of that Most Holy Trinity through which the Creation, Redemption, and Sanctification of man was possible. Of that Most Holy Trinity through which, without destroying the first creation, which had become corrupt, there could be a recreation or new creation of a couple within sin: of a new Eve, of a new Adam, the means to recreate unto Grace and thus reestablish the order which had been violated and the final end among and for the men proceeding from Adam.
By the will of the Father, in prevision of the merits of the Son, and by the work of the Holy Spirit, the Son could take human flesh from the Immaculate Woman, the new, faithful Eve, for the Spirit of God covered the Ark not made by the hand of man with his shadow, and there could be the new Adam, the Victor, the Redeemer, the King of the Kingdom of the Heavens, to which those are called who, accepting Him with love and following Him in doctrine, deserve to become the children of God, co-heirs of Heaven.
From his first words as a Teacher to his last words in the Cenacle, the Synedrium, and the Praetorium and on Golgotha and from these to those preceding the Ascension, Jesus always witnessed to the Father and the Heavenly Kingdom.
The Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of Christ. Two kingdoms which are a single kingdom, since Christ is One with God and God has given all things which exist to Christ and through Christ, after the Eternal saw them all in his Only-Begotten, Infinite Wisdom, the Origin as God, the End as God, and the Cause, as the God-Man, of the creation, deification, and redemption of man. Two kingdoms which are a single kingdom, for the Kingdom of Christ in us grants possession of the Kingdom of God for us.
And Christ, saying to the Father, “Thy Kingdom come,” as a Founder, as the King of kings, as the Eternal Son and Heir to all the eternal possessions of the Father, established it on earth, established it in us, and made his kingdom and the Father’s one; He joined them, uniting the kingdom on earth - as with a mystical bridge, which is, moreover, his long Cross as a Man among men who do not understand Him and as a Martyr by means of men and for the good of men - to the one in heaven; He gave that Kingdom of God the Church as its visible Royal Palace and, as King, Himself, its Eternal Head and Pontiff, and, like every king, He instituted its ministers and clearly described it as a “foretaste” of the Eternal Kingdom and called the Church the “new earthly Jerusalem,” which, at the end of time, would be transported and transformed into the “Heavenly Jerusalem,” in which the risen would rejoice forever and lead a life known to God alone.
A visible Kingdom by means of the Church, but also an invisible kingdom, this kingdom of God in us. It has taken on a likeness to its Founder, who, as Man, was and is a visible King and, as God, an invisible King because He is a most pure Spirit, to whom faith is tributed out of pure faith because human sight or any other human sense never saw God before He became incarnate and cannot physically see the First and Third Persons, but sees Them in the works which were or are carried out by Them. A Kingdom, then, which, like man, was made in the image and likeness of its Founder - a true and perfect Man and, as such, a visible prototype of men as the Father had created them, contemplating them in his Eternal Word and in his Incarnate Word, and true and perfect God and, as such, a most pure Spirit, invisible in his spiritual Divine Nature, but living with no possibility of a beginning or end, as the “Living One.” Such is the Kingdom of God, represented on earth by the Church, a visible, living Society with no possibility of an end since it was constituted by the Living One. Such is the Kingdom of God in us, invisible because it is spiritual, living in the spiritual part and living since it was created, unless man destroys the Kingdom of God in himself by sin and by persisting therein, killing the Life of the spirit as well.
A Kingdom which is served and won. It is served on earth and won beyond the earth, during all the events of daily life. Every year, month, day, hour, and minute, from the use of reason until death, it is service of God by the subject through doing his Will, obeying his Law, and living as a “son” and not an enemy or a beast preferring a life of small, transitory animal enjoyment to living in such a way as to deserve heavenly joy. Every year, month, day, hour, and minute is a means to win the Heavenly Kingdom.
“My Kingdom is not of this world,” the Incarnate Truth on different occasions told his chosen ones, friends, and faithful, as well as those who rejected Him and hated Him out of fear of losing their base power.
“My Kingdom is not of this world,” Christ testified, when, realizing they wanted to make Him king, He fled to the mountain, alone (John 6:15).
“My Kingdom is not of this world,” Christ replied to Pilate, who was questioning Him.
“My Kingdom is not of this world,” He said once more - the last time - to his Apostles, before ascending; and regarding the time of its reconstruction, still awaited in human terms by his chosen ones, He replied, “Only the Father knows the times and seasons, which He has established by his own authority” (Acts 1:7).
Christ always bore witness to the Kingdom, then, this twofold Kingdom, which, moreover, is one single Kingdom - that of Christ-God in us and that of us in God and with God, which will become the Perfect Kingdom, immutable, no longer subject to the snares and corruption when “He, the King of Kings, comes on the clouds, and every eye will see Him (Revelation 1:7), to take possession of his Kingdom (Revelation 19), to triumph over his enemies, to judge and give each what each has deserved and carry the chosen ones into the new world, the new heaven and the new earth, the new Jerusalem, where there is no corruption, weeping, or death (Revelation 19, 20, 21).”
And to testify with means more forceful than words that He is the visible King of the Kingdom of God - that is, of a kingdom where charity, justice, and power are exercised in supernatural ways - He did such powerful things that no other king can do them, restoring freedom to members and consciences bound by diseases, possession, or serious sins, dominating the very forces of nature and the elements, as well as men, when it was appropriate to do so (Luke 4:30; John 8:59 and 11:39), and also overcoming death (the daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow from Naim, and Lazarus), always showing perfect and impartial charity and justice and instructing with wisdom possessing teaching for every material, moral, or spiritual case, to the point that his enemies themselves had to confess, “No one has ever spoken as He does.”
To those who decreed, “We do not want him to rule,” He replied with miraculous deeds over which human will could exercise no power. With his Resurrection and Ascension He responded, thereby showing that if they were able to kill Him, it was because He so permitted for a purpose of infinite love, but that He was King of a Kingdom where power is infinite, for by Himself He could restore life to Himself and ascend by Himself to Heaven, to his Father’s side, even as a Man of true flesh.
While waiting to be able to grant his chosen ones the Heavenly Kingdom, He gave them peace. The peace which is, along with charity, the breeze of his Heavenly Kingdom. The peace issuing from Him. From Him, who is He who is and who is the Prince of Peace and who, to give men the peace of reconciliation with God came to earth - He who is Eternal Being - to take on flesh, blood, and a soul, to join them hypostatically to his Divinity, to carry out the perfect Sacrifice which appeased the Father. Perfect, as the immolated Victim, to erase the sin of mankind and the offense it had committed against God, its Creator, He was true Flesh in order to be immolated, and innocent, pure Flesh, but He was also true God. His Sacrifice was thus perfect and suitable and sufficient to wash away the Stain and restore Grace and make us once again citizens of the Kingdom of God and servants, not through slavery, but through a spiritual priesthood offering homage and worship to God, and He works so that his Kingdom will be extended and many souls will go to the Light and Life, to that immortal Life, for the risen flesh of the just, too, regarding which He testified to us that such a thing could be true by his Resurrection after having been slain - He, the Living One - thus becoming the “Firstborn among the dead,” those who on the last day will again take on the flesh of which they were divested for millennia, centuries, or years, to enjoy, moreover, with this flesh - the object of trial, struggle, and merit on earth - the inexpressible joy of knowledge of God and his perfections.
(Revelation 1:5) The Firstborn Among the Dead.
When this sentence is read, a certain confusion takes shape in the thought of readers with little training; a kind of doubt arises, and a question is posed as a result: “But isn’t there an error here or a contradiction, since the Firstborn is Adam, the firstborn in the life of Grace, to the point where Christ is called the “new Adam or second Adam,” and since, even if the first man is excluded because he fell from supernatural life and remained that way until the thirty-third year of Christ, Mary, his mother, both by the word of Wisdom and because She was conceived and born before Christ, her Son, in the fullness of Grace, is called the Firstborn Woman?”
There is no error or contradiction.
Adam is the first man, but not the firstborn, since he was not begotten by any father or any mother, but created directly by God.
Jesus is the Only-Begotten of the Father, whose Firstborn He also is. From Divine Thought, which had no beginning, the Word was begotten - He, too, having no beginning. He, as God, is thus the absolute Firstborn. And He is also the Firstborn as a Man, though born to Mary - in turn, called the “Firstborn Woman” by Wisdom and by the Church, for, by virtue of the paternity of God the Father in relation to Him, He is the true Firstborn among the children of God, not by participation, but by direct generation: “The Holy Spirit will descend into you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and the Holy One who will be born to you will thus be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).
The Firstborn, then, even if before Him his Mother was acclaimed as the “Firstborn Daughter of the Most High” (Sirach 24:5) and Wisdom, whose Seat She is, says regarding Her, “The Lord possessed me from the beginning, before He made all things. I was established from eternity” (Proverbs 8:22-23). And, in addition, “He who created me rested in my tabernacle” (Sirach 24:12). The Firstborn because, if his Mother is most holy and most pure through a singular privilege, the Son is infinitely holy and infinitely pure and superior, infinitely superior, to his Mother because He is God.
She, the firstborn Daughter by the choice of the Father, who possessed Her, his holy Ark, from the moment his Thought conceived of Her and established that through Her Grace would come to restore grace to men, and from the moment when, after creating Her full of grace, He always rested in Her, before, during, and after her Maternity. She was truly full of Grace because She was immaculate, always full of Grace, and by Grace She was made fertile, and incarnate, infinite Grace in Her and from Her took on the flesh and blood of Man, being formed in her virginal womb, with her blood, formed exclusively by her action and the action of the Holy Spirit.
He, the Firstborn Son by eternal generation. In Him the Father saw all future things, which were not yet made, both material and spiritual, for in his Word the Father saw creation and redemption, both effected by the Word and through the Word.
The admirable mystery of God! The Immense One loves Himself, not with a selfish love, but with an active, most powerful - indeed, infinite - love, and by this act alone, which is most perfect, He begets his Word, in all respects equal to Him, the Father, except in the difference of his Person. For if God is Triune - that is, an admirable unity, so to speak - with three faces, in order to make the explanation clear to the uninstructed, it is also a truth of faith that the individual faces are quite different - that is, in theological terms there is one single God and there are Three Persons, equal in all respects as regards Divinity, Eternity, Immensity, and Omnipotence, but not confused in relation to one another, but, rather, quite distinct, and One is not the Other, and yet there are not three gods, but a single God, who in and of Himself has given being to the individual Divine Persons in generating the Son and, by that very act, originating the procession of the Holy Spirit.
Power sees and does all through Wisdom, and through Charity, who is the Holy Spirit, He carries out his greatest works: the Generation and Incarnation of the Word, the creation and deification of man, the preservation of Mary from original sin, her divine Motherhood, and the Redemption of fallen humanity. He sees and does all through Wisdom - that is, through Him who existed before all things existed and who, consequently, is fully entitled to be called the “Firstborn.”
When Creation - which has existed and lived its life for millennia, in the individual forms and natures which God wished to introduce into Creation - did not exist, He, the Word of the Father, already existed. And by means of Him all the things which did not exist and which, then, in not possessing life, were dead, were made and thus received “life.” The Divine Word brought them into being from the chaos in which all the elements tossed and turned in a disorderly and useless manner. The Divine Word ordered all things, and all became useful and vital, and the visible, perceptible Creation thus existed and did so through laws of perfect wisdom and with a loving purpose.
For nothing was made without a loving end or wise law. From the drops of water gathered in basins to the molecules collecting to form stars emitting light and heat, from the plant lives predestined to nourish animal lives, foreordained to serve and bring joy to man, the masterpiece of creation, who, because of his animal and rational perfection and, above all, the immortal part enclosed in him, a breath of the Eternal Himself, is predestined to return to his Origin to rejoice in God and be the cause of God’s rejoicing - for God rejoices at the sight of his children - everything was made through love. A love which, if it had been faithfully returned, would not have allowed death and pain to prompt man to doubt God’s love for him.
Death. Among the many things made by God, death had not been made. And pain had not been made, or sin, the cause of death and pain. The Enemy introduced them into the marvelous Creation. And through man, the perfection of Creation, who had let himself be corrupted by the Enemy, by Hatred, death came, first of Grace and then of the flesh; and there came all the sorrows and troubles following upon the death of Grace in Adam and his life companion and in all the descendants of the First Parents.
How, then, is Jesus said to be the “Firstborn from among the dead” if He was born to a woman descending from Adam? Even if, through the act of divine fecundation, the Mother begot Him, and the Mother had clearly been born to two who were certainly just, but stained with the hereditary sin coming from Adam to every man, the sin which deprives us of supernatural life? These are the objections of many.
Christ was doubly the “firstborn” from the time of his birth. For He was born as a man had not yet been born, since when the first child was born to Adam, Adam could no longer beget children who were supernaturally alive. Conceived when the first parents were already corrupted and had fallen into the threefold concupiscence, their children were born dead to supernatural life. And every father and mother from Adam and Eve on procreated that way.
Joachim and Anna would also have procreated that way, though both were most just, both because they, too, were wounded by original sin and because Mary’s conception took place in a simply human and common manner. The only extraordinary element in the birth of Mary, the predestined Mother of God, was the infusion, through a singular divine privilege granted in view of the Virgin’s future mission, of a soul preserved from original sin - a unique soul among those of all born to man and woman - which was immaculate.
Christ, however, born to Mary, is the firstborn from a spiritually inviolate womb, since Mary, faithful to Grace as no other woman was able to be from Eve on, did not experience, I won’t say the smallest venial sin, but even the smallest turbulence capable of upsetting her state of perfect innocence and her perfect balance, whereby her intellect always ruled over her inferior part, and her soul, over her intellect, as happened in Adam and Eve as long as they did not allow themselves to be seduced by the Tempter; and the firstborn from a materially inviolate womb because, since God is both He who made Her a Mother and He who was born to Her and was thus endowed with the gift proper to spirits of penetrating and emerging without opening any door or removing any stone, God entered Her to take on human nature and emerged from Her to begin his mission as the Savior without harming organs or tissues.
The Firstborn and Only-Begotten was born in this way, from the Woman Full of Grace - the Living One par excellence, He who would restore Life to all those dead to Grace. He was born not from the hunger of two bodies, but in the way in which the children of men would have received life if they had maintained themselves alive to Grace. Not a sensual appetite, but a holy love for God, to whom they could consecrate those born in Grace, and a love devoid of malice towards woman, should have guided the increase and multiplication commanded by God - only love, not corrupted by animality.
When this order had been violated, God, to create the new Adam, had to form Him from an Immaculate Woman, no longer from the mud which, having risen up in pride, had wanted to be like God, but with the elements which were indispensable for forming a new man, provided exclusively by the Most Pure and Most Humble Woman - humble to the point where for this reason alone She would already have deserved to become the Mother of the Word.
And the Firstborn from among the dead saw the light of day to bring light to those lying in darkness, Life for those dead to Grace, whether still on earth or already gathered into the netherworld, waiting for the Redemption to open the gates of Heaven for them. And He was also the Firstborn of those who are to return alive to Heaven in the flesh as well. For Him it is true to the full, but since He was born to an Immaculate Woman faithful to the Grace received, who did not leave this treasure inactive, but, rather, always used it actively, with a constant increase of Grace because of Mary’s perfect response to all motions or divine inspirations, for this reason alone as well, the condemnation common to all the sinners in Adam and on account of Adam and his life companion - “You shall return to the dust” - would not have been applied.
