Just Seeing the Blessed Virgin Mary is Enough.

 “Indeed, just seeing Her teaches the beauty of purity, of prayer, and of silence.”

Maria Valtlorta writes in her notebook: Last night, September 18, I suffered terribly. I had been suffering like that all day long and was utterly exhausted. Every breath, every movement, however small, was most painful for me and forced me, who never complain, to protest. And then there was the coughing […]

At supper time – that is, from 8 to 9 pm – when I had been left alone, my mental sight was beatified by the vision of Holy Mary. I will try to describe Her to you. But how can I manage to show you her beauty and the colors She had?

She is dressed in white: a dress closed at the base of the neck, as if it were curled, for I see that over her breast the cloth forms soft folds which chastely follow Mary's figure. The sleeves are rather narrow and long, down to her wrists. At her waist a belt gathers in her dress. But it is not golden or silver. It seems to be a silken cord, the same as the dress in color and luster. It has no bows, but falls down over the dress. It encircles it, and that's all.

Over her head, a mantle of the same cloth as the dress, light, but not veiling Her. It descends over Mary's cheeks and approaches her neck, as if it were held back by a clasp. A long clasp, though, for I see Mary's extremely white throat. In short, it is supported at her shoulders and descends along the upper part of her arms and her side down to the ground.

But how can I describe for you the splendor of that very white arid simple dress? Snow is gray and opaque; the lily is still less beautiful. Its whiteness shines so brightly that it resembles silver turned into cloth. Oh, words are impotent to describe the light! Only in Heaven […] can there be such cloth of a phosphorescent, diamond-like, pearly, opaline whiteness which is a gem without being a gem or resulting from the union of gems so as to shine that way!

I see the rather round oval of Mary's face. Of a shade of ivory like certain magnolia petals, the same color as that of her Son's face, though shaped differently from his, which is longer and thinner. On this flowery face only the thin lips and eyebrows, slightly dark, provide color.

The eyes, not wide open, but seeds veiled by her eyelids, have the same gaze as her Son's and are of the same sky-blue as Jesus', but paler. To continue with human comparisons, I might say that Jesus' eyes are sapphire, and Mary's, turquoise. Jesus' serious, saddened look is in Mary a sadness joined, however, to a smile: the good smile of someone who is afflicted, but wants to console and exhort at the same time.

Her hair is the color of ripe wheat, or pure gold, if you prefer, always tending towards reddish blond, but more blond than red, whereas in Jesus there is a tendency towards a coppery blond.

 

Her long, thin hands, with very long and tapering fingers, emerge from the tight sleeves, with their delicate, very white wrists. They are two magnolia petals joined in prayer. They so resemble budding flowers that it seems to me they must smell of flowers.

No necklace, none at all. It is all of Mary which is a Gem with the luminosity of alabaster, or, better, of opal inwardly illuminated by a flame. Her glorified body emits light, a very gentle light which really makes me think of a lamp burning before the Tabernacle: a lamp of white alabaster or, I repeat, of opal.

I do not see her feet because the dress is so long that it covers them. That's my description of our Mother for you.

She kept and keeps me company, and it strikes me that everything around me is becoming luminous and virginal, and light and purity descend into my heart and, along with them, a joy that makes me weep with blessedness.

I believe that if Mary said a single word, my soul would swoon in ecstasy, for only a thread keeps me from sinking into it, and this is only so I can see the Blessed One and feel kissed by her smile and her look.

It is now evening, and I say to Jesus, "Lord, won't you say something today?"

He replies that my lesson today is being given me by Mary and that the contemplation of Her does not require other words. Indeed, just seeing Her teaches the beauty of purity, of prayer, and of silence. Three great things very little and poorly practiced.

In the midst of my physical and moral aching, I find myself in joy, for the light of the loveliest star, Mary, shines upon me, and it is granted to me to fix my eyes upon Her.

Later… And Mary tells me wordlessly that She is teaching me something else: to see her children even in one's enemies. For them, too, She gave her Son and accepted them as children, as She accepted us. She makes me grasp that to look upon them with acrimony is to cause Her pain and become unlike Her, who gazed at those who crucified her Son and pierced her Immaculate Heart with loving compassion.

Maria Valtorta, The Notebooks 1943, September 19, pp. 322-324.

 

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The Lord is speaking to his Apostle Simon the Zealot: “Let us go to sweet Galilee, rich in green fields and cool waters. Have you ever been there?”

“1 passed through once, in winter, during one of my painful pilgrimages from one doctor to another. I liked it...”

