An appearance of the Virgin Mary “alive, and real, as in Lourdes.”

The evening of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1947.

 

Maria Valtorta is confined to her bed, and laments at not being able to participate in the Church’s celebration of the Feast. She has been oppressed for years by the weight of seven chronic diseases.

 

“I was complaining about not being able to see Mary Immaculate passing by, carried in a procession. It is this being deprived of taking part in the rites of the Church that makes me feel the weight of my infirmity. In ten days, fifteen years will have passed during which I have been unable to set foot on the streets, have not gone to church, and have not seen ceremonies. From the balcony Marta [her live-in housekeeper] can see something, but I can see nothing. Alone in my bed I was complaining to myself as I hear the approach of the choirs acclaiming Mary Most Holy.

 

“And Mary came to me: alive, real, as in Lourdes. One of the most intense, and most complete, ecstasies I had ever had. The world utterly obliterated around me. Mary alone with Maria alone. I received much more than seeing a statue passing by.  

 

“I returned to – what shall I call it? – awareness of what the world is, I would say, after about an hour, I believe, for when She came, there was still daylight and when She left me, there was deep darkness. And I found that my face was moist with tears. I did not realize I was weeping with joy while I petitioned Her for the Church, the Holy Father, Italy, the Order of the Servants of Mary, all of the clergy, and the people dearest to me; while venerating and contemplating Her, I said the fifteen decades of the Rosary in front of Her – so lovely, so sweet, so luminous, and so blessed. But it was joyful weeping, and did no harm. It was an outburst of the heart liquefying with joy in those hours of contemplation and heavenly boon.  

 

“How beautiful She was! How beautiful She was! What joy and peace She left in my heart! May She be blessed! And, with Her, her Most Holy Son, who grants me these balms in my great suffering.”

 

This visit was a preamble to a major appearance of the Blessed Virgin three weeks later. 

 

Maria Valtorta, The Notebooks 1945-50, December 8, 1947; page 454. 

 

Disclaimer: A brief ‘press release’ from a Vatican dicastery has proposed, without offering proof, that her writings are not supernatural [Link]. However, according to the dicastery’s own published standards their press release has no canonical validity [Link, no. 22]. Therefore I am not being disobedient by publicly asserting my 100% human faith that the revelations of Maria Valtorta are from Heaven.

 

View my books Link.

The three Archangels appear to Maria Valtorta.

She is writing to her spiritual director Fr. Romualdo Migliorini, a Servite priest, who had arrived at her bedside to give her Communion:

Oh, Father! I don't know if you realized that at the moment of Holy Communion I was finding it hard to follow you because I was already elsewhere, intent on looking towards heaven, from which a joyful call was coming to me, with that joy which cannot be described by human comparisons and words. I had to make an effort to pull myself away from there in order to respond to you. Afterwards, trembling with joy, waves of vaster and vaster joy, the heavenly domain became progressively illuminated for me, and I saw.

I saw the most radiant azures of the meadows of Paradise. This vision of the heavenly regions flooded with the light which no comparison can convey, the light of Paradise, indeed leads to blessedness, even if it were to remain on its own. […].

From a northeastern point three most radiant figures, like common mortals, are coming to meet me, walking over the sapphire fields, with a royal, very dignified gait. And yet they show no haughtiness. Quite the contrary. They walk nimbly, without losing solemnity. They smile, observing me, and smile at one another, drawing each other's attention towards me with the language of their gazes. As they approach, I see the movements of their beautiful eyes – the first one's are sapphire blue, the second's very black, and the third's golden chestnut – shining in the smile and light of Paradise.

They come up to the limit of the heavenly field, beyond which there is an empty space as far as the lower terrace, where I am, venerating and enraptured. And they halt there, looking at me, smiling as only an angel can smile, clasping each other around the waist, like three brothers who love one another and are taking a stroll together.

They are the three archangels: Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael. And I shall attempt to provide a picture of them. They are three very handsome young men. They strike me as young men aged twenty, or between eighteen and thirty. The youngest is Raphael, and the oldest (in appearance) is Michael, with a tremendous comeliness.

The first on the right was Gabriel, apparently aged twenty four or twenty-five. Tall, slender, and very spiritualized in his enraptured features as a perpetual worshiper. Blond – a pure gold blond – with wavy hair barely touching his shoulders – or, rather, the base of his neck – clasped by a slender diamond-studded ring – it resembled a band of incandescent light rather than metal and jewels. Dressed in that robe of woven light – diamonds and pearls – which I have often seen in glorious bodies. A long, loose, very pure tunic which completely concealed his feet and barely left uncovered his right hand, quite beautiful in appearance, hanging down at his side. He was looking at me with his sapphire eyes, with such a supernatural smile that, though a smile, it frightened me.