The Mother of God, too, did not return to the dust, since She was exempt, in being sinless, from the common condemnation and because it was not appropriate for her flesh, which had been the ark and terrain to contain the Word and to give the Divine Seed all the elements needed for it to become the God-Man, to become putrefaction and dust. But the Mother passed from the earth to Heaven many years after her Son. The Firstborn of those risen from the dead, in the flesh as well, is and remains Jesus alone, who, after his supreme humiliation and total immolation through complete obedience to the Father’s desires, received supreme glorification with his undeniable resurrection. For many - and not all of them his friends - saw his glorified Body and even more saw Him ascend in the midst of the worshipping Angels and later remained to testify to these two truths. “Why do you seek the Living One among the dead? He is no longer here. He has risen” (Luke 24:5-6 and also Matthew and Mark). He rose so transfigured in beauty that Mary Magdalene did not recognize Him until He did allowed Himself to be recognized. And, in addition: “Why are you standing there looking towards Heaven? Jesus, who has been taken away from you, has ascended into Heaven, and He will return just as He has risen” (Acts 1:11).
In this way, the Word of Truth; and the angels, who cannot lie; and the Mother, whose perfection in all respects was inferior only to that of God, her Father, her Son, and her Spouse; and the Apostles, who saw Him ascend; and Stephen, the first martyr; and, after him, many others confirmed that Jesus is the Firstborn from among the dead because He was the first Man to enter Heaven in his flesh. The day when a just man rises with his spirit liberated from the flesh to form part of the people of the blessed spirits is called a birthday. Jesus, on his birthday as a Most Holy Man, took up his dwelling with all his qualities as the God-Man: in flesh, blood, soul, and divinity, for He was the Perfect Innocent.
But there is a second death: that of the spirit devoid of Grace. A great number of the just had been waiting for centuries and millennia for the Redemption, in purifying them from sin, to allow them to come to form part of the Kingdom of God, where only those who have supernatural Life in themselves can enter. An even greater number of men who have come after Christ are waiting to enter when their purification from serious voluntary sins is completed or when Most Perfect Justice opens the Heavens to all who lived and acted with charity and justice, according to the law of conscience, to serve and honor thereby the Being who they felt existed, thus forming part of the soul of the Church.
It is unthinkable that God, Perfect Charity who has created all souls, predestining them to Grace, should exclude from his Kingdom those who, through no fault of their own, have not received Baptism. What sin have they committed? Did they spontaneously wish to be born in places which were not Catholic? Are the newborn who die at birth responsible for not being baptized? Can God act cruelly towards all of these, who are not the “church” in the strict sense of the word, but are such in having received their souls from God and having died as innocents because they died at birth or lived as just people through their natural tendency to do good in order, in that way, to honor the Supreme Good, to whose existence everything in and around them bore witness. No, and a convincing indication that such is not the case is the inexorable, very severe judgment of God regarding those who suppress a life, even an embryonic one, or one just born, keeping it from receiving the Sacrament which removes original sin. Why this severity, if not because for centuries and millennia those souls of innocents are separated from God, in a state which is not a punishment, but not joyful, either? Can it be thought that the Most Good, who has predestined all men to Grace, would deprive those who by no spontaneous choice are not Catholics of it?
“My Father has many mansions in Heaven,” Christ said. When this world is no more, but there is a new world, a new heaven, and the new tabernacles of the Eternal Jerusalem, and all the rational creation receives its glorification with the exaltation of the Risen Ones, who were the just, to possess the Eternal Kingdom of God, those were united only to the soul of the Church will also have their dwelling in Heaven, for only Heaven and Hell will remain eternally, and it cannot be thought that Charity would damn to eternal torment creatures undeserving of it.
Jesus Christ, having returned his spirit to the hands of the Father, was the first to enter with his Most Holy Spirit into the Kingdom of Life, going to the place of Adam, who should have been the first man entering to form part of the heavenly people and who, because of his abuse of power, had to wait for millennia to enter with his spirit and has to wait for many more millennia to enter with his flesh reunited to his spirit. Jesus did not. At the very instant in which “with a loud cry” He offered up his spirit, his most just soul - which, because of the infinite charity of his nature as the God-Man, had burdened itself with all the past, present, and future sins of mankind, but not with the sin which takes away Grace, which is the life of the spirit, and He had burdened Himself with them to consume them all through his complete immolation - was, like every human soul, judged by the Father, who, as before the consummation of the Sacrifice, “treated Him who did not know sin as if He were sin itself” (Paul, 2 Corinthians 5:21), in” the same way, after everything had been accomplished, “exalted Him and gave Him a name above every other name, so that at the Name of Jesus every knee must bend in Heaven, on earth, and in the netherworld, and every tongue must confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father” (Paul to the Philippians 2:9-11). And, having been judged, his human soul, a soul that had reached perfection, at once rejoiced in the Lord and found rest in Him until the moment when, rejoined to his Body, it made the Living One, who had been slain, the glorious Risen One, the first to rise gloriously with his flesh as well, the first Man born to Heaven in body and soul, the first fruits of the risen, the promise of resurrection for the just, and the pledge of possession of the Kingdom whose King and firstborn heir He is.
It is always to the firstborn that the Father’s inheritance is given, that inheritance which He has established for his children. And so that all the brothers and sisters of Christ would have a share in this eternal, holy, regal inheritance, He bound it to them with a holy testament, written with his own blood; and so that men would take their share in the Kingdom, which the Father gave to Him and He accepted in order to give it to men, his brothers and sisters, He let Himself be slain, for only the death of the testator gives value to a testament (Paul, Hebrews 9:16-17).
Jesus, the Firstborn with many primogenitures, was thus the first to take possession of the Kingdom where He is the King of Kings and Lord of the eternal age, according to the Will of the Father, of Him who is the Almighty, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning, the End, the Power, Wisdom, and Charity, of Him who knows everything about what He does and does all that He does with perfection and a good purpose, and for this reason He begot his Word, and, when the time came, gave Him flesh and then immolated Him and afterwards raised and exalted Him and placed in his pierced hands all power to judge, whereby all who see Him from among those who either materially or by the offense of their sins pierced Him will beat their breasts once and once again: at the private judgment and at the final appearance of Christ the Judge. For so it has been established and so it will be.
(1:8) The One who is to come.
In what way? Certainly not by taking on flesh again. If his return is certain, equally certain is the fact that He will never take on different flesh, since He possesses perfect flesh - eternal, glorified by the Father - from the first time He robed Himself therewith.
Nor will He come for a second redemption. There will not be a second redemption, for the first was sufficient and perfect. Since then men have had all the elements and supernatural assistance to remain in the people of the recreated children of God and to move from recreation to supercreation, if only they want to do so. For if, as has been stated, and wisely stated, “man is a capacity which God fills with Himself,” and if, in addition, “grace is a seed which God places in the soul,” or also “a ray descending to illuminate and fecundate,” it is logical that, if man seconds divine desires and inspirations, his capacity to contain God grows and expands the more the whole man grows in age and in the capacity to understand and will. To understand the spiritual words of God - that is, the motions God prompts in every man to lead him to ever-greater justice and a desire to reach the end for which he was created. And in the same way the seed of Grace, if man seconds its growth with faithfulness to it and the practice of the Law and virtues, changes from a little seed to a large plant, yielding fruits of eternal life, and the ray, the more the soul grows in grace and rises on the way of perfection, increases the brightness of its light, as happens with anyone rising from a valley towards the summit of a mountain.
This capacity, which expands to contain God increasingly, this plant growing as the sovereign in the garden of the soul, this ray of the Eternal Sun changing from a ray into an ocean of lights, the more man rises towards the Father of Lights, takes man, re-created by means of the Grace obtained through the merits of Christ, to his supercreation - that is, to identification with Christ - by taking on a new humanity, following his example and model, a new humanity transforming man, a rational creature, into a divinized creature who thinks, speaks, and acts in a manner as similar as possible to that of his Eternal Master in mortal time - the manner He commanded his faithful to adopt. “The disciple, to be perfect, must be like his Master” (Luke 6:40).
Since for twenty centuries there has been everything necessary for man to possess the Eternal Kingdom and reach the end for which he was created, there will not be a second redemption by the God-Man. The man who loses Grace through weakness has the means to recover it and be redeemed. As he falls on his own, so on his own he can be redeemed by using the perpetual gifts which Christ instituted for all men who wish to draw from them.
And the Word of the Father will not come for a second Evangelization. He will not come personally. And yet He will evangelize.
He will raise up new evangelizers who will evangelize in his Name. They will evangelize in a new way in keeping with the times, a new way which will not substantially change the eternal Gospel or the great Revelation, but will broaden, complete, and make them understandable and acceptable even to those who, on account of their atheism and their incredulity regarding the Last Things392 and many other revealed truths, cite the reason that “they cannot believe things which they do not understand or love beings about whom too little is known, and that little is such as to cause fear and sorrow instead of attracting and encouraging.”
New evangelizers. In reality, there already are, even if the world partly is unaware of them and partly attacks them. But they will be more and more numerous, and the world - after having overlooked or mocked or opposed them, when terror takes hold of the foolish who now deride the new evangelizers - will turn to them so that they will be strength, hope, and light in the darkness, horror, and tempest of ongoing persecution by the antichrists. For, if it is true that before the end of time more and more false prophets, servants of the Antichrist, will arise, it is equally true that Christ the Lord will set more and more of his servants against them, raising up new apostles in places where they are least expected.
And since Infinite Mercy, taking pity on distressed men overwhelmed by the storm of blood, fire, persecution, and death, will have Mary, the pure Star of the Sea, shine upon the sea of blood and horror, and She will be the forerunner of Christ in his final coming, these new evangelizers will bear the Gospel of Mary, who was truly left in the shadow by all the Evangelists and Apostles, and Disciples, whereas vaster knowledge of Her would have instructed many, preventing many falls. For She is the Co-Redemptrix and Teacher. The Teacher of pure, humble, faithful, prudent, and devout life in her home and among the people of her time. She is always a Teacher, down through the centuries, worthy to be all the better known, the more the world sinks towards the mire and darkness, so as to be all the more imitated in order to lead the world back to what is not darkness and mire.
The times ahead will be times of war - not only materially, but, above all, the war between materiality and spirit. The Antichrist will seek to drag rational creatures into the swamp of a beastly life. Christ will seek to prevent this repudiation not only of religion, but also of reason by opening up new horizons and ways illuminated by spiritual lights, prompting a powerful awakening of the spirit in whoever does not openly reject it, an awakening assisted by these new evangelizers, bearing not only Christ, but the Mother of God. They will uplift the standard of Mary. They will lead people to Mary. And Mary, who was already, once before, the cause and source - indirect, but still powerful - of man’s redemption, will continue to be such. For She is the holy Adversary of the wicked Enemy, and her heal is destined to crush the infernal dragon perpetually, as Wisdom, which has found its seat in Her, is destined to defeat the heresies corrupting souls and intellects.
At that time - which must inevitably come, in which the darkness will fight with the light, bestiality with the spirit, the Satanic with the surviving children of God, Babylon with the Heavenly Jerusalem, and the lusts of Babylon, the threefold lusts, will overflow like stinking, uncontainable waters, seeping in everywhere, even into the House of God, as already occurred and is to happen again, as has been said, in that time of open separation between the children of God and Satan, in which the children of God will reach a spiritual power never before attained, and those of Satan, an evil power so vast that no mind can imagine what it will really be like - the new evangelization will come, the full new evangelization, which for the time being is going through its initial awakening, exposed to opposition.
And it will work great miracles of conversion and perfection. And there will be great efforts by Satanic hatred for Christ and the Woman. But the two will be unreachable for their enemies. It would not be appropriate or useful for them to be reached. A supreme offense against God may not be committed by striking the Two who are dearest to Him - his Son and the Mother - who in their time already suffered all the most hateful and painful offenses, but who now, having been glorified for centuries, could not be offended without an immediate, horrendous divine punishment of the offenders.
For this reason, with new means, in the right way and at the right time, the final evangelization will be carried out, and those who yearn for Light and Life will have them - full, perfect, and provided through a means known only to the two Givers, by Jesus and Mary. Only those who choose darkness and mire, heresy and hatred for God and Mary - that is, those already dead before dying, the putrid spirits, the spirits sold to Satan and his servants, the forerunners of the Antichrist and the Antichrist himself - will have darkness and mire and torment and eternal hatred, as is proper for it to be, when He who is to come does come.
(1:17) Jesus, in his glorified Body, of inconceivable beauty, is and is not different from the way He was on earth. He is different because every glorified body takes on a majesty and perfection which no mortals, no matter how good-looking, majestic, and perfect they are, can have; but He is not different because the glorification of the flesh does not alter the traits of the person. Consequently, in the resurrection of bodies, those who were tall will be tall, those who were thin will be thin, those who were robust will be robust, and those who were blond, blond, and those who were dark, dark, and so on. The imperfections will disappear, though, for in the Kingdom of God all is Beauty, Purity, Health, and Life, just as was established for the earthly Paradise, too, and such it would have been if man had not introduced into it sin, death, and pain of every kind, from illnesses to hatred between one man and another.
The earthly Paradise was the material figure of what will be the Heavenly Paradise inhabited by glorified bodies. The natural aspects of the earthly Paradise will also exist in the heavenly one - that is, in the Eternal Kingdom - but they will exist in a supernaturalized manner. Accordingly, the sun, the moon, and the stars, which were lights of varying brightness created by God to illuminate the dwelling of Adam, will be replaced by the Eternal Sun (Revelation 21:23), by the most lovely and pure Moon, and by numberless stars - that is, by God the Light, who robes Mary in his light (Revelation 12:1), and her foundation is the moon, and her crown, the most beautiful stars in Heaven; by Mary, the Woman with a stellar name, who by her immaculate purity defeated Satan; by the saints, who are the stars of the new sky, the splendor of God being communicated to the just (Matthew 13:43). And the river watering the earthly Paradise, which - since it symbolized the means by which humanity would be sprinkled with waters that would cleanse it of its sins and make it fertile for the birth and growth of virtues and worthy of pleasing its Creator - had four arms, like the Cross, from which the river of Divine Blood issued forth to wash, fertilize, and make fallen humanity pleasing to God, will be replaced by the river of living water flowing from the Throne of God and the Lamb, which streams through the City of God (Revelation 22:1). And the tree of life, also a symbol of the Tree which would have restored true Life to those who had lost it - the Cross, from which the Most Holy Life-Giving Fruit hung and the Medicine came for all the diseases of the self, which can cause true death - will be replaced by the trees “on both sides of the river,” of which Revelation speaks (22:2).
I said that all imperfections would disappear. The inhabitants of the Heavenly Jerusalem, now having reached perfection and no longer subject to falls - for in the City of God, just as still impure sinners cannot enter, nothing capable of producing impurity, abomination, or deceit can enter - will be without any imperfections at all. The great seducer, who was able to penetrate into the physical Paradise, will be unable to slip into the Heavenly Paradise. Lucifer, who plunged from Heaven to the netherworld because of his rebellion (Isaiah 14:12-15), will be buried and “nullified” at the end of time, before the new heaven and the new earth come, so that he can no longer act, do harm, and bring pain to those who have overcome every trial and every purification, and they will live in the Lord.
There will no longer be any spiritual or intellectual imperfection, then. And physical imperfections as well - which were a cross and torment, merited if proceeding from an unclean life, or unmerited if proceeding from genetic inheritance or human cruelty - will disappear. The glorified bodies of the children of God will be as they would have been if man had remained, in all respects, intact as God created him, perfect in the three parts composing him, perfect as he was made by God.
Jesus-the God-Man, most perfect because He was God Incarnate; whole because He was innocent and holy, with no damage to any of his parts which could be a handicap or shame, for the five wounds are gems of glory and not a mark of dishonor; so luminous, in being “Light,” like God, in being “Most Glorious” as a Most Holy Man, that He seemed white in his flesh, robe, and hair, as He became on Tabor, in a cassock, for He was a “Priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech” (Psalm 109:4), that is, by direct divine ordination, rendered such by the Father, with a golden belt because He was the Eternal Pontiff - will appear to everyone as He was when a Man, and everyone will recognize Him, just as He is in being Most Glorious because, out of obedience to Love, He tasted death to give Life to all, and the blessed will rejoice on seeing Him.