“Oh! It is beautiful. Always. [...] The lake... The lake surrounded by mountains, more or less close to it, seems to be made just to speak of God to souls seeking God. It is a piece of the sky which has fallen into the green vegetation, and the vault of Heaven does not forsake it, but is reflected in it with its stars, which are thus multiplied, to be presented to the Creator strewn on a sapphire plate. The olive-trees reach down almost to its shores and are full of nightingales, and they also sing their praise to the Creator Who lets them live in such a sweet and placid place.

“And My Nazareth! All ready to be kissed by the sun, all white and green […], charming, between the two giants of the Great and Small Hermon, and the pedestal of mountains supporting the Tabor […].

“And then... then, oh! Simon! There is a Flower there!

“There is a Flower that lives solitary, fragrant with purity and love for Her God and Her Son! There is My Mother. You will meet Her, Simon, and then you will be able to tell Me whether there is a creature like Her, also in human grace, on the earth. She is beautiful, but everything is surpassed by what emanates internally from Her. If a brute should [...] disfigure Her and send Her roving, She would still appear as a Queen in a royal dress, because Her holiness would cover Her as a mantle and confer splendour on Her.

“The world can give Me all possible evil, but I will forgive the world everything, because to come into the world and redeem it, I had Her, the humble and great Queen of the world, Whom the world does not know, but through Whom it has received Good and will receive still more throughout centuries.

“Here we are at the Temple. Let us keep the Judaic form of worship. But I solemnly tell you that the true House of God, the Holy Ark, is Her Heart, the veil of which is Her most pure flesh and its embroidery work are all Her virtues.”

Maria Valtorta, The Gospel as Revealed to Me, Volume 2, Chapter 85, pp. 56-58.

 

 

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Why Mary Magdalene? The great secret and the great grace.

 

The great secret:

 

The Lord is talking to Maria Valtorta about the Eucharist, which she has just received.

Jesus says:

 

“I am now with you in Body and Soul, in Blood and Divinity. I am with you as upon an altar. Here, in your room, where your faith shines more than a lamp and your love gives off perfume more than incense, I am as in the Father's breast, and around Me are the worshiping angels. Your faith makes you believe this, and for this faith may you be blessed.

“I want to tell you a secret. The saint whom you have loved since childhood – Mary Magdalene, when a penitent in the lands of France and alone among the crags, was able to release her spirit, caught in the whirlpool of love, to the point where she would send it where I was present in the Sacred Species. And this desire of hers to worship Me in the Sacrament as she had worshiped Me when I lived on earth moved Me more than her penances.

“I am worshiped too little by Christians, by the quibblers who, to worship Me, need more than display. Oh, love Me by the strength of love! See Me and believe in Me just by the strength Of faith! Know that I have not received more intense acts of worship than those of the voluntary recluses or exiles in cells and deserts and that I have not had a worthier altar than that of the little Tarcisius reddening the sacred linen with his blood. [Tarcisius was a child martyr during the roman persecutions, whose death was seen by Maria Valtorta in one of her visions of the Church of the catacombs.]

“To find something more perfect you must think of the ineffable transports of my Mother bending over my cradle or the throbbing altar, whiter than a lily and rendered luminous by love, of her most chaste body bearing Me or her arms, her lap, turned into a cushion for the dreams of the Child God.

“Maria, be Mary [Magdalene]. Mary adoring the living Bread descending from Heaven, the Flesh and the Blood of the Son of God and of Mary […]. Ask her to teach you her Eucharistic fervors.

“Maria, make your house a Nazareth and a Bethany. It already is because I am there, and make it more so with a complete love for your Eucharistic Jesus. Illness is not an obstacle for the loving heart. There are numberless churches where I am alone. Come into them with your spirit. Make up for others' lack of love.

“Learn from Me to say, 'I have ardently desired. I have ardently desired to come to You, Jesus, who remain entirely alone on so many altars, to tell You that I love You with my whole self. I have ardently desired to see You, O my Eucharistic Sun. I have ardently desired to consume my Bread, which You are. For the sake of so much desire, have mercy on your servant, Lord.

“Let me come to your heavenly altar and adore You forever, O Lamb of God. Have me see You with my soul enraptured in your glory, O my Divine Sun, who now appear veiled to Me, because of the weakness of my condition among the living. Let me love You, as I would like to love You, for blessed eternity. Open the gates of Life to me, Jesus, my life. Come, Lord Jesus, come. In the Communion of Light may what is flesh perish and may the spirit conquer You, my Only and Triune God, the sole love of my soul'.”

Maria Valtorta, The Notebooks 1943, October 27 pp. 426-427.

The great grace:

 

How was Mary able to send her spirit to where the Eucharist was present? Because of the great grace which she had received earlier in her life.

