November 13prev home
next
Isaiah 6:6
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 fifty per cent 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 cause harm, and thereupon I have set up my throne of Mercy and Love, provided by 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.”