“I am the First and the Last.”
As God has no beginning, so the Word of God has no beginning. And yet He has a mysterious beginning, which is the one indicated by the inspired John at the start of his Gospel of Light: “In the beginning was the Word.” This beginning without beginning, with no time period serving to indicate it, since for the Eternal there is no temporal limit, but an endless abyss of eternity - what was it, then? It is one of the mysteries which the Word Himself will illuminate for souls when they are in the Kingdom. For everything will be illuminated and rendered knowable by means of the Word, there, in his Eternal Kingdom.
But for men, for whom the flesh and exile make it impossible to penetrate the mysteries and difficult to understand them, even in the measure of what is comprehensible for those living on earth, it should be said that this beginning with no beginning has been since God is, and, by his being, He generates and loves what He generates - that is, forever - for the first one begotten from his fecund spirit with a most ardent and perfect love is his Word, eternal, as He is.
It could be said to those most resistant to understanding that the first blazing forth of Charity generated the Word and produced the procession of the Holy Spirit. But since there is no first blazing forth of Charity for one who is Eternal, it is better to say that the perfect Unity and Trinity of God has had no beginning in the sense which men want to give that word and that the mystery, in being a mystery, will be revealed to us only when we are one with God, just as Christ requested and obtained for us.
Beforehand it is useless to seek to penetrate and know the truth of this mystery. The most ardent mystics, the deepest contemplatives, and the truest worshippers, though, nearly forgetting their human needs, they immerse themselves, plunge in, burn, rise, and dash into that Abyss of loftiness which is the Divinity, to gain knowledge so as to love better and better, to implore the only Object of their love to grant them the truth, the revelation of this mystery in order to be able to explain it to many who, in knowing it, would be attracted towards Love, will never, as long as mortal flesh robes them, be able to receive full knowledge of this mystery.
It is necessary to believe through faith, pure faith. To believe without the limitations of human inquiry. To receive the truths which are proposed to us without wanting to explain them to oneself. To believe firmly, simply, and completely. The more one believes in this way, the thinner the veil over the mystery becomes, to the point where, from time to time, one gets the spiritual feeling that it has split open for an instant, confirming the spirit in supernatural hope of possessing God and producing a more ardent blazing of charity, which, joining us increasingly to God, fosters a new, very swift revelation of the sublime Mystery. Advance, relative instants of the Knowledge which will form our eternal blessedness. We shall then know what here, more or less relatively and in proportion to our life of identification with Christ, the Wisdom, Truth, and Knowledge of the Father, and of our union with the Divinity, we have barely glimpsed in his Truth.
We shall know God. This God who has always been. We shall know the Word. This Word who has always been and who is also begotten by the Father, without, for this reason, having had an initial moment of generation. This Word, “consubstantial with the Father,” in Heaven and on earth, in his human time. This Word, one with the Father, and yet clearly distinct from the Father in his Person, which is not identical to that of the Father, but a specific Person, and a Divine Person, not annulled or absent when the Word took on a human person, but joined to it, though the two remain distinct in Christ, as they are distinct in the admirable Threefold Unity, a true testimony that in man, when made a son of God, or a divinized creature, by Grace, there can be union with God. A most perfect and unique union in the Word made Man, who, while remaining God, took on mortal flesh. A relative union, but no less true, in man, when elevated from the status of a natural, rational creature to that of a divinized creature through participation in supernatural life.
Now, in view of the foregoing, Jesus Christ, who will come at the proper time and in the proper way, for He is Eternal, is rightly called “the First and the Last.”
The First in being and the First in instructing. Initially, through his Word of Wisdom speaking to the patriarchs and prophets by supernatural ways, and then as the Teacher for the throngs in Palestine, and still later, once again, by supernatural ways, for his servants and instruments living on earth. And the Last in instructing, for in Heaven, for the blessed spirits, and then for the risen, He will be the Word, and through the Word, through Jesus, the citizens of the Heavens will receive the final, perfect, and complete instruction which will make known all the truths - incomprehensible as “mysteries of faith” - regarding which doctors, contemplators, and mystics have wearied themselves to gain knowledge.
The Eternal Master. The first and last Master. Still the Master when every school of doctors ceases to exist. A Master filling all the gaps which have remained for millennia and centuries as regards the knowledge of God, illuminating the depth of the mystery which has always remained obscure for human intellects, canceling out the errors of every human school. And as through his first fiat, given by a Master who knows perfectly how everything should be done so that it will be good, the physical Creation appeared, so through his last fiat there will appear the end of all that was corrupted and it will be judged a “good thing” that it no longer exists, and there will appear the new world, and all things will be established in a new, immutable way, according to his Will as a most perfect Master and supreme Judge, to whom the Father has entrusted every power of the Kingdom of God in the Heavens, of the Kingdom of God in hearts, and of the Judgment of all creatures - angelic, rational, or infernal - so that all, in Heaven, on earth, and in the netherworld, will worship, know, and perceive that He is the One who is, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the Alpha and Omega, the Almighty.
Chapter 2
The Apocalypse is a book of revelation, certainly. Indeed, it concludes the great Revelation. But it is also a prophetic book.
Both revelation and prophecy come from God. For only God inspires them. Only God can inspire them because only He knows the Truth, in being the Truth, and is familiar with future events because He is the Eternal, the All-Knowing, and the Almighty.
Prophecy is like a projection of future events, seen by God alone, and illuminated for those living in the mists of their temporary present. To enable the great illiterates in religion to understand - and there are so many, even among those who limit being Catholics to receiving the Sacraments, obeying the precept to observe the days of obligation, taking part in processions, and going - yes, this, too - to talks, but who are unable to respond, when questioned, on so many matters and the meaning of certain words, for one thing is the expression “prophecy and prophets,” and another, “apostle,” and still others, and they get something good, involving light, mixed up with what is not good, not made of light, because they do not know - to make these religious illiterates understand what religion is and what prophecy is, just as elsewhere, to explain the Unity and Trinity of God, the comparison was used of the three sides of a polyhedron, in the same way let the comparison now be used - and perhaps they will understand - of a projection based on real events, but happening in another place and in a previous time, or a projection of events which will certainly take place, but are not yet present, and one single Mind knows them, one single Eye sees them, and one single Word can set them forth.
Man, over the ages, has made many inventions and discoveries, some good, some bad, and others which could have been good, because they could have been a means for training, instruction, and even elevation and instead have become not good because they have served to excite the base appetites of the inferior part, corrupt the intellect, and harm the soul as a result. One of these things which could have been good and which have become not good, in serving to disseminate vice, crime, and sin, is cinematography; another is the press. But the former is of use to get our idea across. Cinematography, with its films, can depict events and persons of the past. More or less competently in historical terms, for man rarely does what he does well and even more rarely does so according to the truth of things. But, in any case, by means of this invention, it is possible to show the living persons, events, traditions, and customs of past centuries and even millennia. The film flows by and man sees.
God takes a man - a prophet or one inspired by Him, certainly chosen by Him for this purpose - and for his spiritual eyes and ears depicts and relates past events whose truth has been altered, because of the passage of centuries or an involuntary alteration which may easily arise in oral revelation or a voluntary alteration caused by religious schisms, heresies, or scientific investigation detached from religious wisdom. Or He illuminates and reveals future events which only He knows in his eternal Present. And they see and hear, as if a film with sound were being projected in front of them. And God commissions them to manifest what He reveals to them, to become his hand and mouth to write and say what God has been pleased to reveal.
This comparison - Jesus, too, made use of comparisons to enable his followers to understand his lessons - will enable many to grasp what prophecy is and what the prophets are, what the inspired person or seer is, and how one must believe in them, who manifest what is good to know so as to proceed along sure paths, provided they do not say things incompatible with Faith and the Great Revelation.
To some, prophecies seem to be something not only incomprehensible, because they are too obscure, but obsolete, in speaking of events that took place centuries ago. Yes, many things mentioned in them have already happened and will not be repeated. But many will be repeated, as they already have been every time humanity has returned to the condition for which the prophecy was given. Accordingly, whereas the Incarnation of the Word and the founding of the Church will not be repeated, since the Church, founded by Jesus, its Pontiff and Eternal Head, cannot perish because of his divine promise and there can thus be no need to found another, it is just as true that the punishments permitted by God as a result of the abomination entering the holy place and human injustice will be repeated, as they already have been repeated. And in regard to many other things it will be that way.
Humanity, with alternate cycles of justice and injustice, of real faith and merely external faith – “the letter and not the spirit of faith” - or even of nonfaith, for half the world’s population, also undergoes alternate cycles of punishment and forgiveness - already suffered and obtained, respectively - without being made better by this. And prophecies, because they are given by those seeing “Time” with no limit in time, in many points serve as a light and guide, a voice of truth, and a merciful counsel for every time.
The Apocalypse, the prophecy of the Apostle of Light and Charity, illuminates - and does so through Charity - times, every time, until the last time. Nineteen centuries have passed since John received the revelation called “the Apocalypse,” whose time of fulfillment, when measuring it solely against eternity, could be termed “near.” But if the time of waiting, when measured against earthly time, was and is long, as regards references to the state of the seven churches it is as current now as it was then.
John, on seeing the seven churches at that time, the seven more or less luminous lights at that time, saw not only those, but the other churches which would be formed over the centuries, just as he foresaw what has happened and will happen on earth, in Heaven, and in the netherworld.
He saw. The lights of holiness. The shadows of injustice. The growth of spirituality. The growth of humanity, or, rather, of materiality. The blazing of charity and of wisdom nourished by it, a blazing rising up to Heaven. And the misty smoke of science devoid of wisdom, crawling on the ground, when man attempts to explain himself and so many other things in creation with his own knowledge alone. The sickening smoke of the lusts of the self, of all the lusts. The blameworthy smoke of selfishness and ferocity. Smoke, smoke, nothing more than smoke, and harmful smoke, crawling on the ground, seeping in, sullying, poisoning, and killing. Killing the “best” things in the sense which God gives to this word and which we would call the most “beautiful” things.
The three and four virtues, social relations, consciences, intellects, peace in the family.... All of them things which the smoke, which is found where there is no blazing of charity, kills, poisons, sullies, and penetrates. The forming of the new world - the world of Jesus, of his Kingdom. Arid the forming of a new world in the new one - the world of the antichrist, of his kingdom.
The triumphs of Christianity. The defeats of Christianity. The admirable unity of Christ’s Sheepfold. The rebellious separation of parts of the Flock. John saw it all. And his vision was so intense that the fulfillment of all seemed to him to be immediate. But it was not! Centuries and centuries had to pass before everything viewed by the seer on Patmos was fulfilled. But everything will be fulfilled, as stated, as partially, and at different times, it has already been fulfilled, though without reaching the completeness of the things which are not good foreseen by John.
A human matter, which is not readily perfect, and even less readily not repeated. Belonging to the People of God did not keep the Jews from falling again into the same sins on different occasions. The example of Adam and the divine punishments - with such means as the flood, the dispersion of peoples after the arrogance of Babel, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra, and the oppression of Egypt did not keep the people from sinning. The mercy of God, who freed them from the oppression of the Pharaoh and wanted to give them a select homeland and law, did not lead men not to sin out of gratitude to God. And they sinned during the very journey towards the Promised land, while God, as a true Father, covered them with his gifts.
Man is always man. In the old and new religion, both of them divine. Whether he belongs to the old or new church. “You seek Me not only because you have seen that I work miracles, but also because you ate those loaves of bread and were filled” (John 6:26). Mankind is always like that. It is attracted by external, prodigious things, by what represents a novelty or even material enjoyment, by human hopes and promises which are thought to be attainable more than by internal, supernatural things which are no less certain - indeed, much more prodigious, much more joyful, much more secure, and, above all, much more enduring, for they are eternal.
Judas is the perfect prototype of those who are seduced by material wonders and the hope of human honors capable of satisfying intellectual and visual covetousness. A perfect prototype not susceptible of conversion.
The other apostles and disciples, though, were not free, either, from this human weakness, not complete in them, of which they stripped themselves more and more to the point of being so detached from it that they could endure all that was humiliation and persecution, going so far as to be able to strip themselves of life itself to obtain eternal Life. And, when confirmed in Faith, Hope, and Charity, in Grace and Wisdom, and in Piety, Strength, and the holy Fear of God - in all the gifts of the Paraclete - they became as many other “teachers” and “founders,” not of a new doctrine and new churches - for there is one perfect doctrine and Church - but “of the doctrine and the Church” among new peoples and in new regions.
Twenty centuries have passed. New apostles have succeeded the first apostles, and new churches, other churches, in ever-new areas of the earth. Apostolic work knows no interruption or pause, even if, because of the faults of men, though proceeding, it recedes in the extent of its domain, and not only in this. The continuation of work, the propagation of the Gospel, the expansion of the Mystical Body - undeniable truths and logical consequences, since Christ nourishes his Church, guides it, and spurs it on, and Jesus is eternal, powerful, and holy. His Holiness descends and circulates in the whole Body. His Power provides mysterious strength to his servants. His Eternity keeps the Church from dying.
But because of the sin and ill will of men, while it has been proceeding and expanding for twenty centuries in new lands, it has been halting, retroceding, and, indeed, dying in others. A sin of these times alone? No, of all times. More or less totally and profoundly, while there were deviations, interruptions, separations, and even “death” in the shoots constituting the whole mystical Vine. They were of different kinds, and the more the centuries passed, the more serious were the deviation and defection of the shoots of the Vine. Now is the time of Negation.
But John saw all of these things. He foresaw them. He saw them in the seven churches at that time. He foresaw them in the churches now, of which the seven churches at that time were not only a truth, but a figure. And he also foresaw the present horror: that of Negation in too many places and in too many spirits. And he foresaw the final horror: the time of the Antichrist.
He saw everything through the first vision. The final consequence is the result of the first consequence. Through cycles of ages it is repeated, growing more and more, the more the Church grows. It is also painfully logical for this to occur. For the more Christ’s affirmation and triumph grows in the saints, the more He is hated and opposed by the Antichrist. Is the Mystical Body winning its battles? The Antichrist increases his power and unleashes more atrocious ones. For if Christ wants to triumph, as is only right, the Antichrist also wants to triumph, and his violence grows, the more Christ triumphs, to defeat Him and destroy Him. Oh, he cannot! Christ is the Victor. But he hopes to and tries to. And since he cannot have a collective victory over the whole people of God, he seizes his individual or national victories, leading intellects astray and possessing spirits, tearing peoples away from the Church.
The seven churches. They had been founded only shortly before and founded by those who had been sent directly by God to found them: “Go and teach all peoples” (Matthew 28:19), after, in keeping with the divine promise, they had received the Holy Spirit, who “would remind them of everything and teach them all truth” (John 14:26), in such a way as to be understood - that is, making them capable of understanding the highest things, so that “robed in power from on high” (Luke 24:49), they would be capable of being the founders of such a lofty thing as the Kingdom of God among men. And, in spite of this, imperfection - and even more than imperfection - had formed in many of the churches, for the Adversary or Antichrist was already active spiritually and was already working to corrupt and destroy the spiritual fortresses of the Kingdom of God. To create discord among the members; to introduce subtle heresies; to arouse foolish pride; to counsel vile compromises between conscience and the law of the flesh, and mental restrictions, which are hateful to God, whose language is “Yes to mean yes, and no to mean no,” and He wants the language of his children and faithful ones to be this way; to make charity grow cold; to increase love for earthly existence and wealth and material honors.
This is the work of the Adversary, tireless in working to try and defeat God and destroy what He has created, taking advantage of all that can help him, provided by men themselves, because of their own imperfection or a reaction provoked by unjust actions by the strongest members towards the weakest ones.