Mary Magdalene and Jesus are together at Bethany, where the Lord has just raised her brother Lazarus from the dead:

“Now... I measure the bottom of my abjection and I know that I must go a long way to climb out of it. But I will do it, if You help me.”

“l will help you, Mary. I will help you also when I have gone away.”

“How, my Lord?”

“By increasing your love in an immeasurable way. There is no other way for you.”

“Too mild when compared with what I have to expiate! Everybody is saved through love. Everybody obtains Heaven. But what is sufficient for the pure, the just, is not sufficient for the great sinner.”

“There is no other way for you, Mary. Because, whatever way you may take, it will still be love. Love if you help people in My name. Love if you evangelize. Love if you live in isolation. Love if you martyrize yourself. Love if you will make people martyrize you. You can but love, Mary. It is your nature. Flames can but burn whether they creep on the ground, burning straw, or they arise like a bright embrace around a trunk, a house or an altar to ascend towards the sky.

“Everyone has his nature […]. Could you pretend that a bee, destined to make honey, should become a little bird that sings among the leafy branches of a hedge? Or that this little branch of an almond-tree that I am holding in my hands, with all the tree from which I picked it, instead of yielding almonds should exude sweet-smelling resins from its bark? A bee works, a bird sings, an almond-tree bears fruit, a resiniferous plant secretes resins. And each fulfills its task. Souls do the same. Your task is to love.”

“Then infIame me, Lord. Grant me it as a grace.”

“ls the power of love that you possess not sufficient for you?”

“lt's too little, Lord, It could have served to love men. Not to love You Who are the infinite Lord.”

“And just because I am such, a limitless love would be required...”

“Yes, my Lord. That is what I want: that You give me a limitless love.”

“Mary, the Most High Who knows what love is, said to man: "You shall love Me with all your strength". He does not exact more than that. Because He is aware that it is already a martyrdom to love with all one's strength...”

 

“It does not matter, my Lord. Give me an infinite love that I may love You as You deserve to be loved, that I may love You as I have not loved anybody else.”

“You are asking Me for a suffering that is like a fire that burns and consumes, Mary. It burns and consumes slowly... Think about it.”

“l have been thinking about it for such a long time, my Lord. But I dared not ask You. Now I know how much You love me. Just now I am aware of how much You love me and I dare to ask You. Give me that infinite love, Lord.”

Jesus looks at her. She is in front of Him, still thin after so many long hours of watch and so much grief, wearing a modest dress and with her hair arranged in a simple way, like a girl without malice, her pale face full of eagerness, her imploring eyes already shining with love, looking more like a seraph than a woman. She is really the contemplator asking for the martyrdom of absolute contemplation.

Jesus says one word only after looking at her carefully, as if He wanted to weigh her will: “Yes.”

“Ah! my Lord! What a grace to die out of love for You!” she says falling on her knees and kissing Jesus' feet.

“Stand up, Mary. Take these flowers. They are those of your spiritual wedding. Be as sweet as the fruit of the almond-tree, as pure as its flower and as bright as the oil that is extracted from its fruit, when it is lit, and as sweet smelling as this oil when sated with essences it is spread in banquets or on the heads of kings, scented with your virtues. Then you will really spread on your Lord the balm that He will appreciate infinitely.”

Mary takes the flowers but she does not stand up and in advance of her balms of love she kisses and sheds tears on the feet of her Master.

Maria Valtorta, The Gospel as Revealed to Me, Volume 8 Chapter 550, pp. 472-474.

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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.

Mary as the Co-Redeemer in Maria Valtorta’s revelations.

Jesus: Mary is the Co-Redeemer. Since everything in Her is, then, inferior to God alone, her pain also had to be such that the pain of no other human creature would ever equal it.

(Maria Valtorta, Notebooks 1943, p. 133)

Jesus: But Mary was the Co-Redeemer. And the mission of a redeemer is always a mission of infinite pain. Otherwise, how could a redeemer pay the ransom for the sins of others? Redeem his brothers and sisters as a victim? Mary was a redeemer, as I was the Redeemer. It was right, then, that Pain should be her companion.

(Notebooks 1943, p. 310)

Jesus: She is inferior to God alone because He created Her. But her maternity and her pain as Co-Redeemer make her exalted above all other creatures. The Gate of God. From Her issues forth faith, hope and charity; from Her, temperance, justice, fortitude, and prudence; from Her, Grace and graces; from Her, salvation; and from Her, God made Flesh comes to you

(Notebooks. 1944, p. 487)

Jesus: Did I perhaps offend charity towards my Mother by exercising the heroic justice of doing the whole Will of my Father? No, in all truth. On the contrary, by doing this, I made Her, the Immaculate One, the Co-Redemptrix. I place this second glorious crown on her head, which She would otherwise not have had. Nor did She refuse to wear it, though it was a crown of boundless pain.

