St. Longinus – the Centurion at the Crucifixion – Part Two.

His reason for piercing the Heart of Jesus with his lance. Although objectively the blow of the lance seems cruel, Longinus’ motive was noble. The great concern Longinus shows towards the Blessed Mother. Mary obtains for him the grace of salvation.

 

Following is a condensed version of Maria Valtorta’s long chapter on the Crucifixion (609), in her work The Gospel as Revealed to Me, removing whatever is extraneous to the role of Longinus in this tragedy. 

 

Four brawny men, certainly of the same category as the scourgers, jump from a path onto the place of the execution. They are wearing short sleeveless tunics, and in their hands they are holding nails, hammers and ropes, which they show to the condemned men scoffing at them. The crowd is excited with cruel frenzy.

 

The condemned men are ordered to undress. The executioners offer the condemned men three rags, so that they may tie them round their groins.

 

But Mary has noticed everything and She has removed the long thin white veil covering Her head under Her dark mantle, and on which She has already shed so many tears. She removes it without letting Her mantle drop and gives it to John so that he may hand it to Longinus for Her Son. The centurion takes the veil without any objection and, when he sees that Jesus is about to strip Himself completely, facing the side where there are no people, and thus turning towards the crowd His back furrowed with bruises and blisters, and covered with sores and dark crusts that are bleeding again, he gives Him His Mother's linen veil. Jesus recognizes it and wraps it round His pelvis several times, fastening it carefully so that it may not fall off.

 

                                                       Pope Innocent VIII holds the spear point. 

 

Now the top of Golgotha has its trophy and its guard of honour. At the top there is the cross of Jesus. At the sides the other two crosses. Half a century of soldiers, in fighting trim, is placed all round the summit; inside this circle of armed soldiers there are the ten dismounted soldiers, who throw dice for the garments of the condemned men. Longinus is standing upright between the cross of Jesus and the one on the right. And he seems to be mounting guard of honour for the Martyr King. The other half century, at rest, is on the left path and on the lower open space, under the orders of Longinus' adjutant, awaiting to be employed in case of need.

 

The indifference of the soldiers is almost total. Only an odd one now and again looks at the crucified men. Longinus, instead, watches everything with curiosity and interest, he makes comparisons and judges mentally. He compares the crucified men, and the Christ in particular, and the spectators. His piercing eye does not miss any detail. And to see better, he shades his eyes with his hand, because the sun must be annoying him.

 

The sun is in fact strange. It is yellow-red like a fire. Then the fire seems to go out all of a sudden, because of a huge cloud of pitch that rises from behind the chains of the Judaean mountains and soars swiftly across the sky, disappearing behind other mountains. And when the sun comes out again, it is so strong that the eye endures it with difficulty. While looking, he sees Mary, just under the slope, with Her tormented face raised towards Her Son. He calls one of the soldiers who are playing dice and says to him: «If His Mother wants to come up with the son who is escorting Her, let Her come. Escort Her and help Her.»

 

And Mary with John, who is believed to be Her «son», climbs the steps cut in the tufaceous rock and goes to the foot of the cross, but a little aside, to be seen and see Her Jesus. The crowd showers the most disgraceful abuses on Her at once, associating Her with Her Son in their curses.

 

In fact Longinus has given an order, and the fifty soldiers, who were resting, have come into action and they prick the buttocks of the first Judaeans they find. The latter run away shouting and the soldiers stop to block the entrances to the two roads and protect the open space. The Judaeans curse, but Rome is the stronger.

 

Also the soldiers point to the sky and to a kind of cone that seems of slate, so dark it is, and that rises like a pine-tree from behind the top of a mountain. It looks like a water-spout. It rises and rises and seems to produce darker and darker clouds, as if it were a volcano belching smoke and lava. It is in this frightening twilight that Jesus gives John to Mary and Mary to John.

 

And fainter and fainter, sounding like a child's wailing, comes the invocation: «Mother!» And the poor wretch whispers: «Yes, darling, I am here.» And when His sight becomes misty and makes Him say: «Mother, where are You? I cannot see You any more. Are You abandoning Me as well?» and they are not even words , but just a murmur that can hardly be heard by Her Who with Her heart rather than with Her ears receives every sigh of Her dying Son, She says: «No, no, Son! I will not abandon You!

