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Acts 2:3487
Jesus says:
“The souls I especially love receive the command Abraham received: ‘Leave your land and your kindred and come into the land I shall show you.’488
“Both a real and a metaphorical departure. Real, because the one who consecrates himself to Me really becomes a stranger and an unknown person among his own relatives.
“Unknown in his new personality. A stranger, because between them and him there takes place a sort of sagging of the diaphragm, like the creation of a singular Babel,489 whereby he goes beyond, towards the land which God indicates to him, and they remain in the place where they are, and even if they are still near, they cannot understand each other any more, for he is already speaking the language of that land and practicing its customs, whereas they go on thinking, acting, and speaking in their habitual way. This produces an immense source of pain and astonishment, if not of derision as well.
“Pain is felt in a particular way by the one whom God has called to the ‘new land.’ He would like to be followed by those he loves, for he has understood that ‘that land’ is an elevated country. He would like others to comprehend him to bring them to love the beauties he is discovering.
“They are amazed at his change. And when they do not deem it an ‘obsession,’ they call it selfishness, lack of love, and eccentricity. Not at all. Perfect love, both for those he loves and for himself, in giving and seeking to give to others the good he obtains for himself. Not eccentricity, but, rather, a perfect norm, since he, as an exception, finds himself in the norm of the son of God: absolute obedience - superior to every other voice of blood, self-interest, or human respect - to the voice of God.
“The wound is not healed and cannot be healed. For the one chosen for the ‘new land’ in his lower part conserves the sensibility common to the sons of man, and from having to hear himself accused of lovelessness by those who should understand him most, and from having to reject them, tearing out his heart, to advance on the path God indicates to him, he suffers constantly, and the wound is always kept open where there are nailed the love of those close to him, who torture him because they love Him; his love, which, because it is not comprehended, twists in the wound; and the imperious will of Him whom he loves with his whole self. A wound of love, then. A wound, then, in which God is present, for God is where charity is.
“‘Come into the land I shall show you.’ God does not show it beforehand. He says, ‘Come.’ The reward of seeing this land will be given to him who obeys without waiting to know what awaits him. God says, ‘Come.’ Nothing else. He goes and asks for nothing more.
“The beginning of the blessed land - whose sun knows no sunset, in which there do not reign asps and scorpions, or wild beasts, in which storms and frosts are unknown and the springtime is eternal, and every being is plump with supernatural food, and trunks drip with honey, and fountains flow with milk, and harmony is light, and light is harmony, and the inhabitants are as happy as flowers on a peaceful April morning and laugh with perennial joy, reflecting the divine laughter of their Lord - is quite bristly and thorny. Stones and brambles, lianas and narrow passages over ravines and whirling torrents, obscure turns, and windy, stormy areas are found at the outset. Above, one single star: Me. I must be light, warmth, voice, hope, comfort, faith, and guidance for the heroic walker. I alone. Woe if one does not look continuously at Me.
“But whoever perseveres sees that the rocks and brambles are followed by a smoother road, and a few flowers appear at its edges; he sees that the lianas, which previously lacerated like ropes of thorny iron, are followed by soft festoons, which are no longer a constriction, but an aid, and the passages become wider, the paths, less fearful, and the way, safer - broader, more lumi- nous, warmer, and more peaceful in its ongoing ascent. Finally, the soul flies - it no longer walks. It flies. Like a dart of love, it penetrates into the land it has conquered. Heaven belongs to it.
“But how much generosity is needed! To give everything, Maria. And not have anything. ‘Not even a place to rest one’s foot’ (verse 5).490 Not to demand anything, for I promise nothing when I say, ‘Come.’ Nothing human. I promise what is eternally superhuman.
“This is what you must strive to grasp and accept and, along with you, all your equals through my election, which consecrates you in the cloister or in the world, and also those who, because they are better, though not called to ways of special perfection, in not being soldiers of the perfection which is counseled, not imposed, wonder why their lives are not peaceful with earthly well-being as well.
“I do not lie and have never lied. I have promised and promise to give you Life and the things incident to Life. This is necessary, and I give it. The rest is superfluous, for it is destined to what perishes. I give it to you because I am good even to the gnat, to which I grant the calyx of a mountain field balm as a bed and the microscopic drop of honey it contains as food. I thus give to you, that are fleeting, the things necessary for what is transient: food, clothing, and dwelling. But I invite you to tend towards what is higher: towards the spirit and what belongs to the spirit.
“Let those who love Me more understand Me more. And let them proceed naked, hungry, and indigent regarding what pertains to this earthly day, but satiated, rich, and royally robed as regards what pertains to the Eternal Day.
“Go in peace.”
487 The reference, which the writer must have added later, does not correspond to the dictation and should be corrected to “Acts 7:2-3.” The error was indirectly confirmed by the writer herself when she noted down the date of this dictation alongside the first verses of chapter 7 of Acts in the Bible she used.
488 Genesis 12:1.
489 Genesis 11:1-9.
490 Genesis 8:9. The reference is thus mistaken.