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Immediately after Communion This Morning (Friday)
Jesus says:
“Lazarus, come out! I give you the order of old.325 I give it to you, that are not dead, but asleep. Asleep to show men that without Me you on your own are a poor, ignorant nonentity - weak, at the mercy of your humanity.
“This is not a sleep of death. Those who live outside of Me are dead. You are nailed into Me more than a pearl oyster to a rock. You have taken root in Me more than mistletoe arising in the hollow of two branches and sinking its roots right into the pith of the tree bearing it. You are more united to Me - more united, I say - than a child in his mother’s womb. For, when the time comes, she discharges him. The more time passes, the more you identify with Me, and when time no longer exists for you, you will then no longer distinguish between yourself and Me, nor will anyone be able to determine where Maria ends and Jesus begins, for you shall be eternally absorbed by your God.
“O Paradise! How you will then enjoy your paradise - you that are now traversing hell, for a loving reason, and are not destroyed by it because the burning of love is stronger than that of hell, but you are terrorized by it. For if love protects you, it does not keep you from seeing. And to see the kingdom of Satan is such a horror as to turn a young person’s hair white because, in addition, the memory of God does not shine there. The memory. In just remembering Him, hell would no longer be hell. And for those who live adoring the Face of God not to see this most holy Face is already a torture. Furthermore, not to be able even to remember Him is a torture compared to which all human tortures and forms of cruelty are child’s play. In short, it is hell.
“I say to you, ‘Come out!’ If I did not call you this way, for some pauses of blessedness as short as a bird’s song, but as sweet as an instant in Heaven; you would die. You cannot withstand. You were right. It is too severe for you. The decree must be mitigated.326 Maria, my Mother ‘has spoken on your behalf’ as She promised you.327
“‘Come out of your tomb. Breathe. Look. Hear.’ Your King is ordering you to.
“Yesterday you were no longer able to follow Me, poor Maria.
I shall resume the unfinished topic.
“The lion, I said, knows the habits - he studies them in order to know them - of those he wants to tear to pieces. He is very intelligent. He understands at once. Satan is also very intelligent and understands at once. He is still an angel. Fallen, but remaining such in his mind, which he now uses for evil, whereas I gave him a powerful mind to do good. The lion knows that his quarries go to quench their thirst in the evening to the channels of water which furrow sun-scorched lands. He knows which pastures they go to in order to graze on the thick grass. He knows when man returns from work to his dwellings. He has only to pause alongside these resting places.
“The wish for physical relief or human imprudence leads man and animals towards his inexorable claws. The meek gazelles and the swift antelopes - so cautious and fearful by day - thus become bold at nightfall. Thirst and hunger spur them on. And they go out to meet death. Man, too eager for gain, thus lingers on to work after sunset. And death brings him to a halt forever on his return. Carnal appetite thus pushes two people beyond the protection of inhabited areas to seek refuge for their illicit love. And the beast eternally dissolves what their lust has joined. But in African lands or in icy regions it is always the same three-pointed goad which spurs men towards Satan’s clawing. It is always concupiscence involving the flesh, money, and power that brings you within reach of the one who, ‘like a roaring lion prowls around you’328 tirelessly.
“Remember that I, too, was tempted in my flesh by hunger in my belly and the offering of fleshly food to my senses, in my mind by the craving for power, and in my spirit by the suggestion that I tempt God.329 Imprudence is to tempt God.
“Be able to imitate Me. Put Satan to flight by imitating Jesus, your Master. ‘Man lives not only on bread, but on the word of God.’ ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’ ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him alone.’
“Wrap your flesh and your spirit in the bands soaked in balms of the Law of God. Those who live wrapped in them preserve their flesh and their spirit from the germs bringing the putrefaction of diseases and death.
“That’s enough, Maria. I shall let go of you. Return to your place of pain. Mercy is already acting greatly with you in giving you this solace in this hour of expiation. Be off - in peace.
325 John 11:41-44.
326 This statement is explained in the following dictation.
327 See May 4.
328 1 Peter 5:8.
329 Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13.