Spiritual
sufferings
The spiritual sufferings can
be catalogued as two types: fights against Satan, though without more
aggressions towards her body after the end of 1937, and
temptations against the faith, also provoked by Satan.
SPIRITUAL FIGHTS AGAINST
SATAN
The demon was
chained at my side. He wanted to get at me. I saw that he could not reach me,
but I felt as if he was tearing my body to pieces by biting. The insults were
plentiful. He said to me: Cursed one,
you will sin, I will drive you to desperation. S (20-12-46)
Satan concentrated on making
her suffer the fear of being deceived about her mystical life, and of
committing the sin of vanity by writing about it.
The demon tells me
that I invent my battles in order to have something to write about! My Jesus, I
want to love You, but I do not want to have to write about it! You know well
that it is him and not me. S (21-8-45)
- You manage with
your falseness to deceive almost all the people: you will condemn
yourself!
And to tell the
truth, in those moments, I felt that I was false, deceptive, malicious. S
(20-12-46)
But the most insistent note is
that of lust.
For some days I
felt that my body was an open house for anyone who wanted to enter it.
I suffered much
with this new suffering! (...)
The demon, more
enraged, came as a thief and I felt as if he took my heart.
- It is mine - he
said to me – let’s go and sin! - And he covered me with insults. - With your
heart in my hands I can make you sin when I want. Then, much more alive, I felt
this to be this dwelling that I spoke about above. As many as wanted entered
into it. I was the house of sin, and the same sin: I accepted everything. My
God, what a horror, so many sins, so many crimes! I fought very much and the demon showed that
he was very pleased because he had made me do everything he wanted. But I said
often to Jesus that I was His victim and that I did not want to sin. S (23-7-45)
It was four combats
that I had with the demon; they had been combats of hell!
I had hands for
everything, except to bless myself with and to move the cursed one away from
me. My body was bathed in sweat, my heart a thundering machine. Yes, I managed to call for Jesus and our
blessed Heavenly Mother. But what I did not manage, or it seemed to me, was to
call them in time.
I liked to be blind
and deaf so that I could neither see nor hear the teachings of the cursed one
and so that I could not allow myself to be disturbed by what he said against
Jesus.
But, if things were
so that I could not fight nor suffer then neither could I be a victim of my
Lord. S (7-11-47)
The demon tormented
me with his strength and diabolical malice.
In the first three attacks he tormented me in the form of a man, but he
introduced in me all human malice. What a horror!
I sinned in all
points and senses. And he, much rested, left to the world his infernal look and
left it full of his malice.
If only I knew how
to tell of the poison that he instils in souls!
What a horror! Oh,
how he sins! S (11-10-46)
Sometimes Jesus gives her to
understand for what kinds of sin she is making reparation.
Our Lord made me to
understand, through the feelings and visions of the soul, for whom He asked me
to make reparation.
The first two
attacks had been for sins committed during worldly balls, sins practised
shamelessly!
The three following
had been for priests. O my Jesus, how much we ought to pray for them! They are
of the same clay that we are, poor men! They are subjected to great falls. S
(9-7-48)
Jesus comforted her,
encouraged her to continue, affirming that with such reparation she was saving
souls.
This explains the
desperation of the demon, this is the reason why he tries to devour you: he
knows well how many souls you have delivered from his clutches. S
(14-9-51)
- The demon has
laid all his infernal anger on you. The damage that you have done him is great:
you do more harm to his satanic work, with your suffering, than all the good
done by humanity in general.
He is raging,
raging. He uses everything. He uses men to destroy my Cause. Never, never are
his infernal designs satisfied.
Suffer everything,
my daughter, suffer all your unutterable pain and torment.
Atone to Me, atone
to Me for all the desecrations and all the insincere confessions.
- Jesus, I love
You: I am your victim! S (19-3-54)
TEMPTATIONS AGAINST FAITH
It seemed me that a
cloud descended on me, black, black, frightful. It wrapped itself all around
me. Everything is night, from earth to Heaven. Beneath me are crosses and
thorns; around me, surrounding me, crosses and thorns; on me, crosses and
thorns. Everything is night, everything is crosses, everything is thorns, pain
and blood: death in the world and death in eternity. S (29-3-45)
I feel as if only
myself and pain live in the world. I feel that everybody flees from me; I feel
that Jesus flees from me. I have pain
for company, darkness for a dwelling. Everything that is born in them dies.
