On emerging from an eight-and-a-half hour coma, I wake up this morning at 6:30, and I hear a cannon as the first greeting of the day - rather, many cannons firing from the nearby heights, contradicting the easy optimism and gratuitous assertions of those who said that “here, since it is a mountain basin, there was no artillery, and we were thus safe.” Fine! Let’s struggle on.
I repeat what I have always said since April 16, In Albis Sunday, the day when, at 5 p.m., I heard about this place as an evacuation residence preferable to others: “In St. Andrea469 I will feel less safe than elsewhere and will be afraid of everything.”
So it is. I am afraid. And horrified at dying here. And pained, greatly pained at dying without having you470 near. The only one among men who gives me the comfort I need: spiritual comfort. The others are of use to Maria as flesh and Maria as sentiment. But I now see flesh and sentiment as clothing thrown over the true self. And my own self is now reduced to spirit alone. And it lacks your help.
I hoped so much to see you in these days. To say so many things to you and to express my thanks for all the good you have done to my soul.
You have brought me Jesus. I don’t mean Jesus as Eucharist. Any priest brings Him. I mean Jesus in my own way. Your presence and your care have put me in a position to understand and see what before I did not see in the wildness which was in me and which I was trying to root out on my own. But I was doing little on my own.
It was a big mistake and a great cruelty to have separated me from the one who kept me so peaceful in God. God is not present where there is a storm. And even if He sees that the storm is not originated by us and thus glides over the stormy sea of our hearts, his voice and his face are perceived poorly, with great effort, amidst the clouds and uproar of the winds and waves.
Since I have been feeling quite ill since June 19 and am thus in the most unfortunate condition to overcome the anxieties and fears hanging over us, which we absolutely must go through, I think I will not hold up. And I will have to depart without seeing my house again and having you near.
Even if I had the whole world around me, I would be in silence and the void, as if in a desert, for I would not have the word which helped me so much. Yours. This is a great, very great sacrifice. And only God knows how much it costs me to endure it.
In any event, thank you for everything. Marta knows what to do. I repeat: help Marta, who in her defects of impulsiveness conceals a heart of gold, and I never understood to what extent until the past two months....
I think that as a final gift I will leave you the second part on Mary’s Desolation - Mary reliving Calvary - and the Holy Hour.471 When you read them, think of me, who received them weeping and smiling. Weeping over the pain of Mary and Jesus and myself, and smiling over their goodness. And pray for me.
I can barely see and find it very hard to write. I think that, even if I live, before long I won’t be able to write any more because my vision is no longer clear. I go by experience, but do not see well. I have made myself a straightedge to keep my handwriting more even. Please excuse me, then, if I am almost illegible.
My thanks to the Superior of the Stigmatines, too.472 Tell her that I have always prayed for her because her goodness truly moved me and that I shall also pray hereafter. As I shall do for you, Father. You can be sure.
That’s enough for now. I pray and wait. Will Jesus speak...?
Later (at noon) Jesus says:
“You see, Maria. Another person who found himself in your state of mind would sin much more and suffer spiritually much less. Because in you even the fear that suffering may lead you to bring pain to Me is suffering. Therefore, I have already told you,473 you think you are in hell, or nearly so, whereas you are in Paradise.
“What is the only concern of the blessed? To keep themselves fixed in God, their Love. And, with much greater effort, since the flesh and the human mind are clinging to your spirit, aren’t you doing the same thing?
“The true life enclosed in man - that is, the spirit - is made in the likeness of God. It thus does not know relative measures and tends towards the Infinite and the Perfect. And, in its tendency, the more it approaches Him, reflecting the divine likeness in itself, like a clear mirror, the more it hates what is not like God. Therefore, even the shadow of an imperfection or the suspicion of lukewarmness cause it more horror than a serious sin in a Christian in name only and atheism in someone without God.
“The fact is that you continually receive the Guest who is your Father and Lord, and, in knowing Him, in his light, you see who you are, and you humble yourselves to the point of annihilation, saying, ‘How do You, Lord, come to me? I am not worthy to have You.’ But it is precisely because you feed on this loving humiliation that the Divine Guest comes and makes his dwelling in you. He there finds love, humility, and upright will. And what else does God want to love you? Nothing. He knows that you cannot give more as long as you are down below.
“But He also says to all of you, and to you, personally, ‘Your anxiety will cease only when you, a finite creature, fuse yourself to the Infinite. The struggle will then be over, the fear of not pleasing Me, affliction over your condition. Do not fear. I let you rave. I am not afraid of your ravings because I know what they are and why they are. They cause me so little fear and disdain that, while you cry out your pain as a creature, I hold you tightly to keep you from doing yourself any real harm. Real harm would be for you to separate from Me, fearful of having disgusted Me. And then I, even if you do not recognize Me because the trial veils you, hold you this way. Maria, I am the Jesus of Gethsemane. And do you want Me not to understand certain forms of anguish...?”
468 See May 15.
469 St. Andrea di Compito. See note 312.
470 Father Migliorini.
471 The entries for June 3 and June 14, respectively.
472 Sister Gabriella from Camaiore, who had gone to visit the writer after the evacuation.
473 Perhaps on May 12.