Jesus says:
“ ‘Blessed is the fruit of your womb.’
“The divine and virginal motherhood make Mary second only to God.
“But do not pause to look only at Mary’s glory. Think of what it cost Her to obtain that glory. Whoever looks at Christ in the light of the resurrection and does not meditate on the dying Redeemer in the darkness of Good Friday is foolish. I would not have had a resurrection if I had not undergone death, and I would not have accomplished the Redemption if I had not had the martyrdom. Whoever thinks of Mary’s glory and does not meditate on how She arrived at glory is foolish. The fruit of her womb, I, the Christ, Word of God, brought torture to her womb.
“And do not take my words149 wrongly. I did not bring it torture in human terms. She was superior to human wretchedness; the condemnation of Eve was not upon her; but She was not superior to Pain. And great, huge, sovereign, absolute Pain penetrated into Her with the violence of a meteorite plunging from the sky at the very moment She experienced the ecstasy of the embrace with the Creator Spirit.
“Blessedness and pain held Mary’s heart in a single knot at the instant of her most lofty Fiat and her most chaste marriage. Blessedness and pain fused into one, as She had become one with God. Since She was called to a mission as Redemptrix, pain surpassed blessedness from the very start. Blessedness came at her Assumption.
“Joined to the Spirit of wisdom, She received a revelation to her spirit of the future which was reserved for his creature, and there was no longer any joy, in the usual sense of the word, for Mary.
“With every hour that passed, as I took shape by drawing life from her blood as a virgin-mother, and hidden in her depths, I had indescribable exchanges of love with my Mother; incomparable love and pain rose like waves of a stormy sea in Mary’s heart and lashed Her with their power.
“My Mother’s heart experienced the sting of the swords of pain from the moment when the Light, leaving the core of the Triune Fire, penetrated into Her, beginning the Incarnation of God and the Redemption of man; and that sting grew, hour by hour, during the holy gestation: divine Blood that was forming with a source of human blood, the Heart of the Son, that was beating to the rhythm of the Mother’s heart. Eternal flesh that was forming with the Virgin’s immaculate flesh.
“Greater was the pain at the moment I was born to be the Light for a world in darkness. The blessedness of the mother kissing her creature changed, in Mary, into the certainty of the Martyr who knows martyrdom is closer.
“Blessed is the fruit of your womb.
“Yes. But I had to give all pain to that womb which deserved all the joy destined for a sinless Adam. And for your sake. For your sake the affliction of saddening Joseph. For your sake the childbirth amidst so much bleakness. For your sake the prophecy of Simeon, which turned the blade in the wound again, riveting and sharpening the sword’s sting. For your sake flight to a foreign land; for your sake the cares of a whole life; for your sake the anxieties of knowing Myself to be evangelizing and persecuted by the hostile castes; for your sake the terror of the capture, the torment of the multiple tortures, the agony of my agony, the death of my death.
“I was gathered up over the womb which had borne Me with a devotion which could not be exceeded; but, in truth, I tell you that there was no difference in life and death between my heart, still to vital movement and rent by the lance thrust, and that of the Most Afflicted Woman, who held Me on her lap. Mary’s heart and her womb were slain, as I, the Innocent One, was slain.
“To the miracles connected with the Redemption, both known and unknown, evident to all or revealed to the privileged, add this one, too: the continuance of life in Mary by the action of the Eternal after her heart was broken by and for the human race, like that of her Son, Jesus.
“You, that are unable and unwilling to bear pain - do you consider what pain that of the Blessed Woman must have been, the Immaculate, the Holy in bearing in Herself a lacerated, dead, abandoned heart and seeing a lifeless, tortured, bloody, bruised body gathered up over her womb which had been the body of the Son, the Flesh of her flesh, the Blood of her blood, the Life of her life, the love of her spirit?
“You have had Me because Mary agreed, thirty-three years before Me, to drink the chalice of bitterness. On the rim of the cup I drank while sweating blood I encountered the taste of the lips of my Mother, and the bitterness of her tears was fused with the bitterness of my sacrifice. And - believe this - making Her, who did not deserve pain, suffer was what cost Me most. Abandonment by the Father, the pain of my Mother, and betrayal by a friend - these were the most atrocious things in my atrocious torture as the Redeemer. Longinus’ lance thrust into an organ which was then insensitive to pain was nothing by comparison.
“For the sake of the pain which tortured my Mother on your behalf, I would like you to give Her love. Great, most tender love, that of children for the most perfect of all mothers, the Mother who has still not ceased to suffer, shedding heavenly tears over the children of her love who repudiate their Father’s house and become the guardians of unclean beasts - the vices - rather than remain children of a king, children of God.
“And if a norm may be given, know that I, God, do not feel I am diminishing Myself in loving - with an infinite love filled with veneration - my Mother, whose immaculate nature, the work of the Father, I see, but whose life of martyrdom as Co-Redeemer I also remember, without which I would not have been a Man among men and your eternal Redeemer.”
149 As might be verified from the dictation of June 23.