 

Listen to Me, My dear... Your Mother is here, She is here... and She only regrets that She cannot come where You are...» It is heart-rending...

 

And John weeps openly. Jesus must hear him weep. But He does not say anything. I think that His impending death makes Him speak as if He were raving and that He does not even know what He says, and, unfortunately, He does not even understand His Mother's consolation and His favourite apostle's love.

 

Longinus – who inadvertently is no longer standing at ease with his arms folded across his chest, and one leg crossed over the other alternately, to ease the long wait on his feet, and is now instead standing stiff at attention, his left hand on his sword, his right one held against his side, as if he were on the steps of the imperial throne – does not want to be influenced. But his face is affected in the effort of overcoming his emotion, and his eyes begin to shine with tears that only his iron discipline can refrain.

 

The head of Jesus falls on His chest, His body leans forward, the trembling stops, He breathes no more. He has breathed His last. The summit of Golgotha trembles and quakes like a plate in the hands of a madman, because of the subsultory and undulatory shocks that shake the three crosses so violently that they seem on the point of being overturned.

 

Longinus, John, the soldiers grab whatever they can, as best they can, not to fall. But John, while grasping the cross with one arm, with the other supports Mary Who, both because or Her grief and the unsteadiness, has leaned on his chest. 

 

Joseph and Nicodemus appear and they go to Longinus. «We want the Corpse.»

 

«Only the Proconsul can grant it. Go quick, because I heard that the Judaeans want to go to the Praetorium to obtain permission to fracture His legs. I would not like them to disfigure His Body.»

 

«How do you know?»

 

«A report of the ensign. Go. I will wait.»

 

The two men rush down the steep road and disappear. It is at this moment that Longinus approaches John and in a low voice says something to him, which I do not understand. Then he makes a soldier give him a lance. He looks at the women, who are all attending to Mary, Who is slowly recovering Her strength. They have all their backs turned to the cross.

 

Longinus places himself in front of the Crucified, he ponders carefully how to deal the blow and he strikes it. The lance penetrates deeply from the bottom upwards, from right to left. John, wavering between the desire to see and the horror of seeing, makes a wry face for a moment.

 

«It is done, my friend» says Longinus, and he ends: «Better so. As for a knight. And without fracturing bones... He was really a Just Man!» A lot of water and just a trickle of blood, already tending to clot, drip from the wound. I said drip.

 

There is a compassionate group that is consoling Mary, and John standing on the left side of the cross and weeping, and Longinus, standing straight on the right side, solemn in his respectful posture. Nicodemus and Joseph arrive back running and they say that they have Pilate's permission. But Longinus, who is not too trustful, sends a horse-soldier to the Proconsul to learn what he has to do also with regard to the two robbers. The soldier goes and come back at a gallop with the order to hand over Jesus and break the legs of the other two, by will of the Jews.

 

Longinus calls the four executioners, who are cravenly crouched under the rock, still terrorised by what has happened, and orders them to give the robbers the death-blow with a club. Which takes place without any protest by Disma, to whom the blow of the club, delivered to his heart, after striking his knees, breaks in half, on his lips, the name of Jesus, in a death-rattle. The other robber utters horrible curses. 

 

The four executioners would also like to take care of Jesus, taking Him down from the cross. But Joseph and Nicodemus do not allow them. Also Joseph takes off his mantle and tells John to do likewise and to hold the ladders, while they climb them with levers and tongs.

 

Mary stands up trembling, supported by the women, and She approaches the cross. In the meantime the soldiers, having fulfilled their task, go away. And Longinus, before descending beyond the lower open space, turns round from the height of his black horse to look at Mary and at the Crucified. Then the noise of the hooves resounds on the stones and that of the weapons against the armour, and fades away in the distance.

 

On Calvary remain the three crosses, the central one of which is bare and the other two have their living trophies, who are dying.

