Jesus comments on Isaiah 6:6, "Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding in his hand a live coal which he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs."
| |
| Jesus says: "To deserve to transmit the Word of God one must have clean lips and a clean heart. A clean heart, for it is from that heart that the motions of thought and the flesh emerge. Woe to those who do not keep themselves pure and dare to speak in My Name with a sinful soul. These are not My disciples and My apostles. They are plunderers of Me. For they rob souls from Me to give them to Satan. Souls--both those who follow the priest with respect and faith and those who observe him with distrust--are prone to reflect on the priest's conduct, for they are endowed with reason. And if they see that the one saying, 'Be patient, be honest, be chaste, be good, be charitable, be forbearing, forgive, help' is, on the contrary, dominated by wrath, harshness, the senses, resentment, and selfishness, they get scandalized and, even if they do not separate from the Church, always feel a conflict in themselves. These are like the blows of a battering ram which you--priests who are not the victims of your sublime ministry, which makes you the continuators of the Twelve among the throngs that, at a distance of twenty centuries, always have to be evangelized, for Satan continually destroys the work of Christ, and it is up to you to mend the ravages of Satan--direct against the edifice of Faith in hearts. Even if they do not collapse, they are injured, and then a shove by Satan is enough to make them fall. There are too many among you who imitate the twelfth apostle and for the sake of base human interests sell My portions--souls, whom you bathe in My Blood, which I have entrusted to you--to the Enemy of God and of man. The current situation, at least 50 percent of it--and I am very indulgent--is due to you, salt that has become tasteless, fire that no longer gives warmth, light that smokes and does not shine, bread that has turned bitter, and comfort that has become torment, for you present a whole mass of thorns to the souls that, already wounded, come to you for support--you give harshness, uncharitableness, indifference, and rigorism to the souls coming to you to hear a fatherly word in which there will be an echo of My sweetness, forgiveness and mercy. Poor souls! You thunder against them. And why don't you thunder against yourselves? Are you tempted to appear as the emulators of the ancient members of the synedrium? But that time has passed. I set a tombstone over it because it deserved to be buried so that it would no longer cuase harm, and thereupon I have set up My throne of Mercy and Love, provided a Table and a Cross where a God becomes bread and a God becomes a host for the redemption of all. Learn how to be priests from Me, the Eternal Priest. To be priests means to be angelic, it means to be holy. The throngs ought to see Christ as utterly evident in you. Ah! You often show them an appearance more like Lucifer's. How many, many souls I will ask My priests to account for. I repeat to you what Paul said. And believe that it would be better for you to confess openly that you can no longer remain in that way rather than live as you do. You alone would deny Me. By remaining you cut so many souls away from Me. Once and for all, leave aside so many embellishments and concerns. For cultivation, go back to the Texts and ask God to purify your minds and hearts with the fire of continence and of love so as to be able to understand them as they should be understood. For--know this--you have turned the burning gems of My Gospel into opaque little stones filthy with slime--that is, if you haven't even turned them into large stones of anathema for lapidating poor souls by giving the words of love a sternness which chills and leads to desperation. It is you that deserve those stones, for if a flock is torn apart by wolves or plunges into a ravine or grazes on poisonous grass, who is to blame ninety percent of the time? The indolent or guzzling shepherd who, while the sheep are in danger, goes on a spree or sleeps or busies himself with markets and banks. Ask God--by way of a penitential life which will cleanse you of so much humanity--to have a seraph purify you continually with the flaming coal taken from the altar of the Lamb--I might say, 'from the Heart of the Lamb'--which burns from eternity out of zeal for God and for souls. Penance kills nothing but what should be killed. Do not fear for your flesh, which you ought to love for what it deserves--very little--and which you love as something precious. My penitents do not die of this. They die because of the Charity which burns them. It is Charity which consumes them, not the hair shirts and scourges. And the proof is that they sometimes arrive at advanced ages and with a physical integrity which the solicitous protectors of the flesh do not reach. My saints who die at a young age are the ones burned on the pyre of Love, not those destroyed by austerities. Penance provides light and spiritual agility because it tames the octopus of humanity, which keeps you nailed to the bottom. Penance uproots you from what is lowly and launches you on high, towards Love. Simplicity, charity, chastity, humility, and love of pain are the five greatest gems of the priestly crown. Detachment from cares, forbearance, constancy, and patience are the other minor gems. They form a crown of pointed gems which clasp the heart in a circle. But it is precisely from being clasped in this way, remaining wounded by it, that this heart increases its splendor and becomes a living ruby in a wreath of diamonds. I don't even say to you, 'Have the heart of My Peter; I say, 'Have the heart of My John.' I want that heart in you because it was the perfect apostolic heart from the dawn of his priesthood until its dusk. I infuse the mind of Peter into My Vicars, but you must make the heart on your own. And that heart is indispensable in whoever is My priest: from My most lofty Holy One, who is white in soul and in thought, as in clothing, and who is the greatest Host in this bloody harvest which the Earth is celebrating, to the least