What it is right to say should be said. Committing sins against justice and charity - which, like heavenly honey, draw souls to the mystical beehive and keep them faithful - provokes reactions by the stricken members, pain, scandal, and even distrust and separation.
The Church was founded by Charity, and it should always have been perfect charity. The Church is nourished by Charity and should give perfect charity to all its members, also and above all to the least and the weak ones to nourish them and keep them alive. The Church received the command to teach charity. But woe if the teaching is limited to the letter instead of being practiced in its spirit!
To live in charity to make the lambs live therein. This is the duty of the pastors. For if the lambs see that charity is expected by the pastors - and woe to the lamb who does not offer reverential love spurred to the point of renunciation of free judgment and free action in good things, which God Himself leaves man (indeed, He leaves all freedom, limiting Himself to saying what is good and not good) - while that charity is refused the lambs by the pastors, what happens? Because of a heart that does not open itself to the limitless needs of souls - I am speaking of the hearts of pastors - souls turn elsewhere and go knocking on other doors, and sometimes they are doors opening to material needs, and they give bread, clothing, medicine, advice, and help to find a job, not to be thrown out of one’s house by a hardhearted rich man, but they also remove religion and justice from hearts. For this is what happens. And because of bread, clothing, a roof, or help to re-establish justice towards the persecuted, one soul or several souls leave the sheepfold, the pasture, the way of God, and go to other pastures - the former, to material ways; the latter, to anti-Christian ones.
During the centuries-long development of the Mystical Vine, separations even of main shoots have taken place. There have been many causes, and not all of them derive from spontaneous rebellion by members, but also from rebellion provoked by rigorism without charity, which requires others to carry the weights one does not carry. For this reason Israel experienced internecine battles and schisms. For this reason the humble folk followed Christ. For this reason today, too, some members separate or at least remain bewildered or fall into scandal.
Let us observe the seven churches at that time, as John saw them and as he heard them being judged by the Eternal Judge. We shall see that what later, and to an ever-vaster degree, was and is active in the churches or religions called “Christian,” but which are not Catholic Christian, was already active in them. The separated churches.
They gave themselves a human constitution, preserving, as regards the true Church, only what they liked to preserve to call themselves “Christian.” But to be Christians does not mean just to pray to Christ and preach Him in some way or other; it does not mean to be even more rigorist than true Catholics in certain matters. To pray to God, to preach God, and to be rigid in the formalistic service of God - such was also done by the priests, scribes, and pharisees of Jesus’ time among men. And yet that did not make them - aside from rare exceptions – “Christians,” but, on the contrary, made them “anti-Christians.”
To be Christians means to form part of the Mystical Body by belonging to the Church of Rome as Catholics and belonging to Christ by truly living as He taught and commanded us to live. Otherwise one is not a Christian in reality, not even if one is Catholic because one has received Baptism according to the rite of the Church of Rome and the other sacraments. Even if one has not fallen into and remained in serious sin, even if one has not gone so far as to deny the Faith, form part of sects condemned by the Church, or belong to political parties which are also condemned because they are rightly condemnable, one is not a true Catholic and real Christian when a Christian life is not led, when God is not honored with intense, continuous inner worship, even in the intimacy of one’s home, always present even in the intellectual or manual work which must be carried out, and always active even in the social relations which must be continuously maintained with all of our neighbors, whether more or less linked to us by bonds of blood or social relationships.
One is not a true Catholic and real Christian when one practices only external, formal worship in order to be praised or only inner worship so as not to be derided as sanctimonious or perhaps suffer material loss. One is not a true Catholic and real Christian when one does not seek to practice virtues as perfectly as possible, to the point of heroism, if necessary; when one does not exercise what is called “completion of the law: charity,” of which the works of mercy are as many other branches; when one does not seek to suppress a vicious habit which is the cause of sin; when one sins against the Holy Spirit by doubting Divine Mercy, which forgives those who repent, by presuming one can save oneself alone, by mocking or denying the luminous truths of Faith, not only the primary and principal truths, but everything contained in the Creed and defined by the ancient and recent dogmas, by harboring envy towards the just, by obstinately remaining a sinner and impenitent; when one harms the life of one’s neighbor or just the neighbor’s physical health or honor; when one tramples on the order of nature by carrying out abominable acts which animals do not carry out in blameworthy fashion because they lack reason and conscience; by oppressing the poor; by practicing usury for illicit gain; and by limitlessly exploiting those who work and denying them a just wage.
When one lives that way, Jesus’ severe judgments of the scribes, pharisees, and merchants in the Temple are deserved. How appropriate it would be for the points in the Gospel - which ought to be the book read every day by every Christian, sentence by sentence, meditating on the truths which yield Life - where Jesus distinguishes between the truth of religious life and the appearance or falsification of religious life to be very frequently read, reread, and meditated on! And for one to examine oneself. Compare oneself to the pharisee and the publican, the pharisee and the sinful woman, the Levite and the Good Samaritan, and the rich who tossed their excess wealth into the treasury and the widow who tossed “all she had to live on” and see to which category one belongs. And repent and become a true disciple of the Master, a true child of God, and a true brother or sister of Christ - that is, be called a Christian and, even more, be one in reality - if one sees one belongs to the category with only external worship.
For otherwise people will be called Christians, but not be shoots nourished by Him. They will be detached shoots which, even if they are not completely dry because a natural tendency towards Goodness makes them act as just ones, are nevertheless branches that have replanted themselves on their own, in a proud way, and have produced a plant standing apart which yields fox-grapes and not good ones. To go back to being such they must again be grafted onto the true Vine, the only true Vine enabling the shoots to bear abundant, holy fruit.
This is valid for both the individual shoots and for those forming a life apart, the separated churches, which, because they are separated and have given themselves their own constitution, conceived of by their founder - a man, and not the God-Man - cannot have that totality of spiritual life which only belonging to the Mystical Body maintains and which protects against ever-greater separations, not only from the Body in itself, but from the Truth and Light which render secure the way leading from the earthly Church to the heavenly one.
And the fact that not belonging to the Mystical Body produces a falling away from justice as well is seen more clearly than ever today. Separation is growing deeper. For some of the separated churches not only limit themselves to not offering veneration and obedience to the Supreme Pastor; not only do they take the liberty of raising their protests when the Pontiff speaks with divine light, defining new truths; not only, though saying they want to serve Christ, do they tear away from Him - or try to - the creatures that belong to Him, who are part of his Sheepfold and whom they, the separated ones, attempt to take to their own, to other pastures where not everything - and especially the main part - is good; but, and this is monstrous, they set about celebrating the Beast, the Antichrist, and approving his ideologies.
But this, too, has been said: “And the whole earth followed the beast in wonder” (Revelation 13:3). Even though one sees that the beast, out of obedience to the dragon, that gives it all power, “is waging war on the saints and defeating them” materially (Revelation 13:7). War on the saints - that is, on all who worship the true God and remain faithful to Him, loving the Son of Man and of the Woman with all their strength and loving the Woman who was God’s Tabernacle and sempiternal Praise, the perfect Image and Likeness of God. Not as we are since the tragic inheritance of Adam disfigured and weakened the divine likeness in us. Not as Adam and Eve were before sin - two innocents, two children of God, with whom the Creator had conversations whose true nature is a mystery, but which should not for this reason be placed in doubt (Genesis 1:28-30; 2:16; 3:9,11,13,16-19,21), two persons predestined to live by and in the blessedness of the vision of God forever. No, Mary, shaped by the Divine Hand to be the “form of God Incarnate,” who was the most perfect Image of the Father: “Whoever sees Me also sees my Father” (John 14:9); Mary, with whom the Triune God always had conversations such as were proper to a true Daughter, Spouse, and Mother; Mary,. who, with all her faculties, was constantly attentive to her Lord; was and is the Most Pure Mirror wherein the Image of God appears, supreme Beauty and Perfection, and whoever contemplates Mary thus sees what constitutes the indescribable Beauty immersing the eternal citizens of Heaven in the abysses of blessedness.
Mary: the creature, our sister through human birth. Mary: the divinized creature whose lesser spiritual sisters we can be, if only we want to. Mary: the masterpiece of God, the Creator of men. Mary: the sign, measure, and perceptible form of what God has always destined for the human beings who live as children of God.
Man, imperfect in believing in the resurrection of the flesh and in risen flesh’s sharing in the joy of the blessed spirit; man, who, because he is unable to believe in this truth or at least is in doubt about it, who is not yet convinced by the Resurrection of Christ because he says, “He was God and so...”; in the face of the established truth of the Assumption of Mary in body and soul into Heaven, can no longer doubt. His mind has a means which powerfully leads him to believe in the resurrection of the flesh and its sharing in the eternal joy of the spirit.
Jesus is the He who reveals God the Father to us. Mary is She who reveals to us the blessed destiny of the children of God. Jesus is He who taught us as a Master how to live as children of God. Mary is She who has shown us in practice how to live as children of God. And the men who find it difficult to follow the Gospel and say, “He could even do so because He was God, and some of his chosen ones can do so because the God Jesus gives them special gifts,” on seeing the life, the way of life, of Mary from the time She opened her eyes to the light - for in Her, full of grace, there never was that state of nescience common to all the other newborn, who are thus described as not responsible for their acts before the use of reason - can be convinced that living as children of God is possible for all those born to woman - indeed, for all created by God - provided they want to live as divinized creatures.
Nor should the following objection be made to this assertion: “Mary was free from sin and its causes.” Eve was, too. Indeed, she was innocent in an innocent world, a queen in a world subject to her, the only higher creature, along with her man, endowed with intellect, grace, and knowledge, the mistress of the physical universe, guided by the Voice of God. And yet she yielded to the first temptation, whereas numberless souls, though stained with sin, and many creatures, though having the causes in themselves - that terrible “law of the flesh” which made Paul, Augustine, and many others who are now men and women saints in Heaven moan - did not yield.
Mary, like Jesus, never sinned, in any way, in any respect, not even with the logical, natural, proper reaction of a mother seeing her Son being tortured and killed, in regard to charity or any other virtue. She did not want to sin. And She did not. God certainly worked in a mysterious way in Her so that not even the slightest imperfection - I mean the shadow or seed of an imperfection - altered the purity and sanctity of the Entirely Beautiful Woman. But it is also true that Mary seconded with all her faculties and will the Will which God had for Her.
God did not make Mary a slave who can only obey the Master commanding her, but a Queen, his Queen, to whom He sent an archangel as an ambassador to tell Her about God’s design. A design which is fulfilled only when Mary spontaneously says, “Let it be done according to your word.”
The same archangel had manifested to the priest Zechariah another prodigious case of maternity, because it was outside of natural laws, given the age of the spouses and the sterility of the future mother. But, though a priest and in the fullness of his priestly functions before the Holy of Holies, he doubted the power and mercy of God and the truth of the angel’s words and was punished for this.
This is the difference between justice and the perfection of justice. In Mary there is faith, and complete obedience, though the miracle was measurelessly greater. In Zechariah there is not. Why? Because Mary was, indeed, the Woman, for the Word of the Father needed the Woman to take on human Flesh; but She was the Woman who had become so divested of natural humanity and so rich in supernatural nature that She could no longer possess any of those ties and obstacles by which a creature’s faculties are impeded and weighed down in following the will of God, who, in a certain terrain, in a self stripped of impediments to divine actions, can carry out the greatest works of his Omnipotence.
“The earth will follow the beast and put to death the saints who do not worship the beast of the earth” (Revelation 13). The first of the manifestations of the Antichrist, who is “of the earth,” for he denies God and all that is of God because he falls into the idolatry of what is not God, but, on the contrary, is against God, and suppresses the divine law and replaces it with his own, which is not even the natural moral law, and even tries to cancel out the memory of it in creatures and oppresses and kills whoever does not want to become wicked, unbelieving, and opposed to God.
The beast that devours the lambs to tear away from God as many children as he can. And yet this time sees the horror of ministers of separated churches, which also want to be called “Christian,” offer the veneration of adherence to the words and desires of the beast of the earth, this monstrosity that combats Christ - to offer veneration to this ideological idol, corrupting and merciless, without being forced to, like those who are subjects where it reigns, and without reflecting that, if it were to hold sway everywhere, they, too, sooner or later, would be devoured, tortured, and deprived of the most sacred freedoms of the free individual, even of freedom of thought. But for twenty centuries Christ has been pointing out these deviations and their causes.
Here there are good works and patience, but “initial charity has been abandoned,” and life in God has thus become weaker or died entirely, for where there is no charity, God is not present, nor is God’s life in the person or person’s life in God. Instead, there is love for life’s riches - that is, health and life - whereas those who wish to serve Jesus Christ must not have love for material life and must not fear and flee from persecutions, but consummate them, when necessary, to the point of death, for Christ did so and those who lose their lives to serve Him will possess Him in a special way in Heaven.
In other places there are some who show weakness towards those guilty of heresy or of imperfect doctrine and living. And that is in order not to make enemies. No, when in the garden of the militant Church wicked or sick plants or those giving a bad example to others are seen to arise, they must be cleansed of the diseased parts and provided with ingrafting, and, if they reject the ingrafting which would make them good, one must be able to cut them off at the root. One plant less is better than poison for all! It is better to be persecuted and be left without friends than to allow enemies and useless servants to ruin other souls and have God withdraw because He sees that a pastor of his prefers friendship with the little goats to his own, which is most holy.
Elsewhere there are some who believe more in the false prophets, impure voices stirred up to speak by Satan and condemned by the law of the Church, and it is a condemnation for all who, as Catholics, listen to them - these Satanic voices speaking by means of mediumistic tables and spiritists, voices speaking to deceive, seduce, lead astray, and separate people from the Church.
Only the spirits of light are truthful and good guides. But they never come - I repeat, never - by human imposition and do not need any special apparatus to manifest themselves. God sends them whenever He wants to whomever He wants. And they are the only ones who tell the truth. The others, in all of their manifestations, are a lie. Because they are manifestations of Satanism, and Satan is only deceit. Everything proceeding from these voices, even if they appear to say good words, is always contaminated with error in a subtle manner. They speak to separate people from the Church by saying it is not necessary to communicate with God.
They speak to sneak in false theories on reincarnation, on a system of evolution of souls, and on successive lives - all of which is absolutely false. They speak to suggest scientific solutions to the most luminous manifestations of Divine Omnipotence, which created everything from nothing.
Poor science wanting to be only “science” and rejecting Wisdom! Science can confirm Wisdom, but it cannot abolish it. Where it abolishes it, it extinguishes an ocean of comforting light for human souls and intellects.
Woe to whoever puts out this light! Like the gesture of a mad tyrant who, out of hatred or delirium, places mines in a city or temple and blows it to smithereens is the gesture of those who, out of excessive love for science, nearly a form of worship - whereas it is Wisdom that should be loved, listened to, and believed in because it comes from the “Father of Lights, in whom there is no variation or shadow of change” (James 1:17), who is the Spirit of Truth and Love and wants us to be nourished with truth to love more and more perfectly and wants us to see so as to know better, serve better, and love better - blow the building of simple, innocent Faith to smithereens, or at least many parts of it. The main ones.
But when the foundations and main walls are undermined, can a building stand any longer? It cannot. And when, out of human thirst to appear learned and modern, advanced for one’s time, the cornerstones are removed from the foundations of the building of faith - declared to be no longer in keeping with the present moment, childish, and inadmissible, fables which can no longer be accepted - what happens? A great deal collapses, causing victims; a great deal remains ruined and disfigured; a great deal which was luminously beautiful becomes darkly and smokily adorned with poor human lights which with their smoke obscure the heavenly lights and prompt questions in bewildered souls, questions which science does not satisfy and which Wisdom can no longer destroy, and voids are created which nothing manages to fill. A world of pure faith collapses. And the ruins of their syllogisms, deductions, and research do not fill the void which has arisen.
