Jesus says:
“Let us continue the reference linking past and present, which in the eternal being of God is an eternal ‘present.’ And today I will have you observe what is closest to your heart.
“I do not deny love for one’s country. I, the eternal Son of God, when I became man had a country and loved it with a perfect love. I loved my earthly country and would have wanted to know it was worthy of God’s protection, and, knowing instead that it was unworthy, I wept over it. I thus understand the pain of a loyal heart that sees its country not only in danger, but condemned to days filled with a pain in comparison to which death is a gift.
“But tell Me, Maria. Can you say that I have not loved this land, which is your country and into which I sent my Peter to erect the Rock which will not collapse from the blowing of winds, this land, where I came to confirm Peter, in a moment of human hesitation, for martyrdom, because there was a need for that blood in Rome to make Rome the center of Catholicism?
“Can you say that I have not loved this land, in which my confessors have fallen in sheaves, like ears of an eternal wheat, cut down by an Eternal Harvester, to make them nourishment for your spirits?
“Can you say that I have not loved this land, where I have brought the relics of my life and my death: the house in Nazareth where I was conceived in an embrace of luminous ardor between the Divine Spirit and the Virgin, and the Shroud where the sweat of my Death imprinted the sign of my pain, suffered for humanity?
“Can you say that I have not loved this land, where the greatest saints have flourished, those similar to Me because of the gift of the wounds, those who have seen Our Essence without veils, those who, helped by Me, have created works which over the centuries repeat the miracle of the bread and fish multiplied for man’s needs?
“Can you say that I have not loved this land, to which I have given so many geniuses, so many victories, so much glory, so much beauty in sky, earth, sea, flowers, mountains, and forests?
“Can you say that I have not loved this land in giving you help to become free and united? In wars against enemies ten times greater than you, in mad enterprises - in human judgment - I was among your ranks with my angels. It was I, it was I who illuminated the commanders, protected the soldiers, thwarted betrayals, and gave you Victory and Peace. It was I who gave you the joy of conquest, when this was not a work of overbearance, but could be a work of civilization, of rescuing your lands from foreign domination.
“Can you say that I have not granted to you the most necessary Peace - that of my Church, which your fathers had offended and which has forgiven so that Italy would really be one and great?
“And have I not come to give you water for the thirsty harvests, sun for the wet fields, health in epidemics?
“And have I not given you the Voice that speaks in my Name, that speaks to you before others, for in my Vicar, too, the universal Pastor, there is love for his country, and my Vicar has been an Italian for centuries? From the heart of Italy the Voice expands over the world, and you receive its first wave, even the slightest one.
“And what has been the use of all this?
“You have acted dishonestly. You believed everything was licit for you because you foolishly thought that God was at your service. You thought that my Justice would give its backing to your sins, to your acts of overbearance, to your idolatry. The more God was good and forbearing, the more you took advantage of Him. You have systematically rejected Good and embraced Evil, worshipping it.
“So? What are you complaining about?
“But isn’t the ‘abomination of desolation’ just outside the See of Peter? Doesn’t it thrust its foul waves of vice, concupiscence, fraud, and the idolatry of sense, unjust wealth, and plundered, predatory power against the very steps of the Chair of Peter? And what more do you want?
“But read John’s words carefully and don’t ask to know more.
“God may not be mocked or tempted, O sons and daughters. And you have tempted Him so much and do so continuously. Within your souls, your minds, your bodies, your homes, and your institutions. You tempt Him and mock Him everywhere.
“My angels cover their faces so as not to see your trafficking with Satan and his precursors. But I see it and say, ‘Enough!’
“If Jerusalem was punished for its crimes, won’t the second Jerusalem be punished, which, after twenty centuries of Christianity, uplifts upon false altars new gods imposed by masters even more marked with the sign of the Beast than you are in Italy, and does it think it can deceive Christ with a fraudulent veneration for his Cross and his Church, shown only out of refined hypocrisy which, under the smile and the bow, conceals the killer’s sword?
