[Jesus says to the dying woman:] "Get up, Mary. It's Me. Life is fleeing. It's true. But I have come to tell you that Christ awaits you. There is no waiting for Mary. Everything is forgiven her. From the first moment it was forgiven. But now it is more than forgiven. Your place is already prepared in my Kingdom. I have come, Mary, to tell you this. I did not order the angel to do so because I repay a hundredfold for what I receive, and I remember what I have received from you.
Mary, let us together relive a moment in the past. Remember Bethany. It was the evening after the Sabbath. Six days remained before my death. Do you remember your house? Everything was beautiful in the blossoming tract of its orchard. The water was singing in the pool, and the first roses could be scented around its walls. Lazarus had invited me to his supper, and you had stripped the garden of the loveliest flowers to adorn the table where your Master would take his sustenance. Martha did not dare to reproach you because she remembered my words and looked at you with gentle envy, for you shone with love while coming and going for the preparations. And then I arrived. You ran faster than a gazelle, preceding the servants, to open the gate with your usual cry. It always sounded like the cry of a freed prisoner. I was, in fact, your liberation, and you were a liberated prisoner.
The apostles were with Me. All of them. Even the one who was then like a gangrenous member of the apostolic body. But you were there to take his place. And you did not know that while observing your head bending to kiss my feet and your sincere, love-filled eyes, I forgot my disgust over having the betrayer at my side. I wanted you on Calvary for this reason. You in Joseph's garden for this reason. Because to see you was to be sure that my death was not without a purpose. And my showing Myself to you was an act of gratitude for your faithful love.
Mary, blessed are you, that have never betrayed […] Me in my hope as the Redeemer – you, in whom I saw all those saved by my death! While everyone ate, you worshiped. You had given Me the perfumed water for my weary feet and chaste, ardent kisses for my hands, and, still not content, you wanted to break open your last precious vase and anoint my head, freshening up my hair as a mother does, and anoint my hands and feet so that all your Master's limbs would be scented as members of the consecrated King. And Judas, who hated you because you were now honest and rejected the appetites of males with your honesty, reproached you. But I defended you because you had done everything out of love, such a great love that the memory of it accompanied Me in the agony from Thursday night until the ninth hour.
Now, because of this act of love you gave Me on the threshold of my death, I come, on the threshold of your death, to repay you with love. Your Master loves you, Mary He is here to say this to you. Do not be afraid or anxious about another death. Your death is no different from that of those shedding their blood for my sake. What does the martyr give? His life out of love for his God. What does the penitent give? His life out of love for his God. What does the lover give? His life out of love for his God. See that there is no difference. Martyrdom, penance, and love consummate the same sacrifice and for the same purpose. In you, then, a penitent and a lover, there is martyrdom, as in those perishing in the arenas.
Mary, I will precede you into glory. Kiss my hand and lie down in peace. Rest. It is time for you to rest. Give Me your thorns. Now is the time for roses. Rest and wait. I bless you, blessed one."
Jesus has obliged Mary to lie down on her couch. And the saint, with her face washed with tears of ecstasy, has lain down as her God has wanted her to and now seems to sleep, with her arms crossed over her chest and her tears continuing to fall, but with a smile on her mouth.
She rises again to a sitting position when a very bright radiance appears in the grotto because of the arrival of an angel bearing a chalice which he sets upon the altar and worships. Mary, kneeling beside her cot, worships, too. She can no longer move. Her strength is failing. But she is blessed. The angel takes the chalice and gives her Communion. He then goes back up to Heaven.
Mary, like a flower scorched by too much sun, bends – she bends with her arms still crossed over her chest and falls, with her face amidst the leaves of her cot. She is dead. The Eucharistic ecstasy has cut the last thread of life.
Jesus says:
"Although creatures may be consummate in the generosity of love and in repaying those who have loved them, they are always very relative. But your Jesus surpasses all human immensity in desire and every limit to satisfaction. For your Jesus is God, and to you, the generous and loving – since this is a page which I address especially to you, the souls that are not satisfied with obeying the precept, but embrace the counsel and push your love for Me to holy acts of heroism – I give with my abundance as God, and as a good God.
"I create the miracle for you, to repay you with joy for all the joy you give Me. I take the place of what you lack or produce what you need. But I let nothing be lacking for you that have stripped yourselves of everything out of love for Me to the point of living in a material or moral solitude in the midst of the world, which does not comprehend you and which mocks you and which, repeating the insult of old which was previously directed at Me, your Master, shouts at you, 'Madmen!' and takes your penances and your lights to be diabolical signs […].
"But go ahead and let them call you 'madmen and demons.' I know that you are possessors of true wisdom, of upright intelligence, and that you have the soul of an angel in a mortal body. I remember, and not a single loving sigh is forgotten, what you have done for Me; and, as I defend you against the world – for I bring the best ones in the world to know what you are in my eyes – so I compensate you when the hour comes, and I consider that it is time to infuse some sweetness into your chalice […].
"I never disappoint those who hope in Me. Say this over and over again to everyone. "
Maria Valtorta, The Notebooks 1944, March 30, p. 252-259.
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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 supernatural revelations of Maria Valtorta are from Heaven.
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