To contest known truth is a sin against the Holy Spirit. And it has been stated that “the Holy Spirit as a teacher flees from pretense and keeps away from senseless thoughts and withdraws when iniquity appears” (Wisdom 1:5). And what iniquity is greater than deducing that God, the Almighty, had to wait for spontaneous evolution to create his masterpiece, which is man? What thought is more senseless than that of someone thinking that God was powerless to create the most beautiful work of his creation directly?
The truth about everything is in the Book. For it is the word written through the inspiration of Wisdom - that is, of God. Everything else is pretense, imagination, and human deduction. Only one never errs: God. Man, even the holiest or the most learned in human culture, can always err when speaking or acting as “man” - that is, when not moved by the Holy Spirit, when not illuminated by the Light-Jesus, when his gaze is turned away from the Father-God, no longer seeing Him in all his works.
Science, too, can be good and useful. God has given man the intellect with a good purpose and in order for him to use it. But ninety percent of men do not always use it for a good purpose. And more than ninety percent of scientists do not use it for a good purpose.
Why? Because they lose sight of God and his law in order to follow and chase after human ways and chimeras. Yes, even if they apparently serve Him and offer Him external worship and even, indeed, relative internal worship and are convinced they honor Him, in reality they no longer see Him luminously or luminously see the eternal precepts of love. They no longer live the life of God, which is a life of love. If they lived this life, if they saw God and his Law luminously, how could they use their intellect to destroy the simple faith of the “least ones” with their scientific deductions and, with their scientific discoveries, the existence of so many human lives, of whole cities, and even undermine the entire globe by disturbing the equilibrium, the order of the elements, of the cosmic laws, established by God, which for millennia has been making the earth live and produce vegetable and animal lives without emerging from its orbit, without shifting from its axis, thereby avoiding apocalyptic cataclysms?
But it is a greater crime to destroy the simple faith of the “least ones,” destroy the conviction in the masses that God is the loving Father who takes care of even the birds and the flowers in the field and listens to and grants the requests which his children present to Him with prayer filled with faith.
How can man simply believe any longer if, in the name of science and with the support of uncertain scientific evidence, you upset the foundations of the Revelation contained in the Book? How can man believe any longer that God is powerful and loving, a Father who takes care of his children, if, on account of your discoveries, man is stricken by punishments - no, not punishments, for the wicked are punished by all human laws, whereas your means of destruction strike an enormous number of the non-wicked - if man is tortured to the point of going mad or dying of terror and wounds, reduced to not having even the lair God grants to even ferocious animals, the food and clothing granted to the birds and flowers in the field?
The greatest crime! To destroy faith and trust. Faith in the truth of Revelation. Trust in divine goodness and omnipotence. The first destruction brings about the collapse of a whole world of beliefs which were a powerful incentive to live as children of God; it cancels out all the luminous poetry of celebration of the infinite goodness of the Lord. The second makes man, discouraged by what he has experienced, wonder, “What is the use of praying, sacrificing, and living as just people if we are stricken all the same in this way?” It is doubt that arises! It is the consequent relaxation of faith and customs! It is the abandonment of prayer! Sometimes, it is despair! These are the fruits of science when separated from Wisdom.
The fruits of the accursed tree of knowledge when not rendered good by the ingrafting of Wisdom. You want to know everything, investigate everything, and explain everything. But man’s intellect, especially that of fallen man, an intellect wounded by original sin, an intellect wounded by mental concupiscence, cannot know everything. Even Adam, though having been made the “king” of all creation, had received a prohibition: “Do not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for the day you eat thereof you shall die” (Genesis 2:17). He did not obey, he wanted to know everything, and he died, first to Grace and then in the flesh. Now as well too many, when faced with the two trees - the one giving Life (that is, Jesus the Redeemer-Savior-Word, who s, gives eternal Life) and the tree of knowledge, which yields fruits which are generally of death - reach out to the latter and not the former, taste the latter and not the former, and bring about their death and cause death.
Is science to blame for everything? No, as no man is totally and perennially wicked, so science is not always and in all respects wicked and blameworthy. There are scientists who use their knowledge for good works. Others who, having discovered means for killing, destroy them, preferring to renounce the human glory they would obtain from such a discovery provided they can spare humanity new scourges. Others for whom, since they are truly Christians, scientific study augments religion and supernatural and moral virtues.
They are blessed by God and are benefactors of mankind. And they should be imitated by all the others. But that is not the case. Listened to and caught up with the support of their deductions are the other scientists, the ones who scrutinize and explain everything in human terms, seeing it all with their human, material sight, which looks downwards, at the earth and its secrets, as animals do, and worse than they do. For in reality animals, many of them, may be said to praise things - at least the beautiful things in creation, the good things, and are grateful to the sun warming them, to the water quenching their thirst, to the fruits of the earth feeding them, to man loving them - much better than man does.
Man, a rational creature, endowed with a spirit and supernatural life, ought to be able to look on high, to Heaven, to God. To purify his sight and knowledge through contemplation of divine works, through the belief that He has made them, and to see the indelible sign impressed upon all of them, testifying to their being made by God.
Religion and faith, religion and charity, make human research actively good. When deprived of these spiritual forces or possessing them to an imperfect degree, human research falls into error or draws others into error and into the weakening or death of faith.
In order to appear up-to-date, in keeping with the times, which in reality are certainly not times to be applauded, do not reject the lights, all the lights coming to you directly from Revelation and Wisdom and indirectly from the wise investigation of Christian scientists who have elevated themselves to God to be able to penetrate into the mysteries of the world as well, but who do so in a good spirit in order to know their truth, a truth which confirms God’s work and gives Him praise for it. But, for the sake of appearing up-to-date and in keeping with the times, do not pursue those “depths of Satan,” as they are called in Revelation 2:24, or at least “of the world,” which are not consonant with Revelation, to explain what exists and exists only through divine omnipotence and action.
Elsewhere there is also lukewarmness in the service of God and personal pride. Threefold concupiscence triumphs where the virtues should be the queens and makes the lukewarm and proud poor and without light. Poor as regards what is needed to be just and what it is necessary to have to make one’s subordinates just. Those who are lukewarm cannot warm up those who are cold. And those without light cannot communicate it. And those who are greedy about the major gifts God has given them cannot make his lambs rich. They keep the pasture for themselves and allow his flock to feed only on what is indispensable so as not to perish completely, without considering that in the flock there are weak ones that need to be nourished to a greater extent, sometimes very great, in order not to die.
It is not enough to be saints individually, not to commit personal sins, to be good pastors. One must sanctify and keep watch so that others will not sin, and if one knows some lambs have sinned and mortally wounded themselves in spirit, not wait until they come to ask for healing, but go to them, treat them, and heal them. Even if they show rejection, one must return once, twice, ten or a hundred times, not only in the role of a preacher recalling people to their duty with words of reproach, but with other means - as a friend, as a doctor, and as a father. And if one knows that a person is going astray, one must not let things go on that way, but intervene, with patience and gentleness, to lead the person back onto the right path.
The apostolate of the priest is not limited to daily Mass, Confession, and the explanation of the Gospel and doctrine in church. There is much more to do outside the church. To approach those for whom one is responsible; to bear the word of God and morality se where people do not go to church or go seldom and inadequately; where one member, even just one, in a family fails to carry out personal duties as a father, mother, spouse, son, daughter, citizen, or moral subject.
In how many families there are sorrows, painful situations, and sins! What a vast apostolic field there is in these primary nuclei of human society, in these little churches in which, in the manner of unordained priests, but not without a very specific task - indeed, with two quite specific tasks: to continue creation by procreating, thereby cooperating with God, who creates the soul for every individual procreated by man and woman, and begetting new adoptive children for God - two love one another and live in union. Or at least they should. But sometimes they do not. They fail in their mutual duties as husband and wife and in their duties to their children, neglecting to make them true Christians, letting them go where they cannot become better, giving them examples which are not good, not looking after their religious training, and letting bad companions and the members of antireligious parties approach them and lead them astray.
The missionary lands are not only in Africa, the Americas, Asia, or different archipelagos. Europe, too, and Italy as well are a missionary land for those with a missionary spirit and supernatural vision. Every town, from the smallest ones to the big cities, the area of every parish, and every house can be a missionary zone, a place for rooting out the weeds and sowing good seed, a place of spiritual reclamation, a place for rebuilding in Christ. The reconstruction of the Kingdom of God in the family and its individual members.
“You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-14). The Master, Infinite Wisdom, has filled his chosen ones with his salt and has given them the power to transmit this salt, which must season, to their successors. The Master, the true Light of the world, has filled his chosen ones with his Light and has ordered them to illuminate every man and transmit this power to their successors. Moreover, He, as the Eternal Pontiff, goes on infusing salt and light into the Mystical Body so that they will never be lacking therein, even if lukewarmness in members might produce a scarcity of salt and light.
The Church is a “Mother.” What mother, while pregnant, does not eat and live in such fashion as to give birth to healthy children? The Church, too, in her individual pastors, whether higher or lower in rank, must provide her children with the salts keeping spiritual life whole and strong.
The Church is the “Bride of Christ,” and Christ is the Sun, the Orient, the Morning Star, Infinite Light. The Bridegroom gives the Bride his wealth and property, communicating them to Her so that She will communicate them to all her members, especially to those destined to bring light; her pastors of higher or lower rank must thus be “light” to illuminate the lambs.
But light presupposes a flame; and a flame, burning. A fire blazes up when it burns and consumes. Apostles, too, blaze forth and then illuminate and warm, also setting others aflame if burning and being consumed. But if, out of fear of being consumed, out of fear of becoming a target for the enemies of the Light, out of fear of laboring excessively, they remain lukewarm, they become insipid, no longer emit light, get extinguished, like a star which has stopped glowing in the skies, and no longer shine in their heaven, in the spiritual one.
If, furthermore, to the loss of the light proceeding from the fire of charity, which is caused by personal pride, there is joined selfishness - and selfishness is the opposite of altruism, which is the lifeblood of Christianity: “My commandment is this: that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than that of those who lay down their lives for their friends” (John 15:1213); “if we say we are in communion with God and we walk in darkness, we are liars and do not practice the truth; if, however, we walk in the light, as God remains in the light, we are in communion with one another...; in those who observe the word of God the charity of God is perfect...” (1 John 1:6-7; 2:5); “if anyone says, ‘I love God’ and does not love his brother, he is a liar, for if anyone does not love his brother, whom he sees, how can he love God, whom he does not see?” (1 John 4:20) - if this happens, the pastor is dead.
Christianity is charity. Charity of the powerful towards the least ones, of the least towards the powerful, the charity of superiors towards subordinates - always charity. If there is no charity, Christianity is extinguished and is succeeded by selfishness and lukewarmness, the salt becomes tasteless, and the lantern does not shine, but smokes or is placed under the bushel so it will not be disturbed. And the souls, the poor souls of the lambs, are left abandoned, do not find warmth, light, and relish, grow weak, and go astray. Poor souls - the weaker they are, the more help they need!
These deficiencies, intense and marked in the Churches no longer nourished by the Living Waters issuing from under the sides of the altar of the true Temple (Ezekiel 47:1-2), are not absent even in the true Church. Its Body is holy; its Head and Soul, most holy. Its members are not all holy because more or less intrinsic belonging to the Body does not change man’s human nature. It is man who must constantly work to be regenerated, recreated, and supercreated to reach perfection and the most perfect resemblance possible to Christ, Head of the Church, with the Holy Spirit, Soul of the Church. A resemblance to Christ by means of a life as an alter Christus. A resemblance to the Holy Spirit by means of charity, holiness, purity, fortitude, piety, and every other attribute proper to the Sanctifier.
The more the members strive to be holy, the more the Church triumphs. Because the holiness of the members - I am speaking of the most select - expands to the lower members, elevates them, sets them aflame, and makes them an instrument of sanctification and conversion for members who are already almost dead or completely dead.
The priestly apostolate, if it is as Jesus wanted and wants it to be, prompts the great force of the lay apostolate. A great force because it penetrates more readily everywhere. In families, factories, and the different groups of professionals, it can approach those perverted by party chiefs or psychophysical perversions; demolish the castles of deceit; destroy the mirages provoked by the servants of the antichrist, now at work as never before in the history of the world; neutralize - with the charity of deeds, not words, with the truth of actions and not the false words of the falsest ideologies - the poison scattered in a hidden way by the crafty serpent of the present time, who for the time being still limits himself to being a “serpent,” waiting to take on his final appearance as the triumphant Antichrist during his brief and horrendous triumph.
But if the spirit becomes relaxed in the superior members, if the lay apostle is not assisted by the priestly one in full measure, it is inevitable that what happened in Israel should happen, when, with the Temple and the Synagogue having fallen away from justice, even the select classes, in human terms, could be the cause of scandal, oppression, and ruin for the people.
It was written that Christ was to die at the hands of the priests, scribes, and pharisees. But God, on giving souls to those priests, scribes, and pharisees who would corpbat his Word to the point of provoking his death on the cross, had not created special souls for deicides, the cruel, the unjust, those greedy for power, and liars. No, He had created souls for them which were like the souls of all other men - equal in terms of creation and then becoming equal through the damage of original sin, as the Law and Revelation were the same for all Israel, as was the free will of the highest and the lowest.
But justice had grown too weak in too many people in the Temple and the Synagogue, and the Holy Temple had become a “den of thieves” (Matthew-Mark-Luke), and the descendants of the Assideans had become hypocrites. The degenerate descendants of the Assideans. For they had been men of lofty, true morality and complete faithfulness to the Law and Mosaic doctrine, with noble sentiments of love for their country, as a result of which they were able to combat and die to save the nation from oppressors and corrupters. The pharisees, on the other hand, were just rigorists on the outside, while inside, in the shadows, they were “whitewashed tombs filled with rottenness,” and though they professed to be “separated” from the majority, they were not separated from sin. And with them were the scribes, who had so burdened the Law with traditions introduced by them that they had deformed it and rendered it impossible to practice. Since all of this had occurred, their souls could become deicides, and they used their freedom, the freedom given to them by God, to kill the Son of God.
To kill the Son of God! To defame Him! To present Him as what He was not!
But is it just a sin of that time? No, now as well that sin exists. And if hands are not raised directly to strike, torture, and kill Christ, they are still raised against Him, present in his servants. For it is still Christ who suffers in those who are persecuted, whatever they persecution they undergo may be.
Saul of Tarsus did not kill Christians personally, but “approved of their being slain” (Acts 7:56) and “brought affliction to the Church by entering homes and taking away men and women, whom he subjected to imprisonment” (Acts 8:3). He himself was an active antichrist - he, who would later be the Apostle and the Select Chalice; he, would later fight so effectively against the antichrist arising at once in the different regions where the churches of Christ had arisen.
But while, “breathing murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord,” and furnished with “letters for the synagogues of Damascus in order to bring to Jerusalem as prisoners all that he found to belong to that faith” (Acts 9:1-2), he was going to Damascus, what happened to him? The meeting with Christ near Damascus. And what did Christ say to him? Did He perhaps ask, “Why are you persecuting my servants?” No, He asked, “Why are you persecuting Me?”
Jesus was the one persecuted. It is Jesus who undergoes persecution in his servants. Because Jesus is in them. His Passion continues in them. And those persecuting the servants of God, the adoptive children of God and brothers and sisters of Jesus go on striking the Word of the Father, the Only-Begotten Son of the Father, Jesus, who is, like God, in the Father and in true Christians.
Is it a sin of the present time alone? No, of all times. And those persecuting the servants of God and the most beloved brothers and sisters of Christ are not always the antichristians with many names. No, persecution often comes from those who ought to be helpful to them. It comes from those who, out of pride, do not want others, “the least,” to rise up to the place to which they have not been elevated. It comes from those who, because they are lukewarm, cannot grasp that others are a flame fused with the Flame - the human spirit rendered a flame by the charity of Christ and through Him, made one with the Spirit of Christ, one single fire. It comes from those who do not remember clearly and comprehend even less clearly one of the most beautiful hymns in the Gospel: “Glory be to You, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and the prudent and revealed them to the little ones” (Matthew 11:25; Luke 10:21). It comes from those, “out of human respect or hunger for donations” (Deuteronomy 16:19), become blind and go against justice.