Horrible blindness, frightful darkness! S (3-5-46)
I believe, I
believe that you are my Jesus, I believe even in darkness and pain: do not
permit me to doubt! I do not want to displease You. S (22-7-49) How many pains,
how many sighs hidden and suffocating! I
am under the earth and it is this same earth that stifles my sighs and hides my
pains No cry of mine makes it to Heaven: no groan is heard there, not a single
tear is seen. What abandonment, my
Jesus, what abandonment! S (27-7-51)
It seems me that I
am tempted to despair of myself. I lie to all and I lie to myself. I have temptations against the faith: it
seems that I want to convince myself that after this exile everything finishes,
that nothing is improved by suffering.
I feel the fury of
the demon on me: he is raging against me. It seems that there is a strong iron
grating separating me from him. (Indeed,
after the end of 1937, Jesus does not allow him to touch her.) But my soul
sees and feels that his strong teeth bite into these iron bars as if he were
biting into me. He fixes me his desperate and ferocious eyes. I hear his howls
and desperations. S (14-9-51)
In this stormy
immensity where only emptiness prevails, my soul conserves itself in peace,
except sometimes, in some moments of agitation, doubts about all of my life, temptations against the faith
that almost cause me to fall into despair.
Why did I come to the world? What is served by suffering like this, in a
life nailed to a bed?
These are not
questions I want to ask. I feel they are temptations of the demon, that they
are him wanting to rob me of peace. S (20-6-52)
I am in a stormy
sea. I do not cease to fight with the waves. I feel tired, I feel that I am
fainting away, having to fight continually like this. I want to clutch at the
sand, or some thing that will provide security, but I do not find it:
everything fails me. I myself remain at the mercy of the waves. S (15-1-54)
She continued the fight
between the will to believe and the temptation to disbelieve. It was a
tremendous suffering!
I believe, whether
in pain or in joy, in abandonment or in comfort. I believe, in life and in
death. I am yours, Jesus, I am your victim! S (16-7-54)
I feel that I am
not doing anything in the world, after losing Jesus and our heavenly
Mother.
Since eternity does
not exist, or so (the demon) tries to
persuade me: what am I doing here, without enjoyment, always suffering? What
for, what for?
“I believe, Jesus,
I believe! I believe that You exist.
What matters to me
the feeling of the lie (saying “I
believe”), if You are the Truth, O Lord, if You are You, and You are
eternity?”
In this fight I
disdained all Gethsemane (when she
relived the Passion). Nothing exists. There is nothing, there has been
nothing!
Thus I climbed
Calvary, without faith, without believing in eternity. And, such was the
temptation, wanting to commit suicide!
It seemed to me
that I should want to discontinue a life which had no life, in any way at all. (Jesus suffered similar demonic attacks, not
only at the beginning, in the desert, but also at the end, in Gethsemane).
With what cost I
called on Jesus and our Heavenly Mother and repeated to Them my “I
believe”!
In the darkness of
agony and of death, I have wanted to repeat it, and I could not.
Jesus came. He
called out to me firmly and with sweetness:
- My daughter, O my
daughter, your reparation is for those without faith, for those without God,
for the unbelievers. S (15-10-54)
One
month later Jesus reaffirmed that He wanted this form of reparation, with its
tenacious profession of faith. But He also gave her His aid.
Repeat your “I
believe”. You must live the faith without faith, love without the feeling of
love.
All I want of you
is your “I believe!”, your adherence to the cross, your heroic generosity,
always heroic.
Come and rest on my
divine Heart. It is divine rest, it is comforting rest, it is life’s rest. S
(19-11-54)
Even while reliving the
Passion the fight continued. Here is a description of it with wonderful
poetical power.
I believe, I
believe firmly, I have repeated as many times on the top of the mountain,
impaled on a spear, but in such a vertical line that I was not hanging more on
one side than on the other: to God or the demon; to eternity or the
vacuum.
Thus wounded,
covered in blood, I could do nothing but go on repeating my “I believe, I
believe firmly!”
I believe, even so
my feelings are all liars.
Jesus came; he said
to me:
- Believe, my
daughter, believe, my beloved spouse, believe, tender flower of Paradise!
Believe that I
exist, believe that you are in the Truth, believe that all your life is my
life. Courage, courage! S (17-12-54)
The last year of her exile
arrived, yet that tremendous fight was intensified still more.
