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.
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