Errors joined to the weakness of man, who remains “man” even if he has put on the robes of religion. Errors which have sent servants of God to the stake or to jail and which still apply chains - which, even if they are not material, certainly continue to be chains - to the twofold freedom of the individuals chosen as servants by their Lord: the freedom of man, which, provided he does not do things against the state or his fellows which are punishable under the law, is sacred, and the special freedom of the servant of God to serve God as He requests of his servant.
Before, long before Jesus, the voice of the Prophets had predicted that the peoples that did not know the Lord would become “his people” in place of the one that did not want to recognize Him. Jesus, many centuries later, warned his people that “the Gentiles would surpass many of them in justice.” And He offered an example of the way to treat the Gentiles and sinners to lead them to the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
And yet the Apostles themselves, directly instructed by the word and example of the Master, because of their ever-recurring pride in being “Jews,” impeded dealings with the Gentiles. The example of Peter with the centurion Cornelius (Acts 10) should show everyone how pride can slow down the conquest of souls and or pave the way for certain souls not to come to Life. God had to intervene with a miracle to persuade the Apostle that “God does distinguish between persons, but in any nation those who fear him and practice justice are acceptable to Him” (Acts 10:34-35).
Jesus, and, before Him, the Prophets, had clearly instructed people about the destiny of Christ. And yet, when the evening of Holy Thursday came, though they were fortified by purification and the Eucharist given to them by the Eternal Pontiff, human weakness, which is not canceled out by consecration, brought them to flee in fear and shame and to deny; and it was precisely Peter, the successor of Jesus in the government of the Church, who denied Him. And later, though assailed by the Holy Spirit on different occasions, he showed a lack of understanding towards his brothers in the priestly ministry and was weak to the point of manifesting duplicity in his way of life (Galatians 2:12), out of fear of prompting criticism or enmity.
Man is man. “Like newborn babes” (1 Peter 2:2) longing for sincere spiritual milk to grow and become a “chosen lineage, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and the people of God,” so Peter changed from being a man to being holy, heroically holy, ever holier, truly becoming “another Christ” by assiduous effort. But first he was “man.” As Paul was a “man” in whom the law of the flesh (Romans 7:23) struggled against that of the spirit. A man who, after being snatched up to the third heaven, still experienced the blows of the angel of Satan, the spur of the flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7). As “man” many other servants of God existed, martyrs of their selfhood, blessed because they overcame this self and were regenerated in Christ.
“How often must I forgive?” Peter asked Jesus one day. And Jesus replied, “Seventy times seven” - that is, an unlimited number of times. For Jesus knew that man, even if regenerated by Grace, even if nourished by the Eucharist, even if confirmed in the Grace of Confirmation, even if elevated by the Priesthood, would always be “man,” man in need of compassion and forgiveness, because he was prone to err.
And soon, within the Church, out of pride or lukewarmness, separations and heresies arose. There were gnostics, Nicolaitians, Simonites, and Bileamites, and, later, antipopes, the dark period of the papal court in Avignon and the even darker one of nepotism and all that was associated with it. A permanent star, like every star the Church, too, has its phases. An undying flame, like every flame it alternates between flaring up and flickering weakly.
But since its Head, Jesus, and its Soul, the Holy Spirit, are eternal and most perfect, and eternal and infinite is their power and will, so it can experience momentary phases of descent and weakening. But it cannot fall entirely or fade out completely. On the contrary, after one of these phases, like a person shaken from drowsiness or strengthened by a powerful medicine, it reawakens and becomes vigorous in its service and admirable universal mission. And it should be stated that precisely in what is painful to be seen within it - momentary laxity or persecution by enemies - lies the cause of its new ascendant phase.
Those who are prone to pride or criticism and to judging everyone except themselves, will say after these words, “But it is something supernatural! It cannot, then, decline in its perfection.” The former will say that. And the latter will say, “If it were the way they say it is, it would be perfect in all its members. But....” And they will cite case after case, more or less deplorable in reality - I say “in reality” because on occasion something may appear not to be good and in substance not be wicked.
And both will err, for the Church is, indeed, a society or congregation of chosen members, regenerated for Grace by Baptism, confirmed and perfected in the virtùes and gifts by Confirmation, nourished by the Eucharist, cleansed by the absolution following upon Penance, and assisted in the mission of spouses and procreators by Marriage or in the other one of pastors of souls by Holy Orders. And, in addition, the Church, as the Mystical Body, is holy in its Head, Soul, Law, and doctrine, and in many if its members. This is true. Nor are the lower members to be disdained because in many instances “the members that seem to be weakest are the most necessary” (1 Corinthians 12:22), since, by their humble, holy, hidden lives, led and offered for the whole society of Christians, they contribute to increasing the spiritual treasures of the whole Mystical Body, and, moreover, “God has arranged the Body in such a way as to give greater honor to the members that did not possess it” (1 Corinthians 12:24) - that is, He often draws the sanctifiers, those who attract numberless souls to God by their action and example, from those who are “the least” in the Mystical Body, without rank or ordination, but rich in justice because they identify themselves with Christ in every one of their actions. Indeed, the Church, as a society of the faithful who are truly such, starting from its Most Holy Head, is holy, and holiness, descending from the Head and circulating through all his members, will never be completely lacking. But the members are not all holy, for man is man, even if Catholic, and remains man, even if he belongs to the Church in any of its parts.
When many members become more “rational man” than “divinized man,” then the Church experiences a period of descent from which it later rises again, for the Church itself understands that it is necessary to rise up to confront external and internal enemies. The open enemies already at the service of the Adversary and the Antichrist and the crafty enemies who corrode the edifice of faith and consequently cause charity to grow chill by wanting to offer a new version of the mysteries and miracles of God by means of those “depths of Satan and of the spirit of the world” of which mention has already been made.
Those who are prone to pride should not say, “The Church cannot experience this because it will always be holy.”
It has been said - both by the divine word speaking to the Prophets and by the Divine Incarnate Word of the Father speaking to his chosen ones - that “great abominations, such as jealousy, and horrible abominations, such as the worship of human idols (and knowledge devoid of wisdom is one of them), and perversion, with the worship of what should not be venerated,” will come into the Temple (Ezekiel 8:1-17) and that “after Christ is killed and when the people denying Him is no longer his people, the city and the sanctuary will be destroyed by a people that will come, whose purpose will be devastation, and when it is over, the desolation decreed will come.... And there will no longer be hosts and sacrifices, and in the temple will be the abomination of desolation, which will last until the end (Daniel 9:26- 27); and further, as direct confirmation by the Word of the words of his announcers, the Prophets: “When you see the abomination of desolation in the holy place..., then the tribulation will be great, as never before since the beginning of the ages.... And after the tribulation... they will see the Son of Man (Matthew 24:15,21,29-30). And the charity which will grow cold in too many hearts will be one of the precursory signs of the end (Matthew 24:12).
It has been said. And it will come. Open your spiritual eyes to read the predictions of Heaven! If you open them, you will read the truth and see what the true signs of the end are and the fact that it is already occurring.
For Him who is eternal, a century is less than a minute. It has not been stated, then, that it will be tomorrow. But if the path is still long in order for everything to be fulfilled, the things which are already happening tell you that the final process has now begun.
The great abominations: jealousy where there should be only fraternal charity, excessive love for human knowledge where there should be only faithful love for Wisdom, the source of Revelation, compromises between what offers earthly gain and what offers supernatural gain in order to receive immediate gain, Christ slain in too many souls, too many from his people who have come to deny their Savior. These are the preparatory things.
Then “the people that will come” for the purpose of devastating. Another prophet said, “When the people from the north.... A great tumult from the lands of the north.... Behold, coming from the north...” (Jeremiah 6:22; 10:22; 50:41).
The two predictions are so clear that it suffices to raise one’s gaze and be able to see, and want to see, in order to understand.
And what will it devastate? Oh, not just buildings and towns! But, above all, faith, morality, and souls. And not all the souls devastated will be common souls. And the sacrifices and hosts will be lacking, for freedom of worship will no longer be allowed and many will fear being seized for this reason. Already, though the devastation and persecution are not yet taking place, many deny the way previously chosen, for the abomination is spreading like evil wild fire, and charity is growing cold as the false prophets arise about whom Christ speaks in Matthew 24 and Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2.
For the time being only these. But afterwards the one they precede will come: the Antichrist, for whom they will have prepared the way by weakening charity, just as the Baptist prepared the ways for Christ by teaching charity, of which he was full in being “filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb” (Luke 1:15), as the indispensable means to be able to unite to Christ and lead the life of God. (For the Baptist’s teachings on charity see Luke 3:10-14.)
In reality, charity is the bond which keeps the Catholic community united to God and to brothers and sisters. In and through charity there appear union and the nourishment of souls and their sanctification and that of ever-new souls. If charity comes to be lacking, it is replaced by self-love. And the difference between the two loves is as follows.
True, holy love, as commanded and counseled by God, is a search for God; it is recognition of his omnipotence, visible in all things; it is elevation to God. And everything contributes to this elevation for those possessing charity in themselves, which is active mercy as regards all the needs of one’s neighbor, for in all neighbors charity brings us to see brothers or sisters, and we perceive Jesus in them, Jesus suffering with the sufferings of the poor, the sick, and the persecuted, or suffering because a son of the Father is becoming a prodigal son leaving the Father’s house in search of a false well-being, or suffering because someone doubts he has a Father, and it is necessary to persuade him that there is a an extremely good Father so that he will not fall into desolation and sin.
Self-love, on the other hand, is the search for ourselves; it is successive love for oneself; it is action performed to glorify oneself in the eyes of the world. It is, then, concupiscence of the flesh, concupiscence of the eyes, and pride of life, and from this plant with three branches there later come vainglory, hardness of heart, haughtiness, longing for human praise, hypocrisy, a spirit of domination, and the conviction that one can judge oneself on one’s own, shrugging aside every command or counsel of Love and of those speaking in the name of Love.
They believe they are free and kings because, according to them, no one is better than they, for, in their own opinion as well, they are already established on the summits of knowledge and power. But they are worse slaves than anyone else - to themselves and to God’s enemy and to the servants of the enemy of God. Slaves, servants, naked, and blind. Slaves to themselves and servants or slaves to the enemy and enemies of God. Naked as regards the beautiful robes, the robes of the marriage to Wisdom, the white robes for the heavenly banquet and to go on celebrating the Lamb. Blind, or at least near-sighted, because they have ruined their spiritual vision with useless human investigations.
They become like this because they have renounced their primogeniture - that is, the highest filiation, the one coming from God - for a poor plate of lentils, earthly food. A plate of lentils is the replacement of sapiential, supernatural works, especially the Great Revelation, which should be accepted and believed in without half measures. A plate of lentils is to replace this with scientific books, which, no matter how perfect, are always books written by a man. They may thus seem clearer and certainly more comprehensible for those able to read the letter alone, remain on the surface of something, for those who cannot penetrate further because of their own heaviness. But they do not transform man. They do not lead him upwards. Inspired books, on the other hand, those books whose Author is God, for those able to read them, are a means of transformation and union in God and with God and of elevation.
All that comes from God is a means of elevation, transformation, and more intimate union with God. Miracles themselves, of different kinds - and especially the miracles of healing of bodies and spirits - are a means of transformation and union with God. How many of the incredulous and sinful were able to be turned into believers and redeemed persons through the wonder of a miracle!
Miracles should not be denied out of deference to rationalism - neither the miracle of Creation nor that of a healing of a soul or the flesh. Matter was brought out of nothing and ordered towards its sole purpose by God. A dead soul or one ill with an incurable spiritual disease was healed by God, through one means or another, but still by God. A body condemned to die can be healed by God. Always by God, even if He makes use of an apparition or a just person to convert and heal a spirit or of special trust in a saint to heal the flesh.
Let the rationalists manage to believe. Reason is a great thing. It is a great thing to be a rational creature. But the spirit is a greater thing. And to be a spiritual creature is greater - that is, those who know they have a spirit and set it in the first place as the king of their selfhood and as the most select thing of all. For if reason helps man to be a man and not a beast, the spirit, when it is king of the self, makes man the adoptive son of God, gives him a likeness to God, and enables him to share in his Divinity and eternal goods. Let the spirit, then, reign over reason and the flesh or humanity. And let a rationalism not reign which denies or seeks to explain what should be believed by faith, which on being ex- plained - indeed, in the attempt at explanation - is damaged, and faith is damaged, if not slain.
Let the rationalists manage to see. Let them put down the opaque lens of rationalism, which will be of no use to them, but, on the contrary, lead them to see altered truths. Just as a lens not suitable for a weakened eye leads one to see even worse. Those who lean towards rationalism are already weakened in spiritual sight. When they choose it, moreover, they place unsuitable lenses before their weakened vision and see poorly in all respects. Let them manage to see. And see clearly, and see Goodness clearly. See God in his continuous perfect action in maintaining Creation, which received life through his will, and restoring health and life where death is already certain.
How can those who want to explain creation and life as autogenesis and polygenesis deny that the Almighty could make even what He was able to create at the beginning, which was not even matter, but just chaos, and later there were only limited, imperfect things? Is it logical, purely logical and reasonable, for us to accept the miracle of self-ordering chaos generating the cell by itself and the idea that the cell evolves into a species which evolves into others that are increasingly perfect and numerous, while God is described as unable to make all of creation by Himself? Is it logical and reasonable to maintain the evolution of the species - indeed, of one given species as far as the animal form which is most perfect because it is endowed with speech and reason, even these alone - when we see that for millennia all other animal creatures have not acquired reason and speech, though coexisting with man?
For millennia every animal has been as it was made. There may have been structural reduction and crosses whereby new hybrid races emerged from the first ones created. But over the course of periods and millennia the bull has never been seen to have ceased being such, or the lion, or the dog, that has also lived with man for many centuries. Nor, over the course of millennia and in contact with man - whose gestures they can certainly imitate, while unable, however, to learn speech - have monkeys ever been seen to become men, at least animal men. It is lower creatures themselves that, with the evidence of the facts, contradict the lucubrations of those cultivating exclusively rational knowledge. They are as they were. They testify to the omnipotence of God with the variety of species. But they have not evolved. They have remained as they were, with their instincts, their natural laws, and their special mission, which is not ever useless, even if it may seem to be. God does not perform useless or totally harmful works. The snake’s venom is itself useful and has a reason for existence.
Let the rationalists manage to see. Let the lenses of scientific rationalism be removed, and let them see in the light of God, by means of the Divine Word, who spoke through the mouths of the patriarchs and prophets of the ancient Temple and the saints, mystics, and contemplatives of the new Temple, for whom One Spirit has always revealed and recalled hidden matters and past matters altered in their truth in passing from mouth to mouth. Above all, let them see by means of the Incarnate Word and Light of the world - Jesus, the Teacher of teachers, who has not changed a syllable in the Revelation contained in the Book, but, as Omnipotence and Truth, He knew everything in the completeness of Truth and indeed confirmed it and restored it, as regards its meaning, which was sometimes intentionally deformed by the rabbis of Israel, to its original form, which is the only true one.
To seek to add to what Wisdom has revealed, Tradition has passed on, and the Word has confirmed and explained is to add tinsel to gold. It is not the tokens of science that open the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven, but the golden coins of Faith in the revealed truths, the golden coins of Hope in the eternal promises, and the golden coins of Charity practiced because it has been believed in and hoped for that give the spirits of the just and later the bodies and spirits of the just their place in the Eternal City of God.