The other one [Michael], in the middle, also very tall, like his companion, was, as I said, awesome in his austere handsomeness. With brown hair shorter than his companion's and curlier, a sturdier build, and a forehead free of all diadems, but with a kind of medal on his chest made of gold and stones […], held up by two little golden chains. The stones set in place formed characters, perhaps a name, but I was unable to read those words, those letters which are not like our own.

He was dressed in inflamed gold, a robe which was so bright that it blinded you. It looked like a light colored flame (not reddish, but golden) enveloping his nimble, robust members. His black eyes were severe and cast-forth beams of light. He did not make me afraid, for I felt he was not angry with me, but, rather, that he loved me. But it was a gaze with an awesomeness which must be distressing for sinners and Satan. Michael had neither a sword nor a lance, quite the opposite of the way he is portrayed, but his weapons were his eyes. Even his smile was severe, very austere.

The third one [Raphael], wearing a robe, with a jewel-covered belt, a robe of a delicate emerald, seemed to be dressed exactly in the color you see when looking at an emerald against the light. He was tall, with long dark hair, like Gabriel's. A precious color of hair which is chestnut with a little sprinkling of dark gold, He looked like the youngest of all and reminded me a bit of St. John the Apostle because of his gentle, youthful smile. Raphael's eyes, though, were a very soft chestnut color, with a placid, patient gaze which is a caress. He was smiling in a more human way than the others. Everything in him was more like the way we are. He was really the "good Young man" of the Book of Tobias. You feel like putting your hand in his, trustingly, and saying to him, "Guide me! In everything! "

They looked at me, smiled, and smiled at each other. Then they greeted me.

Gabriel sang, with his voice like a very spiritual harp (and every note takes you into ecstasy): "Hail, Mary," and on saying "Mary" he gathered his hands over his chest and bent his head, raising it afterwards with a smile increasing the glowing of his entire self towards the heights of Paradise. I understood that, rather than greet me, he had wished to show himself clearly. He is the Archangel who announces the great mystery, and seems able only to say those words and venerate the Virgin.

Michael touched the jewel on his chest. He took it in the fingers of his right hand and lifted it up to show it to me and, with a voice resounding like bronze, said, "Whoever is with God can do all. And Satan can do nothing against whoever is with God. For who is like God?" And these last words seemed to make his heavenly aura vibrate as if from harmonious thunder. He rested his medal on his chest and knelt down, adoring the Eternal whom I did not see, but who I would say, judging from the Archangel's gaze, was perpendicular to or right behind my back, far up, high above.

Raphael, with his golden voice, opened his arms as if to embrace me and at the same time uplifted his shining face in contemplation of God and said, "May joy always be with you." He somewhat resembled the angel I have seen in two visions. But he was less spiritualized than the other. At the root of his hair was a light like a star, a gentle light which brought comfort, as did his robe of shining light emerald.

They continued to look at me. They then clasped each other more tightly around the waist and […] opened their wings of pearl, flame, and pale green light and swiftly rose into the sky, singing an unrepeatable song, just like the one I heard [...] when I saw the angelic cohorts flying over Bethlehem, singing.

And I remained here. Rather, I descended from the spheres where I had been and came back to myself, to my agonies, to my bed. The joy remained, though, and I also realized that – how stupid of me – I had been incapable of saying a word to the three archangels. But my soul spoke with them. I felt that it venerated them, even if I could not translate its beats into material words.

After having received everything mentioned above, I took up the Bible to seek out every angelic apparition in it.

Maria Valtorta, The Notebooks 1945-50, December 21, 1945; pp. 129-133.

Disclaimer: A brief ‘press release’ from a Vatican dicastery has proposed, without offering proof, that her writings are not supernatural [Link]. However, according to the dicastery’s own published standards their press release has no canonical validity [Link, no. 22]. Therefore I am not being disobedient by publicly asserting my 100% human faith that the revelations of Maria Valtorta are from Heaven.

 

View my books Link.

 

God's vengeance is forgiveness.

Jesus’ message to Maria Valtorta:

"On the Cross I could have struck down the blameworthy with a lightning bolt. Lightning furrowed the sky, and I could have directed it against those assembling to insult Me. I could have committed other acts of vengeance, too.

