Jesus says:
“And I shall respond to you658 in the words of the Apostle Paul: ‘The members that seem weakest are the most necessary, the ones we regard as the least noble in the body are covered by us with more adornments, and we treat the least decent ones with greater consideration, whereas the honest parts need no such consideration. Now, God has arranged the body in such fashion as to give greater honor to the members that lacked it.’659
“Do you think this ‘little voice’ thinks she is something great? If you asked her, she would say, ‘I am the weakest and most abject member of the Body of Christ.’ She would answer this way with true sincerity. But you would not believe her because each measures with his own ruler. And you, that lack humility and sincerity and say, ‘I am wicked’ to hear yourselves told, ‘Why, no, you are so good,’ and you think this regarding yourselves, in the highest degree - and if someone is so sincere that, knowing you are not very or not at all good, he remains silent out of charity, but does not praise you, out of sincerity, you go into a rage against him and hate him because he has not praised you - but you cannot believe she is sincere.
“But I, who read in her thought and see the inside of her heart, know whether or not she thinks of herself this way. How often the conversations between this soul and her God resound with reassuring words because she says, ‘How can You have taken me, Lord, who am worth nothing, who have been so much at fault and still am?’ And she almost doubts Me because it strikes her as impossible that I should have chosen her for this mission.
“She considers herself weak, very weak. And if she is compared to Perfection, she is weaker than a strand of hair of a newborn child. She considers herself ignoble. And if we compare her to her God, she is less than a worm born in the slime. But she has one strength alone: total love. In her giving and selfgiving she never thinks of herself or the gain that may come to her from others. She thinks about pleasing Me alone, being useful to Me alone, becoming even hateful to the world for this reason. She has come to hate herself as flesh. With that holy hatred which I taught when saying, ‘He who wants to save his (earthly) life will lose it (as eternal, too), and he who out of love for Me loses it will find it.’660 The holy hatred of one who has understood the Word! Because of this love, which overcomes her weaknesses, I have chosen her.
“One day I took a child and set him in the midst of my apostles, giving him to them as an example.661 Because the child loves with all his capacities and does not have proud thoughts - the little child, the tot, for Satan’s seed produces pride as its first spike, and it flourishes when the seed has barely raised its stem from a mother’s womb, and then puts forth the second spike of sensuality, and, thirdly, that of the force of power and money. But the first one is always pride, and it sprouts from lips that have barely forgotten the sweetness of a mother’s milk. Like children, I want my disciples to be like children, to give them the words of life. How beautiful it was to see them coming to Me with their little hands full of flowers and saying to Me, ‘Take this,’ and run off laughing and come back all over again with other little flowers, in a loving game - they were trusting, sincere, and affectionate....
“I want children in the world to sanctify the world. And since the innocence which passes and lives in your midst is of no avail to make you better - it ought to be, for the innocent one is a heavenly being, a being emitting purity and peace, who speaks, without speaking, of the God who made him, who imposes respect, without speaking, for what God is, who pleads for mercy and love for his purity, which should not be contaminated, and for his weakness, which should be loved, the flower among your neighbors, as are the sick and the suffering, and the first category represents a white flower, as the other two are red and violet, flowers you ought to give preference to among all your neighbors who are to be loved - since the innocence of the chronological children does not suffice, I create spiritual infants, those who, infused with a science you lack, are humble, simple, trusting, and sincere, like children who, smiling, take their first steps and know - they know this - that without their mothers they would fall, and they never leave them.
“These, too, and this woman, too, never leave Me. This is why to her and to those like her, weak members - they appear as such to you - ignoble members - they appear as such to you - there is given what is not given to you.
“In the Mystical Body it is precisely these members, disdained by the world of the proud, that do the most. A finger is not the brain. But, without fingers, what would you do? You could not even carry out the most ordinary and humble acts in life; you would be like a newborn child in swaddling clothes who cannot even take the nipple and draw food from it if his mother does not place it between his lips. Even if you were very learned and intelligent, you would be unable to immortalize the thought of your brains on paper.
“She is like this. She is a finger.... But to this little part I have given the mission of calling you to the Light and pointing out the Light to you. The Light that wants to set you aflame again, O lamps smoking under the vapor of rationalism or extinguished for many reasons, ranging from a lack of love to money, from money to sensuality, and from sensuality to anticharity.
“Down, on your knees. Not before the ‘little voice,’ but before the Word who is speaking. The ‘little voice’ repeats his words. An instrument of her God. Worship the Lord, who speaks. The Lord. The ‘little voice’ is anonymous. I want her to be obscure for the world. Afterwards she will be known. Now she is only a ‘voice.’ It is she who bears my Voice. Her honor is her martyrdom, for every election by God is a crucifixion of the being.
“I don’t even ask you to love her. For this I suffice, and she asks for nothing else. But I want you to leave her in peace, with the respect due to what God has used.”662
655 Acts 5:14-15.
656 Matthew 9:20-22; Mark 5:25-29; Luke 8:43-44.
657 Luke 23:8-9.
658 A reference to the “difficult doctors” in the preceding dictation.
659 1 Corinthians 12:22-24.
660 Matthew 10:39; 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24; 17:33; John 12:25.
661 Matthew 18:2-3; Mark 9:36-37; Luke 9:47-48.
662 This text is followed by a commentary on the episode mentioned in note 647.