Jesus says:
“I further say this to you to perfect you in pain.
“To love pain is indeed a counsel of perfection, for the command of God, who knows human capacity, limits itself to order you to endure pain out of obedience to God. Many - the majority - are unable to do even this.
“To the best ones God says, ‘Love pain since my Son loved it for your good. Do the same for the good of your brothers and sisters.’
“But among the best, who are faithful, convinced, generous, and loving Christians, there is a select category. They are the seraphim of the faithful, the most inflamed with love. The love inflaming them makes them loving as regards what is most difficult, to the point that they not only love the pain which God allows them to be rent with, but ask for it, saying, ‘Here I am, Father. I am here to ask you for the same chalice you gave to your Son and for the same reason.’ And they become the ‘victims.’
“To these, by way of you, who are one of them, I give this counsel of perfection.
“When pain is atrocious, but brief, it is easier to carry out. But when in its gnawing severity it lasts and lasts and lasts, and, like a flourishing tree, becomes adorned with ever-new branches and receives other prolifications on its trunk - like certain trees in the forest where ivy and traveler’s joy cling and moss and lichen become encrusted, and in the hollow between two branches other little plants arise, and you don’t know how they are able to take root there, in that angle between two pieces of wood in which there is just a dash of dust, and yet they grow and become real bushes, and in astonishment man admires this work of the winds and this phenomenon of vegetable adoption - then it is difficult to persist in carrying out the mission of a victim.
“Well then, Maria. I told you421 that to live without disequilibrium in the life of victims one must place oneself resolutely on the spiritual plane. To see, think, and act in everything as one acts in the realms of the spirit - that is, in an eternity which always says ‘now.’
“Those of you that live for the spirit - how do you want to regard things according to the flesh? What have you asked God for? To make you spiritual creatures. In what time do spiritual creatures, like God, live? In God’s time. What is God’s time? An eternal present. An eternal ‘now.’ For your Eternal Father there is no past or future in Heaven. There is the eternal instant.
“God does not experience birth or death, dawn or sunset, beginning or end. The angels, spiritual, like Him, know only ‘one day.’ A day which began the instant in which they were created and which will have no end. The saints, from the moment of their heavenly birth, become possessors of this immutable celestial time, which does not pass and is fixed in its splendor as a diamond inflamed by God, in the eras of the world, which revolve around its immutable fixity, like the planets around the sun, which form and dissolve, reign and disintegrate, while it is always the same and will remain such. For how long? Forever.
“Consider, Maria. If you could count all the grains of sand which are in the seas of the whole world, at the bottom and on the banks of the lakes, pools, rivers, torrents, and brooks, and you said to Me, ‘Turn them into as many days,’ you would still have a limit to this number of days. If I joined to them all the drops of water which are in the seas, lakes, rivers, torrents, and brooks and which tremble on fronds wet with rain or dew and also added all the water which is in Alpine snows, wandering clouds, and the glaciers robing mountain peaks in crystal, you would still have a limit to this number of days. And if I also added all the molecules forming the planets, stars, and nebulae and all that flies through the firmament and fills it with melodies which only the angels hear - for every heavenly body in its race sings the Creator’s praises, like a shining harpist gliding his hands over azure harps, and the firmament is filled with this concert of a huge organ - you would still have a limited number of days. And if I added the dust buried in the earth, dust which is the earth of men who have gone back with their matter to nothingness and which for hundreds of centuries has been awaiting the command to become man again and see the triumph of God - and there are billions of billions of atoms of man - dust belonging to billions of men who thought they were so much and for ages and ages have been nothing, and the world does not even know they lived - you would still have a limited number of days.
“The Kingdom of God is eternal, like its King. And eternity knows only one word: ‘Now.’ You, too, and, with you, all those consecrated to the holocaust, must know this word alone to measure the time of pain.
“‘Now.’ How long have I been suffering. Since now. When will it cease? Now. The present. For spiritual creatures there is only this which is God’s. Time as well. Learn, before the time comes, to calculate time as you will possess it in Paradise. Now.
“Oh, blessed is that time, which is immutable possession, immutable contemplation of God, immutable joy! ‘Life is the blinking of an eye; earthly time lasts a breath. But my Heaven is eternal.’ This is the chord which must govern your song as creatures who are martyrs and blessed.
“You read in the life of my martyr Cecilia: ‘Cecilia was singing in her heart.’ You as well - sing in your hearts. Sing: ‘The “now” of God, who awaits me. I already find myself enveloped in the abyss of this eternal “now,” and this abyss draws me closer and closer to the center of its perfection. I am thus seeing this dust fall away, where every atom is a day, and a grain is a month; I see it fall, blown away by this whirlwind, which inhales me into God, and it is the love of God, who wants to give me “his” time. He wants to give me his eternal present, where to every second of earthly time there corresponds a receiving into myself of the blessedness of having God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, in an embrace that is always new, always desired, always wanted, without weariness, rich in ever-new splendors, ever-new savors, and ever-new love. And I am born with every new arrival as at the first moment when I enjoyed Him - this Triune God, my only Love; and with every new arrival I reach the perfection of Life and am then reborn to my joy as a blessed one to love Him on and on and on, and to be loved by Him on and on and on. Not more. For there, in Paradise, everything has reached Perfection and is not capable of increases or decreases, but with ever-the-same, fresh rejoicing. Mine as a blessed one embracing God. His, as God, who can pour his love, his essence, over a creature of his whom He created out of love, to receive that person’s love and give and give and give that person love.’
“Look at your suffering in this way, my little bride, and its duration will be less than nothing for you. At the end of it I am there. I am.
“My peace be always with you. “422
421 In the preceding dictation.
422 On this page a sheet has been attached containing a “Monthly Note” from the secondary school where Maria Valtorta studied. It is dated April 1912 and bears her name. This report states the following: “Conduct: She won the medal. Manners: Included on the Honor Roll. Orderliness: Included on the Honor Roll. Study: Good. Work: Active and Concerned. - The Director.”