As you see, I have hastened to include the details which, on account of their minuteness, had escaped me and which you wished to have.149
Afterwards, on reading the set of pages today,150 I observe a statement by Jesus which can be a rule for you.
This morning you said you could not make my descriptions known by way of the style, and I, who have a real phobia about being known, was quite happy with that. But don’t you think that this is contrary to what the Master says in the last dictation in the set? “The more attentive and precise you are (in describing what I see), the greater the number of those who come to Me will be.”151 This implies that the descriptions must be known; otherwise, how can there be a number of souls who go to Jesus thanks to them?
I submit this point to you; do as you think best, then, since it is all the same to me. Indeed, in human terms, I share your opinion. But we are not in the human domain here, and even the human aspect of the spokesman must disappear.
In today’s dictation,152 too, Jesus says, “...In showing you the Gospel, I am making a more forceful attempt to bring men to Me. I am no longer limiting Myself to the word.... I am resorting to vision and explaining it to make it clearer and more attractive.” And what about this?
Meanwhile, since I am a poor nonentity who, on my own, immediately withdraw into myself, I tell you that your observation has disturbed me - and the Envious One is taking advantage of this - to the point of making me consider not writing down what I see any more and writing only the dictations. He mutters in my heart, “So, you see? Your famous visions are of no use at all. Just to make you look like a crackpot. As you really are. What do you see? The phantoms of your disturbed brain. Something quite different is needed to deserve to see Heaven!”
He has kept me under the corrosive spray of his temptation all day long. I assure you that I have not suffered so much from my great physical pain as I have suffered and suffer for this reason. He wants to make me despair. My Friday is a Friday of spiritual temptation today. I am thinking of Jesus in the desert and Jesus at Gethsemane....
But I do not give up, so as not to make this crafty demon laugh. And while fighting against him and against my less spiritual side, I write to you of my joy today, assuring you at the same time that, as far as I’m concerned, I would be quite happy if Jesus took this gift of seeing away from me which is my highest joy. It suffices for Him to preserve his love and his mercy for me.
Today in the afternoon I saw the Lourdes apparition.
I clearly saw the grotto hollowed out of the mountain, with its protuberances of stone on which the small plants found in grottoes had arisen, taking advantage of a little earth deposited in the crevices. Slender blades of grass, moss, caper - or, rather, wall pellitory - wild ivy with hanging branches, and, alongside the right wall (as I look), at the edge of the grotto, a thorny wild rosebush extending its branches, still devoid of leaves, inwards and upwards - to the place above where there is a cleft in the rock, a cleft which penetrates into it like a narrow, dark, ascending corridor.
The grotto - don’t laugh at my scrawling - has the following shape.
[sketch]
That sort of window is the cleft, and those scrawls going towards it from the ground are intended to show you the wild rosebush; the two lines behind the crack, the estimated route of the corridor in the stone. On the ground there is earth mixed with stones and grass, the short, shiny grass characteristic of certain places in the mountains.
The crack is illuminated at a certain point by a very soft yellow-pink glow, as if a sunbeam had penetrated into its shadow to turn it gold or a hidden lamp had set it aflame with its joyful brightness. It is a light which brings gladness.
Then from the light there emerges my sweet Lady, whom I love so, the Mother whom I know so well by now. She is smiling, with her face like a lily, with a loving, reserved gaze. She is clothed entirely in white, as when I saw Her in Paradise,153 but she is wearing a long sash made of a splendid heavenly silk which encircles her waist beneath her heart and descends nearly to the hem of her very long dress, from which there emerge the points of her slender, rosy feet. Two roses are pinned to the hem of her dress, above her feet - two magnificent roses that seem to be made of gold filigree. A long veil, with an airiness which is nonetheless solid, covers Her from head to foot. Resting on her joined hands there is a long rosary, which seems to be made of pearls set in gold. The rosary looked complete to me - fifteen sequences.
I forgot to tell you that, when the light formed in the cleft in the rock, the tassel of branches on the rosebush at the foot and along the right wall of the crack stirred as if a wind were bending its thorny branches and its surviving leaves, curled up by the frost and red-green in color, as if rusty.