It will never be sufficiently asserted that knowledge is straw which fills, but does not nourish, and smoke, which obscures, but does not illuminate, and spiritual poison which kills, and weeds yielding the fruit of false prophets with new words and new theories which are not the divine word or divine doctrine.
Elsewhere, where what has been mentioned above is not present, there are some who seem to be alive and are dead - that is, those possessing only the appearance of what they ought to be, in all respects like a beautiful, ornate statue, which is, however, lacking in sensation and cannot communicate to others the life it does not have. Mouths speaking because they cannot keep silent, but which are not convincing because the power which is persuasive is lacking in their words. They themselves are not convinced and cannot convince. Mechanical instruments that even speak well, in terms of eloquence, but soullessly.
There have always been such. They are the ones with a mistaken vocation. Enthusiasts at the outset. Their enthusiasm then gradually fades out. And they lack the courage to withdraw. Better one pastor fewer than a pastor who looks alive and is spiritually dead or very close to dying. A living one could take his place, to provide life. But the falsest form of human respect keeps them from confessing openly, “I am not capable any more, and I will withdraw.”
There always have been such. Judas Iscariot is their prototype. It would have been better for him to withdraw rather than remain and arrive at the supreme crime. “He who looks back after setting his hand to the plow is not fit for the Kingdom of God,” the Divine Master said. And it is better for one who is unfit to withdraw rather than cause many to perish, cause even more to grumble, and do harm to the Priesthood by the scandal occasioned.
The multitude generalizes and sees evil more readily than good. When people understand they have died to the mission, they should withdraw, but they should not allow the multitude to judge, generalizing and harming the whole group. The branches destined to provide sap to the fruits should be cut off if they become sterile because not only are they useless, but they take strength away from the plant just to adorn themselves with pompous, useless leaves.
Among the things created perfect by God there was always a part that was unable to remain such. The first defection was in the angelic host, and it is an impenetrable mystery that this could have happened in spirits created in grace, who saw God and knew his Essence and Attributes, his works and plans for the future. They still rebelled and did not manage to remain in their state of grace and changed from spirits of light living in joy and supernatural knowledge into spirits of darkness living in horror.
The second defection was that of the First Parents, and it, too, is inexplicable. How could it happen that two innocents - who enjoyed God’s numberless benefits and, because of their fortunate state of grace and other gifts, were in a position to know and love God like no other humans, except the Son of Man and his Mother, for they were filled with Innocence and Grace - were capable of listening to and obeying the Tempter and preferring Him to heeding the voice of God, who taught them lovingly and asked them for one single act of obedience? An easy form of obedience. For they had no need to pick that fruit in order to be satisfied in every appetite. They had everything. God had made them rich with all they needed to be happy and healthy in body and spirit. They still rebelled, disobeyed, and did not manage to remain in their state of grace and changed from creatures living in joy and supernatural knowledge into unfortunates in spirit, heart, mind, and members. The latter were wearied by work; their minds were frightened by the difficulties of the immediate future and the impending and eternal future; their hearts were broken by the slaying of one son and the perversity of another; their spirits were discouraged, now immersed in the haze of sin, which kept them from comprehending the loving guidance of the Father Creator.
The third great, mysterious, and inexplicable defection is that of Judas Iscariot, who spontaneously wanted to belong to Christ, who enjoyed his love for three years and fed on his Word, and who, because he was disappointed in his concupiscent dreams, sold Him for thirty denarii, changing from an apostle - that is, chosen for the highest spiritual dignity - into the betrayer of the Friend, the deicide and suicide.
These are the greatest defections. But there are always some, though lesser. For man is man. For what is created is never eternally perfect, as is the Creator, except for the Heavenly Kingdom, where only spirits confirmed in grace and no longer subject to sin have their dwelling, and except for the Son of Man and his Mother - the former, because He was the God-Man, and, therefore, as his human person was united to his Divine Person, so his divine perfections were joined to his human perfections; the latter, because She responded to the extraordinary gifts with which God filled Her from the moment of conception with good will and faithfulness reaching a power which none of the saints has ever reached or will reach.
And the fact that man is sometimes imperfect does not constitute an unforgivable sin. God is also Mercy. And He is Patience. He awaits the repentance of those erring and forgives if that repentance is sincere. Every man who falls can thus rise up again and be just once more. Indeed, he can become more just, for, aware of his weakness, he can be less proud of himself and more merciful towards his fellows in ministry or in human destiny. God also brings good out of evil, when man does not refuse his invitations and counsels and those of his brothers and sisters who are holier than he. But when He sees man is obstinate in his imperfections, content with a quietism which does not lead him to do either good or evil, a quietism which makes him seem to be alive, when, however, he is dead, and by being such he provokes the death and prostration of many, then God comes to him “like a thief, and they will not know the hour of his coming” (Revelation 3:3).
The Master said to his disciples, “Let your belts be tightened and your lanterns be aflame in your hands.” He did not say, “Rest and sleep, for you are now the chosen, and everything’s in order.” The servant of God is a worker, and God wants him to work every hour of his earthly day. And the more he works, the more he receives from God special loving gifts of election. “Much will be expected of the one to whom much has been given” (Luke 12:48). And let him work following the example given by the Master, an example of patience, mercy, and untiring love. For as one would wish to see one’s weaknesses measured by God, one must measure other creatures with the same measure so as not to incur in God’s severity for having measured others with severity. “For you will be measured with the measure you have used, and abundantly” (Mark 4:24).
Elsewhere there is also little virtue practiced heroically, but faithfulness to the Word as regards both oneself and working so that others can be or become faithful thereto, and constancy in confessing the Name of the Lord even in the face of mockers or enemies of Catholicism. Not persecutors, but opponents, those led astray, and those ignorant of that Name and Him who bears it. How many are in the “synagogue of Satan” (Revelation 3:9) or of the world because they are not instructed in Truth. Instructed with patience and love, in the spirit of the Gospel and its Author - Jesus - and of its Custodian and Dispenser - the Roman Church.
Souls that are in darkness, but that instinctively tend towards the Light. Souls that are in the error of idolatrous or separated worship, but that instinctively tend towards the Truth. Souls that by their very nature tend towards Goodness and thus belong as well to the soul of the Church without realizing, and for them an apostolically fraternal hand or word or act of assistance suffices for them to become living members of the Mystical Body and worshippers of the true God.
Now, since it is certain that those who save or give life to even one single soul save their own and give it the reward of Eternal Life, for God is infinitely grateful to those giving Him a son, it is equally certain that God will grant forgiveness for many things to those striving to bring numerous souls onto the ways of the Lord - the ways leading to Heaven - keeping the gate to mercy, truth, and wisdom - the Gospel - open so that, following upon the invitation by God’s minister, all who want to enter therein may find it easy to do so.
From this review and comparison of the seven churches at that time and the current state of the different religions and churches there thus emerge a warning and stimulus not to let charity die; not to follow human doctrines, too much like Balaam’s, which are the occasion for scandal, poisoning, and spiritual fornication for children, as regards what is “scandalous,” and of adults, in relation to the two other things; to combat any and all who have commerce with or frequent persons and acts of darkness, fornicating with the powers of evil and deceit and feeding on mental foods sacrificed and offered to the idols of impure knowledge and curiosity; to shake off quietism and become alive again so as to give life; to make reparation for weak virtue by working with all one’s strength to lead others to the knowledge of God and the Gospel and, consequently, to virtue, so that the saved themselves will speak out on behalf of their savior before the Father of the Heavens and of all men; to burn in order to burn, to shine forth in order to illuminate, to detach oneself from what is concupiscence, even if involving only wealth, power, health, and peaceful human comfort, so as to robe oneself in supernatural things and be free, with no obstacles in apostolic work.
Then those who wanted to become saints, overcoming everything contrary to holiness, will receive the “new name,” will feed on the “tree of life” and the “hidden manna,” will be clothed in the “white robe” and crowned with the “crown” of heavenly glory and rendered a “column” in the Eternal Temple, and “will sit on the throne” which is prepared for the victors (Revelation 2 and 3).
Chapter 4
The greatness of the vision increases, and the power of the ecstasy increases, for the seer is no longer called to see the current matters of his time, a sign and figure of what, in different ways and for different reasons, will later be repeated over the centuries, but future things and supernatural things - the former known only to God, the latter known to the citizens of the Heavens.
And in a new theophany, which is both like and unlike that of Ezekiel, he sees the glory of the Lord seated on the heavenly throne with a human appearance, but a man who has been doubly glorified because He is God and the God-Man, the Holy of holies, the Saint among saints. For no one among men was so holy as the Son of Man. It is thus a body turned into light “like electrum and fire,” Ezekiel says; “like jasper and carnelian,” John says; and both conclude: “surrounded by a splendor like a rainbow.”393
Other prophets, too, had seen the Son of God and of Man shining in a linen robe, like bronze or some other fiery metal, from the time when He was still the Word in the Father’s breast and centuries had to pass before He took on human flesh, and this Flesh, when glorified after the perfect Sacrifice, ascended into Heaven to remain there, as God-Man, Eternal King, Universal Judge, Pontiff, Lamb, and Victor over evil, death, time, and everything that exists, for all power and primacy have been given to Him by the Father.
But if the ancient Prophets saw only the God-Man, some others saw the God-Man borne upon his throne by his principal confessors, the four Evangelists, with an appearance symbolizing their spiritual nature: Matthew, as a man, completely human in his past and in describing the Son of Man; Mark, as a lion, in preaching Christ among the pagans, even more than in describing the time of Christ in his Gospel, in which, however, as a lion, he loved to bring out the figure of the Divine Miracle Worker more than that of the Messiah as a Man, as Matthew had done. And this was for the purpose of causing amazement and winning the pagans over through astonishment, as they were always seduced by what appeared to be wondrous.
Luke, patient and strong as an ox in completing - also with persevering investigation of the events leading up to the real apostolic activity of Christ and his followers - the full work of God for the salvation of humanity. For this work of infinite love began with the Immaculate Conception of Mary, with the fullness of Grace granted to Her, with Mary’s continuous communion with her Lord, who, after creating Her, as a Father, with unique perfection among all the bodies of those born to man and woman, as his most beloved Daughter, then filled Her with his Light, the Word, who had revealed Himself to Her in the divine, intimate lessons by which She was the Seat of Wisdom from her earliest years, whereas the Holy Spirit, Eternal Lover of the Pure, poured the fires of his most perfect charity into Her and, making Her an altar and ark that was holier and more beloved than those in the Temple, took up his repose in Her and shone forth in the full splendor of his Glory.
In ancient times, when the Tabernacle was built, a cloud of fire covered it night and day, whether it was immobile or in pilgrimage towards the goal, and the People of God would halt or journey on according to the movements of the cloud, which was nothing but the witness to the glory of the Lord and his Presence (Numbers 9:15-23).
At the beginning of the new time, the time of Grace, the cloud of fire of the Lord - an invading fire offering protection against every assault by the Eternal Enemy, more active than ever, for he grasped that his defeat was close at hand - covered a much holier Tabernacle, waiting to cover it in a greater manner to conceal the greater mystery of the fruitful wedding between God and the Virgin, whose fruit was the Incarnation of the Word. And the glory of the Lord always covered the Inviolate Virgin, the God-Bearing Mother, whether She halted or moved by divine orders, which led Her from Nazareth to the Temple, from the Temple to Nazareth as a Virgin Bride, and from Nazareth to Hebron and Bethlehem as a Virgin Mother, and from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, as a support in the prophecy of Simeon, and from Bethlehem to Egypt for the protection of the Hated Woman because She was the Mother of God, and from Nazareth to Jerusalem, leading Her to the place where the Boy was with the Doctors, and from Nazareth to one place or another where the Teacher-Son was persecuted and afflicted, and from Nazareth to Jerusalem and Golgotha to participate in the Redemption, and to the Mount of Olives, where the Son ascended to the Father, and from the Mount of Olives to Heaven in the final ecstasy in which the Fire would breathe his Mary into Himself, just as the sun breathes a pure dewdrop into itself.
Luke, unique and patient, consulted and also wrote what may be termed the introduction to the Gospel, which means “announcement,” speaking to us of Our Lady of the Annunciation, without whom and without whose absolute obedience the Redemption would not have been carried out.
It is the property of an ox to ruminate on what was swallowed some time ago, too. Luke imitates the ox. Over many years time had swallowed the preliminary episodes of the coming of the Messiah as such - that is, as Master and Savior-Redeemer. Luke brings them back to light. He shows us the Virgin, a necessary instrument in order for us to have Jesus Christ, the God-Man. He shows us the Most Humble Woman Full of Grace, the Most Obedient One in her “Let it be done to me according to your word,” the Most Charitable One rushing with holy celerity to her cousin Elizabeth to comfort and help her and, though She did not have any idea about it, to sanctify him who was to prepare the ways for the Lord Jesus, her Son; the Most Pure and always physically, morally, and spiritually Inviolate One, from conception to her ecstatic passage from earth to Heaven.
“This gate shall be closed and not be opened, and no man shall pass through it because the Lord God of Israel has entered by it. Only the prince himself may sit down there to eat his meal before the Lord, and he shall enter by way of the vestibule of the gate and leave by the same way” (Ezekiel 44:2-3).
Mysterious words with an obscure meaning until Mary’s Conception and Divine Maternity made them clear to all capable of reading them in their proper meaning under the ray of Eternal Light.
The closed gate, the external gate of the sanctuary, the gate facing east, was in reality Mary. Closed, for nothing earthly ever entered Her, in whom there was a fullness of Grace. An external gate, for She was between Heaven, the Dwelling of the Triune God, and the world - so close to God that She was like the gate opening on the Holy from the Holy of Holies. Mary truly was and is a gate for men, so that through the Holy they may penetrate into the Holy of Holies and take up an eternal dwelling there with Him who dwells there. A gate facing east - that is, facing God alone, called Orient by those inspired in ancient times.
And in reality the eyes of Mary’s spirit were set upon God alone.
A closed gate through which no one, except the Lord, would enter to love Her as a Father, as a Son, and as a Spouse, to render Her fruitful without any lesion, to receive nourishment from Her so as to take on a Body, to be nourished in the sight of his Divine Father, carrying out his first act of obedience as the Son of Man, who, in the obscurity of a woman’s womb, enclosed and limited his Immensity and Freedom as God, subjecting Himself to all the phases governing gestation, just as later, still drawing sustenance from Her, He would follow all the stages of growth, changing from a Baby into an Adolescent.
A closed gate which was not opened for even the holiest maternity, since, in a way known to God alone, just as God, in passing through the burning vestibule of Mary’s charity, entered Her, so He, Infinite Light and Love, came into the world, as ecstasy burned Mary and made Her a glowing altar on which the Host was set and offered so that He would be Salvation for men.
Many centuries after Ezekiel, Paul said to the Hebrews, “Christ... came by penetrating through a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made by human hands” (Hebrews 9:11).
Many interpretations have been given to these words. And correct interpretations, too. But there is another one. And it is this: Jesus came to men, among men, by passing through a greater tabernacle, in terms of supernatural beauty, and a more perfect one than that which was the goal of the Jews of Palestine and the Diaspora, for it was not architecturally perfect, but perfect in holiness, and not made by human hands with marble and gold and ornate curtains, but created - and God watched over its shaping so closely that we could almost say “made” - by Him, so that his Word, when the time came for his Incarnation, would find a healthy, holy, select tabernacle, perfect in all its parts, worthy to receive and be the temporary dwelling of his Divine Holiness.