 

-------------------

 

The Lord Jesus praised St. Longinus: 

 

“Pilate is a false good man. Longinus is good, because although he was less powerful than the Praetor and less defended, in the middle of the street and surrounded by few soldiers and a hostile multitude, he dares to defend Me, help Me, grant Me a rest, to be consoled by the pious women, be assisted by the man from Cyrene and finally to have My Mother at the foot of the Cross. He was a hero of justice and so he became a hero of Christ.”

The Blessed Virgin obtained his salvation, as she revealed to Maria Valtorta, in The Notebooks, Dec. 8, 1943:

 

“It was the mercy of Longinus that allowed me to approach the Cross, at which I had arrived by way of steep shortcuts, carried more by love than by my own strength. Longinus was an upright soldier who did his duty and exercised his right with justice. He was already predisposed, then, towards the miracles of Grace. Because of that mercy of his, I obtained for him the gift of the drops from the Side, and they were his baptism in grace, for his soul was thirsty for Justice and Truth. At dawn on the day of Jesus' birth, the angels had said, “Peace on earth to men of good will.” 

 

“At sunset on the day of his death, the same Christ was giving this man of good will his Peace. And Longinus was the first son born to me from the labor of the Cross, for Disma was the last one to be redeemed through the word of Jesus of Nazareth, as John was the first one, and I might say that he, with his heart like a lily made of diamonds inflamed by love, was the light born of Light, and the Darkness was never able to obscure it.”

 

 

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St. Longinus – the Centurion at the Crucifixion - Part One.

The Way of the Cross from the Praetorium to Calvary and the great sympathy Longinus shows towards Our Lord. He is listed among the martyrs of the Church in the Martyrologium Romanum, with a feast day of March 15. Maria Valtorta’s Poem of the Man-God provides a detailed account of his actions during the Passion.

Pontius Pilate has just decided to have Jesus crucified, bowing to the frenzied demands of the Jews. After washing his hands, literally and symbolically, he goes back to his little throne and summons the centurion Longinus. Standing upright, he stretches his hand forward with its palm turned down, while ordering: “Let Him go to the cross. Soldier, go. Prepare the cross.” Then he descends from his throne without even looking at Jesus or the uproarious crowd. 

 

Some time goes by, not more than half an hour, while the cross is prepared. Valtorta writes in chapter 604: 

 

“Then Longinus, who is entrusted with the task of superintending the execution, gives his orders. But before Jesus is taken outside, into the street, to receive the cross and set out, Longinus, who has looked at Him twice or three times, with a curiosity that is already tinged with compassion and with the expert eye of one who is accustomed to certain situations, approaches Jesus with a soldier and offers Him a refreshment.” Valtorta surmises that it was a cup of wine. “In fact he pours a light blond rosy liquid out of a real military canteen.” Longinus speaks to the Lord: «It will do You good. You must be thirsty. And the sun is shining outside. And the way is a long one.» And Jesus replies to him: «May God reward you for your compassion. But do not deprive yourself of it.»

 

«I am healthy and strong... You... I am not depriving myself... And even if I were... I would do it willingly, to give You some solace... A draught... to show me that You do not hate heathens.»

 

Jesus no longer refuses and takes a draught of the drink. As His hands are already untied […] He can do it by Himself. But He refuses to take more, although the good cool drink should be a great relief to His fever, which is already showing itself in the red streaks that inflame His pale cheeks and His dry lips. 

 

«Take some, take it. It is water and honey. It will give You strength and quench Your thirst... I feel pity for You... yes... pity... It was not You Who was to be killed among the Jews... Who knows!... I do not hate You... and I will try to make You suffer only what is necessary.»

 

But Jesus does not drink any more... He is really thirsty... The dreadful thirst of those who have lost much blood and are feverish... He knows that it is not a drink with narcotics, and He would drink it willingly. But He does not want to suffer less.” Valtorta writes that she has been enlightened to understand [...] that the compassion of the Roman is of greater solace to Him than the water sweetened with honey.

 

«May God reward you with His blessings for this solace» He then says. And He smiles again... a heart-rending smile with His swollen wounded lips, which move with difficulty, also because the severe contusion between His nose and His right cheek-bone, caused by the blow with a cudgel He received in the court-yard after the flagellation, is swelling consider ably.