“Yes. You are also committing the extreme crime. You are persecuting Me in my Pontiffs and in my true faithful. But do it openly and do it quickly. I will act just as quickly.100
“It is painful to speak like this and to speak to the least blameworthy. But in others I do not have ears that hear Me. They fall and will fall cursing Me. If only, at the very least, they were capable of being converted and asking for mercy under the lash of the scourge, in the agony gripping hearts and the country!
“But they will not do so. And there will be no mercy. The full mercy that I would like to give you. There are too few who are deserving, in comparison to the numberless throng meriting increasing censure, hour by hour. If the good were a tenth of the wicked, what has been established might be changed. Justice instead follows its course. It is you that force it to follow that course.
“But if there will no longer be collective mercy, there will be individual justice. Those who mortify themselves out of love for their country and their brothers and sisters will be judged with immense love. The others with severity. Furthermore, it would be better for the most blameworthy never to have been born. Not a drop of blood extorted from the veins of the humble, not a single moan, not one instance of mourning, not a single case of despair extorted from a heart, and not a single soul wrested away from God will remain without weight in their judgment.
“I will forgive the humble who may despair because of the horror of events. But I will not forgive those who have led them to despair in obedience to the will of the Beast.”
Jesus says:
“Hope lives where faith lives. The despair leading so many souls to death today presupposes a lack of true faith. Indeed, those who have true faith ask so insistently that they receive.
“But when you see that a prayer remains unheeded, also consider that it is vitiated in the request made or vitiated in faith. If it is vitiated in the request, then I, who know, do not grant you what would give you a moment’s happiness and pain for the rest of earthly life and sometimes might give you afflictions in the other life as well because of the bad use you would make of my gift. If it is vitiated in faith, then I do not hear it and do not heed it.
“The world no longer has faith and thus no longer has hope. The world does not believe that God is the Almighty Father. The world does not believe that God is a loving Father. If only the world knew how painful it is for Me not to be able to help you always and not to be able always to make you happy!
“I would like my sons and daughters to be so entirely mine as to have only holy thoughts and holy requests to be made to the Father, who would then heed them in all instances - all, and when He could not grant a son a son’s request, He would replace the gift not given with reflections of divine intelligence and a hundred other even greater comforts.
“You know something about this, you that have come to true Faith in your God and Father. But if you meditate carefully on the basic reason for the death of faith and hope, you see that it is a lack of charity.
“God is not loved. Not by Christians in name only, but by those who seem to be fervent Christians. They seem to, but they are not. Many religious practices, many prayers - but the former and the latter are superficial, performed and offered more out of superstition than religion. Many fear that if a certain number of prayers are not said and certain functions are not held, God will punish them, or, rather - they leave God aside - their affairs will not prosper. Selfishness in this, too.
“They have not understood what the Father’s love for his children and the children’s love for the Father are. God exists - they believe He does. But so distant and abstract - that it is as if He did not exist. They believe God is not only distant, gruff and miserly. They believe God is a sower of punishments.
“No. Your God is always close to you. It is not He that drifts away - it is you. It is not He that is miserly and gruff - it is you. It is not He that closes the doors of grace - it is you. You close them by not having faith and love and hope in Him.
“But come, poor sons and daughters; come to me, who burn with the desire to make you happy. Come to Me, who am saddened by not being able to clasp you to my breast and dry your tears. Come to the Only One who can give you goodness and peace, and true, eternal love.
“To live close to Me is joy even in pain. To die with Me nearby is to pass into joy. Those entrusting themselves to Me never have to be afraid of anything on earth or anything in eternity, for to all who are true children I open my heart as a true Father full of understanding and forgiveness.”
100 On a typed copy the writer noted in pencil in the margin, “Three days later Mussolini fell, and fifty days later the Vatican was surrounded by Germans.”