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Job 33:14,19,23,29
Jesus says:
“No. Not once or three times, as Elihu says, but with tireless patience God speaks to you to lead you back to goodness. With dreams and-you know-inspirations, counsels, examples, readings, pains, illnesses, deaths, and all the gentlest and most severe ways, He addresses you to say, ‘I exist. Remember Me. Consider that to forget Me and my law means superhuman misfortune.’
“If God were to speak to you just once to lead this spirit back onto the straight path, not one of you would arrive at the goal, which is Eternal Life. This is what those of the ancient Law could think. But since I have been reigning with my cross, another Law has been judging and regulating you, and it is the law of Mercy, which has become entwined with the Justice of the unchanged, immutable Law of Sinai,586 and it has embraced it and covered it over with its flowers to such an extent that the rough, severe stone has been entirely enveloped in a blossoming robe where every thread is an act of mercy by the Lord. The veil of my Blood has extended over the ancient Law, and it cries out to the Father, ‘Mercy!’ for your sake.
“I, the Son of Love, came to establish Love on earth, and Love is patience and forgiveness. I, the Teacher, have taught man to forgive his fellows seventy times seven,587 as a way of saying that he should forgive without counting the occasions. But if I want this from man, from poor man, into whom-in spite of every wish and miracle of mine and all my sacramental assistance-hatred is injected by the Enemy-and ferments there because the flesh is ,a terrain favorable for the fermentation of Satanic vices-I must want this from Myself, who am Perfection, in a perfect way. Not seventy times seven, then, but seventy and seventy and seventy times seven – always - from the moment the light of your reason opens to understanding until the moment your final agony extinguishes it, I speak and advise and forgive, provided you come to Me with an upright intention.
“But the weakness of man is so great that on his own he would be unable to comprehend and act, repent and be saved. The weaker man is-and sin is weakness for the spirit, a weakness which, the more serious or numerous and repeated sins are, grows more and comes to kill the strength of the soul by consumption-the less he is able to comprehend, act, repent, and be saved. Through the Communion of the Saints, the infusion of supernatural strength then comes to him, which makes him able to comprehend, act, repent, and be saved.
“Elihu says, ‘If an angel speaks on his behalf, God will have mercy on him.’588 In Job’s time Heaven was populated only by angels. The just were waiting for Christ in their stay in Limbo in order to become citizens of the Heavens. But now the processions of the saints in Heaven and the saints on earth join with the angels.
“O what a sweet chain joins and locks together Earth and Heaven and the saints in Heaven and the just on Earth with its golden links of charity, to surround the poor of the Earth in an embrace whose fruit is help and salvation - the real poor, those who are deprived of or endowed very little with Grace!
“This sublime Communion of the ‘living’ spirits on Earth and in Heaven is too little known in its truth; its purpose is to communicate the Life they are filled with in being one with Me as Life to their poor sick, dying, and sometimes already dead brothers and sisters. Prayers to obtain an evvrt more forbearing patience from God, prayers to obtain thunderbolts from Him, not of punishment, but of love, which will convert sinners, as Saul was converted on the road to Damascus,589 offerings for them, and secret, never sufficiently blessed acts of immolation which flow like the surge of an immense river to pour into the basins of the heavenly graces, whereby the nime treasures are drawn out of these basins, the more they overflow with them, for all the just who are alive and all the saints who ascend nourish this ocean, initially formed by my Blood, with which I associate your tears arid your merits, so that you may be ‘one with Me’ in redeeming and in loving, in suffering and in enjoying.
“There was someone who asked you how and through what light the indulgences which are not confirmed by an evident miracle are granted.590 This is one of the rocks against which the spirits that are not wise in Faith founder or get stuck. As the good Teacher who want you to be wise and not ignorant-for to know is to love, to know is to be saved, and I, the King as well as the Teacher, want you to be saved because I am the good King, and a good king loves his subjects and wants them safe within the confines of his realms, not a prey to pain, indigence, and death-I thus instruct you in this truth.