Following is a condensed version of Valtorta’s long chapter on the Way of the Cross (604), removing whatever is extraneous to the role of Longinus in this tragedy.

The two robbers are brought forward, and it is time to go. Longinus gives his instructions. As a centurion he has one hundred soldiers at his command, some are mounted. They are now ready. And Longinus gives the order of march. First the Nazarene, behind Him the two robbers; a decury [a unit of ten soldiers] around each of them, with the other seven decuries positioned on the flank as reinforcements. 

 

Jesus comes down the three steps that from the lobby take one into the square. And it is immediately clear that Jesus is in an extremely weak condition .The Jews laugh seeing Him stagger along like a drunk man and they shout to the soldiers: «Push Him. Make Him fall. In the dust the blasphemer!» But the soldiers do only what they have to do, that is, they order the Condemned One to stay in the middle of the road and walk.

 

Longinus spurs his horse and the procession begins to move slowly. 

 

Jesus is panting more and more. He stumbles and falls on His right knee, but He can hold Himself up with His left hand. The crowd howls with joy… Longinus urges to make haste and the soldiers, striking with the flat of their daggers, press poor Jesus to proceed. Longinus, who turns round now and again, feels sorry for Him and orders a few minutes' stop. And the rabble insults him so much that the centurion orders the soldiers to charge them. And the faint-hearted crowds at the sight of the shining threatening lances, run away shouting and hurling themselves here and there down the mountain.

 

And immediately afterwards, the pain of the third fall, a complete one. 

 

«Make sure that He dies only on the cross!» shout the crowd. «If you let Him die beforehand, you will answer to the Proconsul, bear that in your minds. The culprit must arrive alive at the execution place» say the chief scribes to the soldiers. The latter cast withering glances at them, but discipline prevents them from speaking. But Longinus is just as afraid as the Jews that the Christ may die on the road, and he does not want to have troubles. Without needing to be reminded, he knows what is his duty as officer responsible for the execution and he takes action.

 

So Longinus gives the order to take the longer road that winds up the mountain and is therefore not so steep. This road seems a path that by dint of being used by many people has changed into a rather comfortable road. 

 

And in the midst of the loud noise of weeping women and cursing Judaeans, Jesus sets out again. Jesus is once again completely wet with perspiration. The road continues. It goes round the mountain, it comes back almost to the front, towards the steep road. Here, there is Mary with John. John looks at Her with desolate pity.

 

The other women – Mary and Martha of Lazarus, Mary of Alphaeus and Mary of Zebedee, Susanna from Cana, the mistress of the house, and some others – are all in the middle of the road looking to see whether the Saviour is coming. And when they see Longinus arrive, they rush towards Mary to inform Her. And Mary, supported by John who is holding Her by the elbow, departs from the hillside, stately in Her grief, and places Herself resolutely in the middle of the road, moving aside only at the arrival of Longinus, who from the height of his black horse looks at the pale Woman and at Her blond wan companion, whose meek eyes are blue like Hers. And Longinus shakes his head while passing by followed by the eleven soldiers on horseback.

 

Mary tries to pass through the dismounted soldiers, who, being warm and in a hurry, strive to drive Her back with their lances, all the more now that stones are thrown from the paved road, as a protest against so much compassion. It is the Jews, who once again curse because of the halt brought about by the pious women . 

 

Longinus spurs his horse against the reviling pack of hounds, who run away for the second time. And in doing so he sees a cart standing still, and is waiting for the crowds to pass, so that it may go down towards the town with its load of greens. Curiosity has made the man from Cyrene and his sons go up there. The man, instead, a very strong man, about forty-fifty years old, standing near the little donkey, which is frightened and tries to draw back, looks attentively at the procession.

 

Longinus looks him up and down. He thinks that he can be useful and says to him in a commanding voice: «Man, come here.» The man from Cyrene feigns he has not heard. But one cannot trifle with Longinus. He repeats the order in such a way that the man throws the reins to one of his sons and approaches the centurion.

