Jesus says:
“The end of the vision687 could be the dictation given for all. For now, as twenty centuries ago, I say those words to all. But there are too many pharisees who do not want to receive them.
“The world moves towards its peace, which is not my peace. For mine is a peace of holiness and justice. The world’s, of tyranny and corruption. What has happened and is happening is horrendous, isn’t it?
“I refer you to my first dictations. I have always said688 that this was not a war of peoples. But of Satan against God. One of the wars preparing for the advent of the Antichrist, whose precursors they now are. I have always said that Satan waged war against spirits through the horrors inflicted on bodies and that many would yield because the spirits of men, no longer nourished with grace and faith, are very weak in the face of evil. I said that my angels, through the sacrifice of the good, would fight to impede a general scything in the human race by the demons.
“In the particular case of the Italians, I said that if they proved unable to use the first grace uprightly and, after having worshipped someone less than a idol as a god and having served him with a beastly servility, went on to using his own cruel methods, punishment would descend. For a grace deserves an effort towards goodness and not towards iniquity on man’s part. And you have enjoyed, cursed, hated, and become Judases towards your little master and his most intimate associates. Yesterday, only yesterday, prostrated as slaves, and today already with your fists clenched and cursing and with rapacious claws to seize what yesterday it pained you to see in the possession of others. I said that this punishment would be to experience horror throughout the country. A horror which, if you had considered it among yourselves, you would have believed to be a nightmare from a fever. Do you see that it’s true? But will you correct yourselves?
“The Pharisees, scribes, and Sadducees in my time got firsthand proof of the fruit of their repeated sins. Israel, disheartened, dominated, and dispersed, spoke in a tearful voice, saying, ‘This is the punishment for not being true sons of God.’689 And yet none of the leaders - very rarely, one of the leaders - was converted to Me. Invitations and rebukes, sweetness and severity, condescension and intransigence, smiles and dejection, promptness in working a miracle or insensitivity in the face of their desire for a miracle - I used everything to rouse them and persuade them. I obtained nothing but their deepest, their most complete trafficking with Satan, to the point of arriving at trampling on the prophets and denying that I was the Christ, as events manifested, confirming the prophecies, and killing the Christ, the Word of God.
“Now the same thing is happening. In the great and the small, socially or individually, ninety percent live like the Pharisees at that time and act with the same methods. Self-interest, pride, hardness of heart, lust, avarice, gluttony, and all forms of selfishness are the bases for your lives and the code for your actions. Do not be horrified at the hardness of Ishmael.690 You, too, do the same with those who are no longer of use to you. Charity and charity are dead in you. You love only yourselves.
“But now I tell you: Charity, which you do not want, is being poured precisely on those you disdain, abandon, and mock, perhaps after having exploited them. They are those who live only for Charity and, loving God more than themselves, love you more than themselves. They love you as God loves, coming to your aid in your souls and in material things. You know nothing, understand nothing, and ask yourselves nothing. But God knows, sees, and comprehends without asking. He knows why supreme mercy is still upon you. Because of them, these charitable ones, who love Me and love you and make love the purpose of their lives. Not for the sake of who you are, but to so something pleasing to Me.
“Do you know how many tears, sorrows, penances, and sacrifices are the price of your existence? You think you have life through the mother who generated you and the father who has given you bread. Yes, if you calculate by the measure of the beasts, you have life through them. But Life, true Life, lasts for you to give you time to be converted, through their work. And many of you do not die eternally because these heroes, unknown to you, placing themselves between you and God, with their arms upraised, ward off the divine punishments and transfuse into you a little of that spiritual blood, drained out of you by moral illnesses, which circulates in the great Mystical Body and which is the blood of grace. But it is through the sieve of their sacrificed self that this good filters through to you wicked ones.
“A severe dictation. I am pained over it for the sake of my little John. But I shall comfort him with a caress. This one: even if they all should abandon you, I will remain. Even if they all should hate you, I will remain. Do you see how I come to your aid even materially with physical strength when the time comes? You are in my hands, a beloved, precious instrument. Do not be afraid.
“Live in and for your mission. Act like the children who are given a toy displaying wonderful scenes when they press their eyes against the sights, but which is nothing but a black box if they disengage their gaze. Remain with your eyes fixed on Me and your mission. The world is around you. It must remain around you. But not within you. Within is my world. Give the world, the poor, ignorant, blind world, the teachings and lights coming to you from my world. If only you could see how much Heaven is around your work...! “Ah, how happy you will be when you realize you are in my world forever and have come there, from the poor world, without even realizing, passing from a vision to reality, like a child dreaming of his mother and waking up with his mother clasping him to her heart. I will do this with you.691
“Be good, patient, and charitable, and do not fear. I give you my peace. I give you rivers of it, today, the Name of Mary,692 and may it be the gift of grace for little John.”
687 See note 686.
688 Especially on May 16, but also in certain passages in The Notebooks. 1943.
689 As in Lamentations 5.
690 See note 686.
691 These words take on a touching prophetic value if we recall that Maria Valtorta died (on October 12, 1961) after several years of gradual and growing psychic isolation which led her to become irremediably estranged from the external world, as if she were entirely absorbed by the inner life, thus passing, at death, from a contemplated vision to a reality which she would experience forever.
692 This liturgical commemoration was on September 12.