Notebooks 1945-50, p. 503)

Jesus: Know that I, God, do not feel I am diminishing Myself in loving my Mother with an infinite love filled with veneration, whose immaculate nature, the work of the Father I see but whose life of martyrdom as Co-Redeemer I also remember, without which I would not have been a Man among men and your eternal Redeemer.

(Notebooks 1943, pp. 290-5)

Jesus: Since She was called to a mission as Redemptrix, pain surpassed blessedness from the very start. You have had Me because Mary agreed, thirty-three years before Me, to drink the chalice of bitterness.

(Notebooks 1943, pp. 290-5)

The Holy Spirit: Oh! truly the Rainbow of peace, the Co-Redemptrix is amongst the clouds, above the clouds, the sweet star that shines in the presence of God in order to remind Him that He has promised mercy to men and has given His Son so that men may have forgiveness. She is such, not as a sweet thought but as a true reality, complete, with Her soul without blemish and Her flesh without corruption. Nor is She content at being adored or blessed, but shows Herself to be active and calls, She again calls Humanity to Salvation. The hour of Mary. This hour.

(Lesson on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, pp.102-3)

Mary: I felt the first wound pierce My heart. It was the first pain in My destiny of Co-Redeemer. I offered and suffered it in atonement and to give you a guidance for similar circumstances in life when it is necessary to suffer in silence for an event that casts a bad light on you in relation to those who love you.

(The Gospel as Revealed to Me, Vol 1 p. 119.)

Jesus to Lazarus: Poor Jesus, laden with the sins of the world, needs consolation. And Mother will give Me it. And the even poorer world needs two Victims. Because man sinned with woman; and the Woman must redeem, as the Man redeems.

(The Gospel as Revealed to Me, Vol 9. p. 330.)

Jesus: Mary, the sublime Co-Redeemer, does not cease to suffer, as I do not. In the inviolable glory of the Heavens, We suffer over the men who deny Us and offend us. Mary is the eternal woman giving birth to you with unequaled pain, for She knows that this pain gives rise not to blessed ones for heaven, but, for the most part, to damned ones for hell. She knows She is giving birth to dead creatures or those destined to die before long.

(Notebooks 1943, pp. 147-9 )

Jesus: The third time was when Christ fulfilled his mission as Redeemer by dying on the Cross. Then, too, Mary was united to God's work, and by the work of the Son, She became the Co-Redeemer and Victim with Him. Indissolubly linked to God and to God's will, She was present in every time of the stages of the way of Redemption, and without Mary you would not have had the Redeemer.

(Notebooks 1943, pp. 507-8)

Special thanks to Catherine Loft, who compiled these and many more references to Mary as the Co-Redeemer/Co-Redemptrix for the Maria Valtorta’s Readers Group, a global apostolate: https://www.valtorta.com.au/ The references are contained as attachments in an email she sent me. If you would like to read the full attachments please email me at frankrega at verizon.net and I will forward them to you. 

 

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.

 

Who to contact if you are concerned about lot rent increases.

Social Security has announced that the 2026 payments will be increased by 2.8%. This is the COLA amount, or the Cost of Living Adjustment. Compare this to our Pot-Nets lot rent increase of 5.216%.

State law establishes that Pot-Nets will increase rents annually by 3.5% more than the total rent they paid the prior year,  plus an additional amount adjusted by the consumer price index. This year consumer price increase adjustment is 1.716%.  

 

The final result is a lot rent increase this year of 5.216%

Assuming the consumer price increase adjustment remains at 1.716%, in five years a rental payment of $10,000 will be $12,894.63; in 10 years it will be $16,627.15; and in 15 years it will be $21,440.10 (more than doubled).

You can use one of many online “compound interest calculators” to determine future payments based on your particular annual rent amount.

If you are concerned about this please email your representatives Jeff Hilovsky Jeff.Hilovsky@delaware.gov and Brian Pettyjohn Brian.Pettyjohn@delaware.gov

I recently contacted the DMHOA about the lot rent and here is their response:

“The formula that is being used is established by state law. DMHOA is aware of the concerns and will have conversations about lot rent increases. Please be sure to contact both Jeff Hilovsky and Brian Pettyjohn and share your concern and story. Thank you for contacting us! It is important that we have data on the homeowners who contact us with lot rent concerns.”

Please also contact the DMHOA (Delaware Manufactured Home Owners Association) https://dmhoa.org/contact-us

Note: If you came across this post and wonder why it is on my blog, this is about the manufactured home that I live in at the Delaware shore, in a group of communities called Pot-Nets Homes. 

 

Photo by Dave Rhoten