of my ministers, who breaks the Bread and the Word in a secluded village: a sprinkling of houses which the world does not know it bears on its surface, but which the Eucharist and the Cross render as august as a royal palace--more than a palace, they make it similar to the maximum Temple of Christendom--for in a ciborium of gold, studded with pearls or in the poorest ciborium is the same Christ, the Son of God, and the souls that prostrate themselves before Him--dressed in the purple of Cardinals and a regal mantle or covered with a humble cowl and poor clothes--are equal for Me. I look at the spirit, children. And I bless where there is merit. I don't let Myself be seduced by what is the world, as you often do. Change your hearts, priests. The salvation of this humanity is to a great extent in your hands. Don't force Me on the Great Day to have to strike down vast multitudes of the consecrated responsible for immense ruins which have spread over the world from hearts. | |
| When you have done your duty--I continue to speak to you priests--I authorize you to say what I taught My apostles to say when sent on their mission through Palestine. Remember, however, not to grow weary too quickly. I repeated My doctrine for three years. I was God. After three years, one out of twelve among those who had been filled with Me betrayed Me. Countless others abandoned me in the hour of the trial. Do you claim to be more solicitous than I was? More powerful? Obeyed more? Remember that if brothers and sisters are to be forgiven seventy times seven, spiritual children--and all Catholics are children for you, all of them without exception--are to be forgiven seventy times seventy times. Remember that for you human differentiations concerning souls do not exist. Indeed, there is a reversal of values. Man admires and reveres the honest, the good, and the pure. You must, not admire, but love those who are spiritually unfortunate. The filthier they are, the farther they are from Me, the more you must be a father and a light for them. No repugnance, no weariness, no abandonment, and no fear is granted to you. You must stoop over all forms of wretchedness. You must seek them to look after them. You must love them to bring them Love. When rejected, attack again; when derided, increase your charity. Make use of human things to lead souls to supernatural things. And must I teach you the sweet stratagems of love? Haven't you ever had a father, a mother, and brothers and sisters with whom you have used them to win a bigger and bigger love for yourselves? Your faithful are children for you. Oh, how many things a father studies to make himself be loved by his child! The child is still an infant and the father, weary from his work, still bends over the crib and repeats the sweet words so as to hear them spoken afterwards by the innocent litttle mouth. He is a child, and the father bends to teach the baby to take his first steps, shows him the flowers and the stars, and educates his mind in the first sensations, the first thoughts. Even if he is slow-witted, simple-minded, the father strives to open his child's mind. Even if he is uncontrollably naughty, with a thousand stratagems he seeks to change the child's heart. And you? Why don't you have a father's feelings for your spiritual children? Are they atheists? It doesn't matter. Are they lustful? It doesn't matter. Are they dens of vice? It doesn't matter. Pray and dare. Today, tomorrow, and even the day after tomorrow, and always, always, without tiring. It is often enough to be able to look at a soul with a gaze of true love to conquer it. Souls are not often wicked, as you think. They are disgusted, sick, ashamed. Disgusted with what the world--and the clergy therein--have given them. Ashamed of being sick. They wish to be cured, but they are ashamed to confess their illnesses Give them what they have not had: holy love. Go out to meet them. Persuade them to open themselves without shame. They are reluctant flowers. But if love warms them, they open. Oh, holy dews and blessed rays that you priests by your sacrifice draw down upon souls! Acts of repentance and redemption which make them children of God. Sacraments and grace which you infuse and which make you and them holy. Be blessed for this work, O faithful servants who look after My harvest and My vineyard. And blessed even if you bend over wild grass arising outside My vineyard. It is not necessary to leave one's country to be missionaries, O children. Europe, the world, is entirely a missionary land, for man has again become idolatrous and heretical. In truth I tell you that it would be necessary to till one's native land, out of love for one's country, before others, for it is from a Christian country that the country's well-being comes, and where are the Christian nations today? Look around you. What do you see? Heaps of ruins and heaps of victims. Who has produced them? One? Two? Four individuals? No. They are the wicked agents, the ministers of Evil, who uses them as would a despotic king. But they are what they are because the populations over which they rule have let them be such, finding in them the maximum representatives of their own sentiments. From a people devoid of God--and the peoples are now devoid of God because they have torn Him out of their souls, putting the flesh, money, and power in His place--there arise the cobras that kill by their threefold hunger which Satan incites. It is useless to say, 'They were the cause of the present evil.' Say, all of you--I say all--including you priests, 'We were,' and you will be sincere. Work in the uncultivated field is now much harder. But act. Become like my first apostles again. Become heroes of the priesthood again, which is the only holy militia. Do your duty, all of you, to the point of immolation. For if the throngs are then obstinate in being lost, I will provide for them. You will receive a reward all the same, even if you come to Me with your arms, broken in the wearisome labor, laden with very few ears of grain. But, I beg you--and I am God--do not be to blame for a lack of love. I do not forgive a lack of charity. It is the denial of God."  |
No comments:
Post a Comment