In regard to your desire that I tell you what I knowledge I had of Sacred Scripture, I can formally assure you that I was familiar with only the four Gospels. I have known them by memory, and for years. I also once read the Song of Songs, thirteen or more years ago, in a Protestant edition which I later left with the Pastor at St. Paolino’s at that time, Monsignor Guidi, who is now dead. In a book providing general culture I read the Proverbs of Solomon. And my knowledge ends there.
To read the Bible is for me like walking in an unknown world which would remain impenetrable for me, for on my own I understand only its superficial meaning and what is commented on for me by the annotations at the foot of the page, which, I remark, are different from the ones given me by the Master.
When I was at school, they had me study Sacred History from a little textbook adapted to our young age, and you know what those texts are like: reduced to the minimum terms. I remembered the leading points, more names than events, and confess that, except for Adam, Abraham, Esau, Moses, Lot, Ruth, Esther, and a few others, I no longer recalled anything. A real dunce, needless to say! As for the New Testament, moreover, in addition to the Gospels, I was familiar with the passages included in the Epistles, and that’s all.
Even now, when I have the Bible at my disposal - since you took care of that - I have not gone, by a supernatural order, beyond Esther. And I confess to you that many, many pages of Kings and Chronicles put me to sleep, whereas I liked Tobit a lot. Afterwards, the Master took me in hand to such a point that I was unable to go forward in orderly fashion and came to a standstill at the thirteenth chapter of Job. The rest, excluding the points which the Master explains to me from time to time, represents unknown words to me.
I repeat230 that on the days when Jesus is silent, and with the confidence of love I invite Him by opening the Book here and there, I don’t stop even to read. I look at a point, and if I feel that Jesus is indicating He will speak, fine; if not, I open elsewhere until He speaks. If, after three or at most four attempts, at different points, opened in a haphazard way from among the 1838 pages of the Book, I understand that He does not want to speak, I resign myself and read on my own from the point where I stopped, which is now page 729.231
I could not be more detailed than this or more obedient. And I have been in the midst of many obstacles, ranging from continual interruptions to the dizzy spells caused by my condition, which the doctor found to be very serious yesterday. The state of my lungs and heart justifies all human fears. And all supernatural joys, for me.
I know that my pulse is very weak, thread-like, arrhythmic, and tending to decline. I feel it. I wasn’t a nurse for nothing. I know that paralysis may hit me at any moment. I know that the dizziness and collapses are produced by cerebral anemia and atrophy of the heart. I know that I am breathing with only half of my left lung and that the right one is like a dry branch. I know everything. But these are my riches and the sources of my peace.
As for the past, I entrust myself to the Mercy of God. As for the present, I entrust myself to your help. As for the future, the prospect of soon going to the One I love smiles at me like a joyous sun. Every turn for the worse, then, does not have a funereal ring to it, but chimes like a festive bell announcing to me the approach of my entry into Life.
9:30 a.m. (After Having Finished Writing My Impressions)
Jesus says:
“You spoke correctly.232 It is to chew on straw, and I want you to nourish yourself on pure wheat. Straw does not nourish; it fills one without nourishing. And so it is with a great deal of science.
“What is always a danger in every form of science is even pernicious when it is science of the things of God. But it is now that way. The doctors of sacred science excessively forget what they are dealing with, whose service they are in, and what powers they are speaking about. They also forget who they are speaking to and the consequences of their teachings, which, like waves, bounce back along the coast after directly hitting the first ones to read them. They could be ‘lights.’ They are smoke concealing the light, even where it exists.
“They love to show off human erudition. In truth, I tell you that, if it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to be saved, it will be even more difficult for an ecclesiastic who is learned in human terms, or for anyone who deals with religious matters with human science, to be saved. Not only will they have to answer for having glutted, filled themselves to the point of overflowing with human erudition, denying a place for and expelling from themselves what is holy science, but they will have to answer for the incalculable harm they have done to others, beginning with their brothers in religion and on down to the simple faithful and simple men.
“In truth I tell you that the light which will halo the brow of a humble believer who only knows how to say his prayers, without the additional giddiness of culture, shall bring a blush of shame to those who, like Epulo, the rich man, wanted all foods on their tables while forgetting one alone: the food of Charity. And Charity shall be closed for them; it shall be very miserly with them. As they were closed and miserly with It.
“The Song, which conceals the loving relations between God and the Church and between God and souls, is not understood by the learned. It cannot be. Only those loving God hear the sound of the eighth chord, that sound which is produced by the touch of the finger of God moved by love. The others’ ears are shut to that heavenly voice, which is the true queen among voices, which surround it like a choir and are voices for the human senses. It is not understood by the learned who build a new Babel in the place where there rises up, like the shaft of a mystical candle, the Word that does not need human erudition to be comprehended, but spiritual purity and love. And they are understood by those for whom Love becomes Bread, Voice, and Light.
“Remove your embellishments and the phylacteries in which you strut about and put on a simple tunic of pure linen fastened with a purple sash. It was the clothing of Christ the Master - let it be yours. Purity, O bearers of religion. Let purity be your robe. Purity of the flesh, twofold purity of the heart, threefold purity of thought.
“Do not distribute thought contaminated by your thought, separated from God and filled with human erudition, to those who ask you for God’s thought. Love, love, love around you and within you. Around you, so that the multitudes will see it, and within you, because it is from what is inside that fragrance radiates out. And you cannot infuse what you do not possess; you cannot speak in a proper voice about what you do not comprehend.
“Souls do not need science, but light. For science there are already too many volumes and too many of the learned. Give the words of Wisdom to the multitudes. And give them with words of wisdom drawn from Me.