Luke - a physician in addition to being an Evangelist, with the patient study of the doctor who does not stop at the objective fact or the subject under consideration, but studies and examines the environment and heredity from which the subject proceeds and may have received psychophysical characteristics - to present God Incarnate to us, the Son of Man, and have us come to know Him better in his gentleness, which is such, even though, when necessary, He can be strong, in his loving kindness towards the sick and sinners desirous of physical or spiritual healing, in his most perfect obedience to the point of death, in his humility, which did not seek praise, but, rather, advised, “Do not talk about what you have seen,” in his fortitude, able to overcome every affection or human fear to carry out his mission, in his integrity, because of which nothing could harm his sense, nor could He harbor, even fleetingly, any passion that was not good, presents his Mother to us - that is, the Woman who by herself formed her Son by transmitting, in a single blood which was to robe Him in flesh, a likeness - indeed, even more than a likeness - to Her. He as Man, and thus more virile in his features and manner. She as a Woman, and thus gentler in appearance and style.
But in the Boy capable of replying to Her, “Why are you looking for Me? Didn’t you know that I must do what my Father wants Me to do?” (Luke 2:49) and in the Man asking, “Woman, how does your concern affect Me?” (John 2:4) and also, “Who is my Mother and my family? Those who do the will of my Father” (Matthew 12:48-49), the fortitude is evident which was communicated to Him by the Woman who was able to suffer deeply at all times and for many reasons: the death of her parents, poverty, Joseph’s suspicion, the trip to Bethlehem, the prophecy of Simeon, flight and exile in Egypt, the disappearance of Jesus, her husband’s death, being abandoned by her Son when He undertook his mission, the Jewish world’s hostility towards Him, and the martyrdom of her Son on Golgotha.
In the Son’s gentleness the gentleness inherited from Mary is evident, as are her humility, obedience, and purity. All the supreme virtues of the Mother are also in the Son. Jesus, it is true, reveals the Father to us, but the Mother does, too. And it may well be said that those who want to know Mary, who was revealed too little by the Evangelists and in the Acts of the Apostles, should look at her Son, who from Her, and from Her alone, took everything, except his Divine Nature as the Firstborn and Only-Begotten Son of the Father.
“May the Will of God be done,”*Mary says in Luke 1:38. “Thy will be done,” Jesus says in Luke 22:42.
“Blessed are you for having believed,” Elizabeth says to Mary (Luke 1:45). And Jesus praises those who are able to believe on many, many occasions during his evangelization.
“You have cast down the powerful and exalted the humble,” Mary professes in her Magnificat, and Jesus says, “I thank you, Father, because you have concealed things from the learned and the great and revealed them to the small.”
The Word, the Wisdom of the Father, made his future Mother a Master in Wisdom. And his Mother transfused into her Son, along with blood and milk and motherly care, the select thoughts which had always been rooted in her unharmed intellect and the very select sentiments which were the only ones occupying her Immaculate Heart.
John, the fourth Evangelist, is the Eagle. High, powerful, and solitary flight and the ability to look fixedly at the sun are proper to the eagle. In John the Evangelist there is the nobility of the noble bird, powerful flight, and the capacity to gaze fixedly at the Divine Sun - Jesus, the Light of the world, the Light of Heaven, the Light of God, Infinite Splendor - the ability to rise up to supernatural heights to which no other evangelist rose and, in this way, by rising up, to be able to penetrate the mystery and truth and doctrine - everything - of the Man who was God.
Soaring like a royal eagle quite high above earthly things and humanity, he saw Christ in his true Nature as the Word of God. More than the Miracle Worker and the Martyr, John presents us with “the Teacher.” The only most perfect Teacher the world has ever had. The God-Teacher, Wisdom become flesh and the oral teacher for men, the Uerbum or Word of the Father - that is, the Word making his Father’s thoughts perceptible for men, the Light come to illuminate the darkness and make the twilight flee.
The most sublime truths, the gentlest and best loved, are all sincerely stated in the Gospel of John, who with his eagle eye and spiritual ascent while following the spirit of the Master, from on high saw the supreme heights and the supreme depths and measured the breadth of Christ’s love and the hatred of the Jewish world towards Christ; the struggle between light and darkness, of the excessive forms of “darkness” - that is, the excessive number of enemies of his Master, among whom there was even a disciple and apostle, whom John, in this Gospel of his of Truth and Light, clearly calls by his real name, one of his real names: “thief”; he saw the undercover plots, the subtle traps used to make Christ unpopular with the Roman dominators and Jews and the “least ones” who formed the flock of those faithful to Christ. And he notes them all and makes them known, showing Christ in his sublime holiness, not just as God, but also as man.
A Man who does not compromise with his enemies to make them friends; a Man who is able to tell the truth to the powerful and unmask their sins and hypocrisy; a Man who, while not rejecting any of those deserving of being drawn near because they are moved to come to Him by their soul’s desire to be redeemed, is able to hurl his anathema at those who, though most powerful, deceive Him with false offers of friendship so as to catch Him in sin; a Man who respects the Law, but tramples on what is superimposed on the Law: the “burdens” set upon the least ones by the pharisees; a Man who refuses a kingdom and earthly crown and flees to get free of them (John 6:15), but does not cease to proclaim his spiritual Kingdom and take the crown of the Redeemer to confirm his doctrine of sacrifice with his own sacrifice; the most holy Man who wanted to experience everything associated with man except sin.
The eagle does not sing more or less melodiously, as other birds do, but casts forth his powerful cry, which is such an affirmation of power that it makes the hearts of men and animals tremble. John does not sweetly sing the story of Christ, either, but hurls forth his powerful cry to celebrate the Hero, and it is such a forceful cry in asserting the Divinity and most luminous Wisdom of Christ that it makes souls and hearts tremble from the first words of his introduction.
The eagle loves solitary peaks on which the sun blazes with all its fire, and the more the sun shines, the more the eagle stares at it, as if fascinated by its splendor and warmth. John, too, the solitary, though he was with his companions both before and after the Passion and Ascension of the Master - for he truly was a different Apostle, unique in certain respects as a man and disciple, united to the others only through the charity which was most intense in him - John, too, like the eagle, loved to remain on the summit, in the fire of his Sun, and look at Him alone, listen to all of his words, both spoken and secret - that is, the deep, sweet lessons and conversations of Christ and his solitary outpourings of feeling, his prayers and communion with the Father, in the silence of the nights or in the depths of the forests, wherever Christ - the great Solitary, because He was the great Unknown and Misunderstood One - isolated Himself to find comfort in union with his Father.
Jesus: the Sun of Charity; John: the lover of the Sun of Charity and the virgin wedded to Charity - he, the pure one, attracted by Jesus, perfect Purity. Love gives special understanding. And the stronger love is, the more the lover understands even the intimate movements of the beloved. John, the one most faithful to and most loving towards Jesus as God and Man, comprehended everything about Him, not as if resting on his Divine Heart, but as if in his Heart.
No one knew Christ intimately as John did. All the perfections of Christ were known to him. He penetrated into his mystery and into the ocean of his virtues, truly measuring the height, breadth, and depth of this living Temple not made by human hands that men were trying to destroy in vain. And, after decades had transpired, he wrote about them all and described them, leaving the most perfect Gospel in historical veracity, the most powerful in doctrine, the most luminous in terms of wisdom and charity, and the most faithful in describing episodes and characters, capable of overcoming the mental restrictions of the Jews and describing even what the other evangelists had not dared to say: the Samaritan woman, the royal official, the scandal and flight and rebellion of the disciples against the Master after the discourse on the Bread of Heaven, and the adulterous woman, and the open disputes with Jews, Pharisees, Scribes, and Doctors, and his taking refuge in Samaria and Ephraim, and his contacts with the Gentiles, and the truth about Judas, “who was a thief,” and many other things.
More than mature in years, because he was advanced in age when he wrote his Gospel, but perennially young because he was pure, but always equally and ardently loving towards Christ, for no other human love had diverted the flames of his charity from the Beloved, John, the loving eagle of Christ, has revealed Christ to us with a power superior to every other, inferior only to that of Christ Himself, which was infinite, since it was the power of God, in revealing his Father to us.
All four standing around the throne (Revelation 4:7-8) were covered with eyes. Indeed, they were the contemplatives, those who had clearly contemplated Christ so as to be able to describe and confess Him clearly.
But John, the eagle, with his mortal and immortal eyes, had contemplated Him as an eagle, with an eagle’s gaze, penetrating into the burning mystery of Christ. And beyond life, now at the side of his Beloved, with perfect sight, he looks fixedly and penetrates as far as the core of the Mystery and intones the hymn of praise which the others and the twenty-four elders follow, to be fortified in spirit and declare the events of the last times: the supreme horror, the supreme persecution, the final scourges, and the supreme victories of Christ, and the supreme, eternal joys of his faithful followers.
The first words of his Gospel canticle are praise of the Light. His last words in the Apocalypse are a cry with a loving reply and a loving question: “Yes, I am coming soon!” “Come, Lord Jesus!” And these two cries, of the Beloved and the Lover, disclose to us more than anything else what John meant to Jesus and Jesus to John: Love.
Let us compare this ardent lover-who, led by love, rose in spirit and in intellect to sublime regions and penetrated into the highest mysteries as did no other apostle or evangelist - to the man, Matthew. John was all spirit, increasingly spirit; Matthew was matter, all matter until Christ converted him and made him his own. John, an angel with a human appearance, a seraph, indeed, who with his eagle wings ascended where only very few were allowed to rise; Matthew, the man, still a man even after the conversion which made him, a sinful man, into a man of God - that is, a man raised back up to the degree of a rational creature destined for eternal life in Heaven. But still a man, without Luke’s culture, without John’s supernatural knowledge, and without Mark’s leonine strength. On the mystical ladder of the evangelists Matthew may be placed on the first rung, Mark a quarter of the way up, Luke halfway up, and John at the top.
But remaining “a man” did him no harm, but, rather, served to lead him higher in perfection by keeping him humble, contrite over his past, just as his describing the Word made Flesh as “man,” more than as Teacher, Miracle Worker, and God served at that time and in the future centuries to confirm and confess and assert the true Nature of Christ, who was the Word of the Father eternally, but who was really Man, becoming incarnate through a unique, divine miracle, in the womb of the Virgin to be the Master and Redeemer forever and ever.
He had neither the loving raptures of John nor the admirable economy of Luke, who did not limit himself to speaking about Christ the Teacher, but also speaks to us about what the preparation for Christ was like - that is, about his Mother and the events preceding the public manifestations of Jesus Christ, to make everything known to us, to confirm the prophets, and to demolish (with the most exact narration of the hidden life of Jesus, Mary and Joseph) the future heresies which would arise - and they are not all over yet - which alter the truth about Christ, his person, and doctrine, his healthy, strong, patient, and heroic person, like no other that has ever existed. Who shows us Christ the Savior and Redeemer, who begins the Passion by sweating blood at Gethsemane, as Luke does? But if Luke is the erudite historian, Mark is the impulsive man who imposes Christ on the pagan multitudes, bringing out his supernatural - indeed, divine - power in miracles of every kind.
Each of the four served to compose the mosaic giving us the true Jesus Christ, God-Man, Savior, Master, Redeemer, Victor over death and the devil, Eternal Judge, and King of kings forever. For this reason, in the theophany described by the Apostle John in his Apocalypse (4:5-9), the four, with their four different appearances, serve as the base and crown for the Throne on which there is seated the One who is, was, and will be, who is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end of all that was, is, and will be, and their voices, joined to those of the twenty-four - that is, of the twelve main patriarchs and the twelve greatest prophets, or major prophets - sing eternal praise to Him who is Most Holy and Omnipotent.
Twelve and twelve. This number was one of the sacred numbers for the Jews. There were twelve Patriarchs, twelve sons of Jacob, twelve tribes of Israel; and if there are twelve Commandments of the Law - the Commandments given by God the Father to Moses on Sinai (Exodus 20) - in reality there have been twelve since the Word of the Father, eternal and most perfect Wisdom, completed the Law and perfected it, teaching that the commandments of the commandments are “Love God with your whole self and your neighbor as yourself,” for these first two and principal commandments are truly the living basis for all ten commandments, since the first three cannot be practiced if one does not love God with one’s whole self, with all one’s strength, and with all one’s soul, and the other seven cannot be practiced, either, if one does not love one’s neighbor as oneself by not going against love, justice, or honesty in any respect or in regard to any person.
The age of twelve was prescribed by the Law in order foy a Jewish boy to become a son of the Law. And Jesus, faithful to the Law, wanted twelve apostles as followers because that number was sacred. For if one rotten branch later fell and the new plant was left with just eleven branches, a new twelfth branch soon appeared on the plant of Christianity, and the sacred number was re-established.
How many sacred numbers there were in Israel! And each with its symbol, which was later transferred to the new Church. Three. Seven. Twelve. Seventy-two. And, in the future times, there will shine forth the truth about the numbers which are still obscure that are contained in the Apocalypse, numbers which stand for Infinite Perfection and Holiness, and Impiety, which is also without measure.
Jehoshua = Perfection, Holiness, Salvation,394 a name with eight letters.
Satana = Impiety, the enemy of the human race, the perfection of evil, a name with six letters.
And since the former is the name of most perfect Goodness, and the latter, of most perfect Evil - that is, measureless - each of them multiplies by three, the number of perfection, the number of its letters, and the former becomes 888, and the latter, 666. And woe, woe four times over, to those days when Infinite Goodness and unlimited Evil will fight their final battle before the definitive victory of Goodness and those who are Good and the definitive defeat of Evil and his Servants!
All the horror and blood there have been on earth since the Creator made it will be nothing in comparison to the horror of the ultimate struggle. For this reason Jesus the Master spoke so clearly to his followers when he predicted the last times. To prepare men for the final struggles, in which only those with intrepid faith, burning charity, and unshakable hope will be able to persevere without falling into damnation and merit Heaven.
For this reason - since the world is descending deeper and deeper into the abyss, into nonfaith or excessively weak faith, and charity and hope languish in too many and in many are already dead - through every means an effort should be made for God to be more greatly known, loved, and followed. What the Priest - avoided or not heeded by too many - cannot obtain can be gained by the press and books in which the Word of God is again presented to the multitudes.
A word sometimes suffices to lift up a fallen spirit, lead a straying person back onto the right path, and prevent the definitive suicide of a soul.
For this reason God, who sees and knows everything about men, with the means of his Infinite Charity reveals his thought and his desire to souls chosen by Him for this mission and does not want his help to remain inactive and suffers on seeing that what would be the bread of salvation for many is not given to them.
Languishing souls’ need for spiritual food is constantly growing. But the choice grain given by God remains locked up and useless, and weakness is increasing, and the number of those perishing, not so much in this life as in the other, goes on growing.
When, through truer, vaster, and deeper knowledge of Christ, when, through final removal of the seals over that which is a source of life, holiness, and eternal salvation, will a multitude of souls be able to sing the hymn of joy, blessing, and glory to God, who helped them to be saved and to form part of the People of the Saints?
With what words and looks will the Eternal Judge speak and gaze at those who by their will prevented many from being saved? In what manner will He demand from them an accounting of those who failed to possess Heaven because they, like the scribes and pharisees of old, closed off in the face of people the way that could have led them to the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 23:13), and, in both voluntarily blinding their eyes and hardening their hearts (Isaiah 6:10), they did not want to see or understand?
Too late and to no avail they will beat their breasts and ask for forgiveness for the way they acted.
Judgment will by then have been given and will be irrevocable, and they will have to expiate their guilt and also pay for those whom, by their way of acting, they kept from finding God and being saved.
391 The notebooks from which this last entry is taken, unlike the previous ones, do not mention the precise dates on which they were composed, but only a general reference to the period. In addition, the writer does not use her customary term at the outset - says - with an attribution of authorship to Jesus or another heavenly source speaking in the first person, as happens in the “dictations.”
392 Death, judgment, heaven and hell.
393 Ezekiel 1 and 2 (1:4 and 27-28; 8:2); Revelation 4:3; 21:19-20.
394 We maintain the spellings of the names in the Italian text, for the sake of the numerical observations which follow.