Mary is smiling without speaking, in the nimbus of her golden light, which makes Her seem even more snow-white in her dress and the color of her hands, neck, and very pure face proper to one who is barely more than a girl. You would think She was not over twenty - and a very lovely twenty, too.
Mary descends towards the opening in the crack, as far as its edge. I see her slightly swaying step, as I previously saw it on the other occasions when I saw Her walk - the step characteristic of someone used to sandals, with no rising of the heel. On reaching the edge of the opening, just above the rosebush, She stops.
Mary makes the sign of the cross. She teaches me to make the sign of the cross. There is cause for shame on considering the way we do so! The angel in the vision of Paradise taught me to say, “Hail Mary.”154 Mary teaches me to say, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
She separates her hands joined in prayer, rests her left hand on her heart, and with her right hand, free of the rosary, touches her forehead - looking towards heaven - her chest, and her shoulders, and then bends her head at the “Amen,” rejoining her hands, as before, and smiling again. Before, on making the sign of the cross, She was neither serious nor smiling - She was absorbed in God. The gesture is very sweeping and slow. Not even distantly related to ours, which resemble... fly swatters and are mutilated in the words.
She then starts to pass her fingers over the beads of her rosary. Slowly, saying the “Glory be to the Father” in a loud voice, bowing her head low. While I say the “Hail Marys” and the “Our Fathers,” She smiles and keeps silent. From time to time the wind moves the extremity of her silken sash. A light wind.
Finally, She opens her arms and stretches them towards the ground, bending her head and slender body in a slight bow of humility, and in her very soft, inimitable voice says, “I am the Immaculate Conception,” and, on saying this, She lifts her head up again and rejoins her hands once more, looking towards heaven with eyes moistened by supernatural emotion.
She says nothing else. But her gesture, her smile, and her gaze make me understand that She is “the handmaiden of God”155 and always deems Herself to be such (by humbly lowering her arms and head); She is such by the grace of God and not through her own merit (this is the meaning of her initial gesture), and She is such through the Lord, to whom praise should be given for having bestowed Her upon the world as the first forgiveness for blameworthy mankind (this is the meaning of the second part of the gesture, in which there is praise, gratitude, and modest recollection).
To say this conveys nothing. But on being seen, how many things that gesture alone taught!
She then recollects Herself as if in inner prayer, with her gaze enraptured in God, whom She sees, and fades out in this way, returning to her Paradise, leaving in me the light, music, and fragrance of her whiteness and the spirituality of her prayer.
I have written while overcoming the hindrances created by the Tempter and my humanity. And I now remain still, with my rosary in my hands, trying to imitate Mary, the Mother-Teacher who has come to teach me to pray and give praise to the Lord for everything He does with us.
Our Lady of Lourdes, teach me to pray and protect me from the devil and myself. Amen.
149 A number of texts not included in this edition were also written in the month of February 1944: the passages involving “The Death of St. Joseph,” found in the Preparation cycle; “Jesus’ Farewell to His Mother and Departure from Nazareth” (February 9), found in The First Year of the Public Life and the beginning of the Passion cycle (February 10 and 11); a description of the Passion appearing in the Italian edition (February 11, 18, and 19), but written in a new, definitive version for the life of Christ in 1945; the episode involving “Jesus and His Mother in the Forest of Matathiah,” which was written again in 1946 for The Third Year of the Public Life; a vision of “The Last Supper” (February 17) found in the original edition of these notebooks, but written again in 1945 for the definitive Passion cycle; part of a vision of “The Burial of Jesus” (February 19), which was written again in 1945; and a vision of “The Resurrection” (February 21), which was also rewritten in 1945 for the definitive life of Christ.
To clarify the content and sequence of the aforementioned texts and others, the reader should consult the Italian edition of these Notebooks: Maria Valtorta, I Quaderni del 1944 (Isola del Liri, Italy: Centro Editoriale Valtortiano, 1985). 148 She is referring to some marginal observations introduced by her into the episode written on February 3 and mentioned in the preceding note.
150 This must be a reference to the typed version of her handwritten notebooks prepared by Father Migliorini.
151 See the end of the dictation on January 25.
152 The one on February 4 mentioned in note 148.
153 In the vision on January 10
154 In the same vision on January 10.
155 Luke 1:38.