“And now that we have spoken of this, continue to write further on Wisdom.233 I have introduced this gloss into the middle of the commentary because it is the proper place for it. I have granted it to you after obedience because obedience renders Me benignant and more of a Master than ever. I want to hold your hand as a good child, and the more you remain with the soul of a good child, the more I will be your Father and Master.
“ ‘Wisdom protected the one God first made...; it drew him out of his sin and gave him power to govern things.’
“Adam, pure and obedient in the earthly Paradise, was directly instructed by God. When Adam stained himself with sin, he forfeited God’s teaching. The final act of paternal care was to give the two of them clothing and teach them how to cover what was now a stimulus for their contaminated senses. How could the first couple have oriented itself on Earth if a spiritual power had not guided it?
“God is always a father, sons and daughters who do not consider this. And even when He strikes a blow, He does not do so except out of goodness and with goodness. He does not cast you naked and forsaken upon ruinous ways, leaving you alone. If you draw punishment upon yourselves, He joins spiritual aids to it. But you, made of flesh and blood, do not appreciate these. You want only what is joy and food for your flesh and your blood.
“Adam no longer heard the voice of the Offended One. But the Offended One did not leave him without lights, for He loved him as the work of his hands. He gave him the lights of instinct and the lights of thought. The former, for his flesh; the latter, for his soul. By sincere repentance he merited salvation, and by instinct he reigned over things.
“In his children the lights, which are nothing but Wisdom, were the teachers of progress. Except in the one who, in rejecting Wisdom, gave heed to Error - that is, Satan - who armed his hand with the flint by which the Innocent One was slain.
“Wisdom instructed the honest one so that he would save the race of man and the races of the beasts in the punishment of the waters opened upon the world, which became a cesspool.
“Wisdom inflamed Abraham for the great sacrifice and led his fatherly heart to deliverance, as it led the just and obedient one out of the fire coming down from Heaven.
“Wisdom does not abandon those who entrust themselves to Her with a pure heart and upright thought. But She flees from those who want to choose their food and their way on their own, and those who tread the pathways of error and eat the food of death.
“Like a sun rising higher and higher in the vault of the sky and increasingly flashing and inflaming, so Wisdom, ever loftier, shone on the men who were capable of loving Her. She produced spiritual progress and progress in intelligence. She blazed forth in the miracle of Sinai, where She gave the unchanging Law to men. And if only your hardness now wanted to split open before the blood that you drink - for the rivers and seas of the earth have turned into blood, and the ear of grain and cluster of grapes giving you bread and wine feed on blood - if only it now wanted to open itself to receive Wisdom again, as it opened to the Jews of Egypt.
“Even this is a punishment of Mercy, children. It is you that turn it into a punishment of Justice. Acknowledge Me as a Father and not as an implacable king. Make Me King, but a king of love, the king of your homes: a father, your father, and not a Judge.
“And aren’t you all - you that live in Me and you that have separated from Me - tormented in a way? The former, by the pain produced by men; the latter, by pain not comforted by God? Aren’t all of you on earth suffering? There is also hunger for the neutral; the extermination of pestilences and the dangers of new scourges fall upon all, even those far away, the most neutral of all.
“Come to Me to be saved! Weep not only with regret over the material well-being which you have lost, but out of remorse over having deserved censure from God. Weep, but weep while beating your breasts; weep over my hands, which, if they have stricken you, have done so out of love, to awaken you from the morbid sleep into which you had fallen and where you will perish if you remain therein.
“Stop worshipping those who are not God. Are you still not convinced that what you worship against the Law turns into punishment for you? Don’t say that you didn’t believe, that you didn’t know. For a century I have been increasing the ‘voices’ and apparitions, both of them miracles of Goodness, to call you back to my Way. For a century I have been increasing the weight of punishments to call you back to my Law. You don’t surmise anything. And the more God draws away, the more you drift apart instead of calling Him.
“What shall I call you to give you a precise name? I shall call you ‘Malice,’ for you have filled yourselves with malice; you have sold yourselves to Malice.
“No, you cannot accuse Me of anything. It is not I that am destroying you. It is you that have closed the doors to the Love that was watching over you like a father bending over the cradles of his children, and you have opened the doors to Satan.
“In my Justice, which cannot remain passive, I am still indulgent. In the midst of the pelting of misfortunes, I remind you that I am God and there are no others apart from Me. I remind you that I am the Powerful and Perfect One, and you, mud, which is something as long as it remains under the action of Grace, holy dew which keeps mud from becoming dust. I remind you that whoever separates from Me falls into excesses and provokes ruin. I remind you that the word and promises of men are a passing cloud which often dissolves into thunderbolts and that one alone is the Word and Promise that saves. That of your God.
“And if to support your thesis as bedeviled people you tell Me that in punishment the just as well fall with the blameworthy,234 I tell you that not I, but you are their slayers, and I will have you account for that blood, race of hyenas that live only by tearing to pieces, O race of serpents that pass by strangling or contaminate minds and hearts with your venom.
“No, I will not be severe with whoever did not know what God was. But with you Christians, who are Judases, I will show a merciless severity”
230 See the text for November 3.
231 The edition used by the writer was La Sacra Bibbia, translated and commented on by Rev. Eusebio Tintori, O.F.M. (Istituto Missionario Pia Società S. Paolo, 1942). Page 729 contains the final words of the eleventh paragraph, the twelfth paragraph, and the first three verses of the thirteenth paragraph of the Book of Job.
232 In the text of November 3.
233 The writer in pencil apparently adds a reference to chapter 10, verses 11-12, but may be referring to Wisdom, chapters 10, 11, and 12.
234 The writer notes at the foot of the page in pencil: “Did He wish to refer to the Just One, to his Vicar, threatened twice by enemy bombs?”