‘I remained God. But I was never God so much as when using forgiveness as the only form of revenge. By punishing those offending Me, I would have been a powerful man, remaining a man who, with God's favor, can use even cosmic forces to terrify his enemies. The history of my people is full of episodes of this kind brought about by patriarchs and prophets – always by just men. But in taking revenge with forgiveness I was God – that is, a superhuman Being, so far above men that I was able to use the revenge which man does not use: forgiveness.

"And I taught it to you, my followers, for the followers of Christ, the true followers of Christ – that is, the saints – become what is called 'children of the Most High, gods, heirs of the Kingdom of God.'

"Maria, forgive. Those bringing you pain do not know what they are doing. They do not know. Forgive to be a daughter of the Most High, a mirror of Me, my sister. My peace is your balm."

Maria then adds a personal note, writing that this message was the Lord’s comforting her for bad behavior by her relatives: ‘Comfort for bad behavior by relatives.’

Maria Valtorta, The Notebooks 1945-1950, August 29, 1947, p. 412.

 

View my Catholic books HERE: 

 

Disclaimer: A brief ‘press release’ from a Vatican dicastery has proposed, without offering proof, that her writings are not supernatural [Link]. However, according to the dicastery’s own published standards their press release has no canonical validity [Link, no. 22]. Therefore I am not being disobedient by publicly asserting my 100% human faith that the revelations of Maria Valtorta are from Heaven.

 

 

 

A personal visit from the Little Flower.

Maria Valtorta was contemplating the ‘little way’ of St. Therese of Lisieux:

 

While reading a text on St. Therese, I reflected that I had never wished for extraordinary things, either, convinced as I was that they were more of a danger than anything else for our weakness, and I bewailed the fact that my mission had placed me precisely on this extraordinary way [the revelations Jesus had her write about]. I moaned, "Why, my God? Why such a big thing for me, so small? Why such a dangerous thing for me, so weak? Why this thing so proper to adults for me, who could be saved only through spiritual childhood?"

 

I was in the midst of these thoughts when St. Therese herself appeared to me in the full Carmelite habit – that is, with the ample white mantle, but without roses or the Crucifix adorned with flowers. No, just the way she must have looked a thousand times in her Carmel when she went to the Chapel. She approached me and passed her arms over my shoulders in such a way that her lovely left hand was on my left shoulder, and her right hand, on my right shoulder, and she thus had me feel her embrace and spoke:

 

"Do not fear, my little sister. It was a simpler way [the ‘little way’ of St. Therese]. But you did not ask for this other one. It is Love who gave it to you – indeed, who placed you thereupon. And you are walking along it with your heart of a child who wants to remain a child. And your way thus becomes doubly heroic. Because of childhood and extra-ordinariness. To be faithful to both is a great thing. 

 

“But you will always be a child because you want to. A child on whose lips the Spirit will place the words which are more than an adult's because they are not human words. Maria will always be the little child on the way of spiritual childhood.

 

“The spokesman, moreover, in the hours of his office [of reporting the visions and revelations], will follow the extraordinary way, and, so that he will not experience fear or harm on that account, he will follow it in the arms of God. [Note: St. Theresa uses the masculine form here because Jesus often called Maria Valtorta ‘Little John,’ referring to St. John the Evangelist].

 

“Simply to do the will of God, whatever its grandiosity may be, is to conserve oneself always as a child. For only children act without measuring the greatness of what they do – they act only because they are told to act. Do not fear, little sister. Jesus, who placed you there, protects your heart and will not allow what is extraordinary to harm your heart as a spiritual child.”

 

And she had me feel the pressure of her beautiful hands, and I felt the mantle extended over my shoulders like a protecting, isolating, defending veil. I felt her face bending over my head, so fraternally that I was completely comforted by it. I felt protected, loved. Fears ceased. 

 

I raised my head and encountered her smile, the gaze of her most beautiful eyes. How lovely she was! Heaven shone from every part of her. She had me feel all her love and then disappeared in an intense golden light. And peace and the memory of her embrace remained.

 

(This heavenly visitation took place in 1946; St. Theresa of Lisieux, the Little Flower, passed away in 1897.)

 

Maria Valtorta, The Notebooks 1945-1950, August 20, 1946 pp. 286-287.

 

Disclaimer: A brief ‘press release’ from a Vatican dicastery has proposed, without offering proof, that her writings are not supernatural [Link]. However, according to the dicastery’s own published standards their press release has no canonical validity [Link, no. 22]. Therefore I am not being disobedient by publicly asserting my 100% human faith that the revelations of Maria Valtorta are from Heaven.

 

My web page [Link].