 

«Do you see that man?» he asks. And in doing so, he turns round to point out Jesus and he sees Mary, Who is imploring the soldiers to let Her pass. He takes pity on Her and he shouts: «Let the Woman pass.» He then resumes speaking to the man from Cyrene: «He cannot proceed further laden as He is. You are strong. Take His cross and carry it in His stead as far as the summit.»

 

«I cannot... I have the donkey... it is restive... the boys cannot hold it...» But Longinus says: «Go, if you do not want to lose your donkey and get twenty blows as punishment.» The man from Cyrene delays no longer. He shouts to the boys: «Go home and be quick. And say that I am coming at once» and he then goes towards Jesus.

 

Bernini's Statue at the Vatican

Jesus turns towards His Mother, Whom only now He sees coming towards Him, because He is proceeding so bent and with His eyes almost closed, as if He were blind, and He shouts: «Mother!»

 

Since He began being tortured, it is the first word that expresses His sufferings. Because in that cry there is the confession of everything, and all the dreadful sorrow of His spirit, of His morale, of His body. 

 

Mary presses Her hand against Her heart, as if She had been stabbed, and She staggers lightly. But She collects Herself, quickens Her step and while going towards Her tortured Son with outstretched arms, She shouts: «Son!» But She says so in such a way that whoever has not got the heart of a hyena, feels it is breaking because of so much grief. There are signs of compassion even among the Romans... and yet they are soldiers, accustomed to slaughters, marked by scars... But the words: «Mother!» and «Son!» are always the same for all those who are not worse than hyenas, they are understood everywhere and they raise waves of compassion everywhere...

 

The man from Cyrene feels such pity... And as he sees that Mary cannot embrace Her Son because of the cross, he hastens to remove the cross, and he does so with the gentleness of a father, in order not to give a shove to the crown or rub against His sores. 

 

Behind Jesus there is now the man from Cyrene with the cross. And Jesus, freed of that weight, is proceeding more easily. He is panting violently, He often presses His hand against His heart, as if He had a great pain or a wound there, but He can walk better.

 

Longinus stops and orders his men to inexorably repel everybody farther down, so that the top, the place of the execution, may be free.

 

The soldiers, who have driven the people away from the top, with convincing blows of their lances subdue quarrels and make room, so that the procession may pass without any hindrance on the last stretch of the road. The mountain, on the three sides on which the slopes descend gently towards the valley, is all crowded with people. While the men responsible for the execution prepare their instruments, finishing emptying the holes, and the men condemned await in the middle of the square formed by the soldiers, the Jews insult them. They insult also the Mother: «Death to the Galileans. Death! Galileans! Galileans! Curse them! Death to the Galilean blasphemer. Nail on the cross also the womb that bore Him! Away from here the vipers that give birth to demons! Death to them! Clear Israel of the females who copulate with the billy-goat!...»

 

Longinus, who has dismounted, turns round and sees the Mother... He orders his men to stop the uproar... The fifty soldiers who were behind the condemned men charge the rabble and clear the second esplanade completely, as the Jews run away along the mountain, treading on one another. The centurion sets out towards the top. Everything is ready on the summit. They make the condemned men go up. And once again Jesus passes near His Mother, Who utters a groan, which She tries to stifle, by pressing Her mantle against Her lips. The Jews notice it, they laugh and deride. John, the meek John, who has one arm round Mary's shoulders to support Her, turns round and glares at them.

 

As soon as the condemned men are on the fatal platform, the soldiers surround the open space on three sides. Only the one that drops sheer is empty. The centurion orders the man from Cyrene to go away. And he goes away, unwillingly now, and I would not say out of sadism, but out of love. The two robbers throw their crosses on the ground swearing. Jesus is silent. The sorrowful way has come to its end.

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On the Modernist Novus Ordo Mass.

A Modernist council and Modernist Popes have given us a Modernist Mass.

 

No less an authority than Pope Paul VI himself admitted that the smoke of Satan had entered the church through some crack. As the late Fr. Dominic Bourmaud stated in his classic work One Hundred Years of Modernism – A Genealogy of the Principles of the Second Vatican Council, the smoke is Modernism, and the crack was Vatican II. 