“The indulgences are applied by drawing the means for them out of the treasuries of the Communion of the Saints-from the coffer of the Holy One among the saints, I, Jesus, to that of the just. Like meadows in the springtime after a tepid nocturnal downpour which present themselves to the sun’s kiss entirely ‘covered with flowers, so, under the dewfall of Grace, I see just souls blossoming on the arid fields of the earth and living, smelling sweetly, and dying with their corollas stretching towards Heaven, into which they pour their life and fragrance, which, fused with the luminous life and fragrance of the blessed, then come back down to sanctify the earth. The sod that receives them and is able to bring a new spirit to blossom as a child of God on the arid flintstone is fortunate.
“Are you perhaps afraid that the millions and millions of days of indulgences will not be covered by the sum of merits? Oh, do not fear! I infinitely multiply the merits of the saints because I fuse them to mine, which are infinite. Even if every man were to benefit from them every day, and for the total sum of all the days of indulgence of all the prayers on earth, the treasures of merits are so great that they would not be seen to diminish.
“But do you fear that the one applying them applies them mistakenly? I said to Peter, ‘What you release on earth shall also be released in Heaven.’591 If I, then, have given my Peter and those succeeding him the authority to absolve people of their sins and thus release them from the knot of the Evil One, it is logical for Me to have also given him the authority to take from among the treasures of Heaven those riches which remit your debt as well, or part of it, which remains after absolution from condemnation. If it is possible for the person invested with my spirit to judge and absolve, why should it not be possible to apply unquestionable wealth?
“A sin may be judged personally. This happens only rarely at my Tribunal, for I make up for the gaps in my judges and enlighten their vision. I leave only those who are not worthy to be such without light. But there is no danger for souls in this, for I compensate in their regard with my mercy, guiding them to other priests worthy to orient them. I am always vigilant. A sin may be judged personally. There are thus numerous differences among judges in severity. But the merits of the saints are certain and sure in their vastness. There is, then, no reason to fear that the Head of the Church and the heads of dioceses, in drawing from them abundantly, will one day seek to apply what no longer exists. Be assured, then.
“I hear the objection ‘But is it proper to associate one indulgence or another with a certain prayer, practice, or festivity?’ “Do not worry. Even if it were not proper-but I have you note that in matters of worship my Pastors are divinely guided-even in this case, I would never allow souls to be deceived in their trust. One prayer, practice, or festivity or another, then, will give souls the indulgence applied to thern through the merit of the faith of souls, a merit and faith which. I never overlook, but reward without fail.
“Let us, then, take into consideration as wc-l1 the case where a Pastor grants an indulgence to something which does not deserve it. Even more, to something which is an error. Even more, when the Pastor is devoid of light because he is spiritually dead through mortal sin. Are souls for this reason deprived of the time of indulgence granted for that thing? No. Never. They, the good souls, carry out that thing for an upright, holy purpose. Their action thus starts from a holy point to arrive at an even holier one: the Communion of the Saints. If in the middle of the journey the tower of an error rises up, it does not block their coming, for their action flies and does not crawl, surmounting and passing high over the obstacle and coming to dive directly into the heavenly treasures, with no impairment of any kind.
“I reward true faith. And remember a great truth: every act of faith is the fruit of love. Love is by itself the total indulgence canceling out a multitude of sins.592 Even if an indulgence has been applied without any authority, for the soul that out of love for Me seeks to acquire it, the indult of my infinite love is reserved and applied, which will free it from every shadow of spiritual death so as to live and see the Light.
“Go in peace. I am with you.”
586 Exodus 20:1-17; Deuteronomy 5:1-22.
587 Matthew 18:22.
588 Job 33:23-26.
589 Acts 9:1-6.
590 The writer notes, “This person was my cousin Paola, who asked that question on July 30.
591 Mattew 16:19; 18:18
592 1 Peter 4:8.