- O Jesus, forgive
me! I
do not have faith nor do I believe in You. Dear me, who will save me?
- It’s Me; I save
you, my daughter! You have inflexible faith, firmer than a rock.
Make reparation for
those who do not have it, for those who live without God.
Trust, trust! Souls
are saved by the millions, by the millions. Yes, my daughter! S (25-3-55)
And thus I go on
walking on neither sea nor land, only with a false whisper, that always urges
me to cast myself into the abyss.
Save me, Jesus!
Save me, Celestial Mother! Comfort me in this world of uncertainties and
doubts. O pain, O pain, O agony and death! …
In this painful
and, so to speak, continuous fight, Jesus came and spoke to me:
- (...) Courage,
courage! You have faith, you have love and you give Me everything. (...)
Go, live in the
faith, repeat your “I believe”. Suffer and love, suffer and love! S (1-4-55)
My soul bleeds, my
whole being bleeds in the darkness.
O my God, speak to
me about the soul, speak about what I so often seem not to have! How many times
a voice cries out to me – to the soul and to the body too: “Grasp, grasp!” -
but I can find neither one thing nor another to grasp. I grasp, grasp at the darkness, at ignorance,
at uselessness, at death! It is what I
have, is what I find in myself.
To cry out, to cry
out healthy and strong to Heaven, to Heaven that isn’t there, to an eternity
that does not exist! O my God, it is useless to cry out to anything. I am in
great agony.
I want, if Jesus
wants it, to be here for His glory and for the salvation of souls. S
(13-5-55)
Jesus warns her of
an ultimate increase of the martyrdom.
- My daughter, it
is not the feelings of faith and consolation that console me, but rather this
constant fight at the height of pain. It
is the last phase, the tremendous phase: the pinnacle of suffering will be
facing the pinnacle of sin. The world sins, the world sins! Have courage, you who are the light and the
lighthouse of the world. Make reparation so that my divine Heart be loved. Stay
my Father’s arm of justice, who insists that it fall on the earth. S
(10-6-55)
My daughter, climb,
climb, courage! (...) Your phase, the last phase of your life cannot be more
painful. But thus it is when I choose a soul for the highest degree of perfection,
love, and union with me.
Trust: you love Me
and make Me loved. Your Heaven is near! S (8-7-55)
With a heroic firmness she repeated her “I
believe”
Cost what it may,
what bleeds, bleeds! Even if lying to myself, I must always repeat: I believe
in God, I believe in all the eternal truths, I believe that I have a soul, a
child of the God’s blood! S (5-8-55)
Always fighting,
always grasping, grasping without having anything to grasp, here I go from fall
to fall, from abyss to abyss towards the endless abysses of darkness, death,
uselessness.
And without faith,
my God, without faith! I always go on
repeating in my soul: Everything for your love, Jesus, and for souls! S
(19-8-55)
And, finally, in the last
diary, she dictated:
In heart-rending
anguish I repeated my acts of faith:
I believe, Jesus, I
believe that your birth, your death, your Calvary were for me.
I believe, Jesus, I
believe!
My abysses are so
black and deep that only God could penetrate them.
Which is just what
Jesus did.
He went down into
my depths, with the tender rays of His light he brought up to the surface my
poor being and illuminated it:
- Come here, my
daughter, light and lighthouse of the world!
You that you are
darkness without equal, you are the light that shines, the lighthouse that
illuminates everything.
The darkness is for
you, the light is for souls.
Come here, light of
whom I am light, lighthouse of whom I am lighthouse!
Can I not make you
shine with My brightness?
Can I not make you to
be a lighthouse, just as I am the lighthouse?
In the same diary we read a
last afflicted appeal of Jesus:
- My daughter, let
Jesus cry out through your lips:
“O Church, O
Church, accept the voice of the Lord! Vigilance, vigilance!
O Church, my beloved
Church, pay attention, pay attention, do not sleep, do not rest!
Never has the world
sinned in such a way.
Never was there
such urgent need of reparation.” (...)
Have you not said
to Me many times that you wanted to consume yourself and to disappear in my
love? Courage, courage! I have done everything to the letter, everything that
you have said to Me.
- O Jesus, look at
my soul! Only You know how to look at it.
Listen to my
requests!
And the world, the
world! Jesus, forgive it, because it is yours! S (2-9-55)
With such an anguished plea,
which explodes from a heart bleeding with pain and burning with love, the diary
of our holy martyr closes.
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