Jesus says:
“I was silent yesterday to give you the chance not to rest, but to obey. Father226 told you to write down your impressions and the manner in which you hear Me. As your strength and your time are limited, if you do one thing, you cannot do the other. And I thus left you undisturbed to give you the chance to obey. Father did not give you a command; he just expressed a desire. But for the truly obedient even a desire becomes a command.
“Obedience is worth more than words, even if they are words written as dictated by Me. For you hear and write the word, but it is not yours; you repeat it, but it is not yours. Obedience, on the other hand, is yours. It is appropriate to say, ‘Let her act, for you always have the poor and do not always have Me.’ You always have the poor, to give the word to. You do not always have the chance to pour forth the precious aroma of holy obedience, defying the comments of others.
“And know that obedience was the virtue of the Word, destined to be Man and become the Redeemer. Love, power, perfection, and wisdom are common to Our Three Persons. But obedience is mine, exclusively mine. obeyed in becoming incarnate, in becoming poor, in remaining subject to men, in carrying out my mission as an evangelizer, and in dying.
“Therefore, when you obey, both men in the corresponding forms of obedience and God in the major acts of obedience implying deeds of renunciation and bloody sacrifices and the acceptance of death, sometimes an atrocious death, you are like Me, who was obedient unto death, who was the Obedient One par excellence, the Divine Obedient One.
“Second to Me in obedience was my sweet Mother, who always obeyed - and with her lowing smile - the will of the Most High.
“Third was my chaste Father on earth, who made his manly strength into embroideries of obedience - indeed, he bent his manly strength and his judgment as a just person like a silken thread to make them bow to the will of God.
“Therefore, whoever obeys obeys the three most obedient ones in the world and shall have them as friends here and hereafter, in Heaven.”
And I shall now strive to describe the phases and modes whereby the word of the dear “Voice” comes to me and is written by me.
Sometimes, at night, when I am half asleep - more awake than asleep, for at the same time I hear everything happening in the room or in the street - I hear the Voice saying a phrase to me repeatedly, as if to invite me to sit and write. If I have enough physical strength, I sit, and, struggling with somnolence and pains, I set about writing.227 Then the sentence - or a few initial sentences - is followed by the others, and the suffering ceases which is provoked by the clash between the soul intently listening - that would like to be served by the body - and the weary body, which refuses to serve the soul by emerging from repose in order to write.
At times, however, the “Voice” - which, together with the sound, on occasion has to communicate to me a special power which lasts as long as the need for it - is so overwhelming that I must immediately sit up and write at once, or, if it is during the day, stop whatever I am doing in order to write.
I often sense the approach of the moment for instruction, and thus of the Master’s closeness, from a kind of shock, penetration, or infusion - I don’t know how to explain to be precise. In short, it is something which enters into me and gives me a luminous joy. I say “luminous” because it is just as if I were to shift from a shadowy place into the warmth and joy of the sun.
But this does not always happen. These are the highest moments, as are the ones in which mental vision of what He is describing is joined to the words (as when He showed me Mary in her glory in Paradise228). Generally, it is a closeness, very close. But always closeness.
The lessons, furthermore, are as Follows.
Sometimes, like this morning, with the passage which I enclose on the separate sheet, nothing justifies and provokes a given instruction. For example, this morning I was a thousand miles away from that thought. I was not praying; rather, I was intent upon an entirely material occupation connected with my special needs as a patient. I say this to show you how far away I was from thinking about mystical things. The “Voice” began to speak without taking anything else into account. It then waited - after giving me the first cue, so to speak - for me to finish with that occupation. It then spurred me to write and led me to understand that I should take half a sheet, which would be enough. I had a whole sheet in my hands, but it had me set it down. As you in fact see, it was enough.
The first sentence, spoken when I could not write, was “Obedience is worth more than words. Obedience was the virtue of the Word.” Afterwards, when I could at last write, Jesus dictated his words on the initial subject, just as I wrote them on the sheet.
On other occasions, He instead begins the lesson spontaneously, having me open in a haphazard fashion the book which He wants and in which He presents the sentence to me immediately; He then imparts more or less lengthy instruction on it. He sometimes makes use of any book, perhaps a newspaper, from which He draws a teaching.
There are also days when He does not speak, and I am then so unhappy that I seem to be a child who no longer has her mother at her side and seeks her everywhere and calls her. I, too, call Him and invite Him by opening the Bible here and there. There are days when He remains inexorably silent and others when, after making me stroll back and forth without lending me an ear, He surrenders, and I then feel that certain sensation mentioned at the outset, whereby I realize that grace is coming.
Observe that, whereas I was previously able to make meditations on my own - poor meditations, if compared to the ones I receive now - at present I am absolutely unable to do so by myself. concentrate perfectly on a point. I get nothing from it, and the Master, as a rule, never explains to me the point I would like to have explained at that time. He explains what He wants and in the manner most removed from the way I would have explained it and the way it is usually explained.
In the same fashion, I am no longer able to get interested in books for reading. I, an obstinate reader, now let books stagnate without opening them. If I do open them, after a few lines I get tired and close them. And I don’t get tired from reading. I get tired because they are tasteless and repugnant food for me.
And the same holds for habitual conversations. They are really tiring. I would like to remain alone and in silence, for chit-chat disturbs me greatly and seems to be more trivial than ever. I must perform prodigies of charity to put up with my fellows who endeavor to keep me company and by being there impede the Company which is dear to me, the only one I desire and my soul endures: that of Jesus or of a person who, like you, is not unaware of my secret.
But who are these persons? You, Marta, Paola, and her father.229 The latter understands one per cent and does not get the other ninety-nine, and so... There are three left. But Marta is always on the move and is so tired at night that she falls fast asleep. So it’s you and Paola. When close to the two of you, and especially you, I rest and feel joy. But the others are weariness and affliction to me.
In regard to the book by Ricciotti, from the first moment I leafed through it I did not like it. Well translated as a Canticle. But the author’s reasoning - it’s really the kind I can no longer assimilate. In addition, with the insistence of a refrain, the Voice whispers to me, “Don’t busy yourself with that job. I don’t want you to.” It says nothing else. But, seeing that it insists, I resolve to tell you that I won’t read any further than I have, and, I confess to you, I don’t feel pained about it, for, I repeat, it seems to me that I’m chewing on straw. That’s that. I have obeyed.
226 Father Migliorini.
227 At this point the writer inserts the date, “November 3,” as if making an annotation.
228 In the text on September 12.
229 Father Migliorini, Marta Diciotti, Paola Belfanti, and her father, Giuseppe.