 

According to Fr. Bourmaud, the Modernist levels a three-pronged attack against the bulwarks of Christian culture – the philosophy of being, revelation as a fact, and the harmony between faith and reason. In its place modernism proposes a philosophy of no being (existence precedes essence), revelation without a historical basis, and ultimately, “a theology without God.”

 

In the current synodal process, as noted recently by Fr. Davide Pagliarani, Superior General of the SSPX, “The underlying idea is that God does not reveal Himself through the traditional channels of Holy Scripture and Tradition, which are safeguarded by the hierarchy, but through the ‘experience of the people of God’ [i.e. revelation without a historical basis]. Such a faith-experience, necessarily destined to evolve according to the awareness and the needs of the different moments in history, is constantly ‘enriched’ with new contents, and at the same time leaves aside that which is no longer current.”

 

This is reflected in the Modernist Mass of Paul VI with its constant state of flux – changes in rubrics and praxis, in rules, regulations and ceremonies. It focuses on the personal experience and feelings of the people, their active participation in the Mass, on self, and secondarily on the Lord, thus approaching a “theology without God.” 

 

The following three facts alone indicate the Modernism of the Mass and its theology without God – the tendency to minimize the absolute primacy of the worship of God in the Mass:

1.  The Priest faces the assembly while praying to God.

2. The Sacred Species are handled by Eucharistic ministers.

3. Communion is received in the hand and standing – disrespectful on two counts. 

It is ironic that the proponents of this Mass are attempting to increase devotion to the Eucharist. Historically, only in contact with the consecrated hands of a Catholic Priest, the Sacred Species are touched by unconsecrated male and female lay “ministers,” and put into the hands of the laity without exception for reception, while everyone is standing. “And he said: I believe Lord. And falling down he adored Him” [John 9:38].

 

I am old enough to remember attending the Tridentine Mass, when as a child I thought that the few who received Communion must be very holy. They received only from the Priest, in the mouth and kneeling. Confession before reception was the implied standard. This process is of course completely alien to the Modernist Mass, as it is the antithesis of the “welcoming, ecumenical” mindset of its attendees, most of whom according to statistics, do not even believe in the Real Presence. The best example of the Modernist mass-going mentality that I have read came from a diocesan newspaper, where one person was quoted as saying that to kneel before receiving Communion would be “beneath her dignity.”

 

To quote Fr. Bourmaud: “The religion in which man divinizes and adores himself is thus a rejection of original sin and the refusal of the Savior. Such is the essence of Modernism” [p. 181].

 

In the Modernist Mass, the Priest is not obliged offer the Holy Sacrifice ad orientem, the sermon is frequently an attempt to entertain, and talking in Church is common. In fact, in one of the most recent Modernist Novus Ordo Masses that I attended, the deacon had to get up on the altar before Mass started in order to ask everyone to be quiet, because some people wanted to pray!

 

To approach the altar with a “humble and contrite heart,” after proving oneself; to deny oneself, forget oneself, and concentrate on worshiping and adoring God. This is piety, this is reverence. Lord, help me not to judge those who accuse worshipers such as these of being triumphalist rigid Christians, rosary counters, restorationists. and self-absorbed neo-pelagians.

 

To improve Eucharistic devotion, the Modernist Mass would have to change direction and proceed in the way of the Traditional Latin Mass. But change direction it will not and cannot, since it would be admitting defeat. How many decades went by before they finally caved in and restored the Eucharistic prayer to say “for many” instead of “for all?” Instead they will tweak it in some minor, non-essentials. For example, having communicants say more than just “Amen” upon receiving the Host. 

 

Let them tweak all they want – there is little hope for the Modernist Novus Ordo Mass!

References: 

 

Fr. Dominic Bourmaud, One Hundred Years of Modernism: A Genealogy of the Principles of the Second Vatican Council, Kansas City, Mo., Angelus Press, 2006. 

 

“Interview with the Superior General of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X”, with Fr. Davide Pagliarani; https://fsspx.org/en/publications/letters/interview-superior-general-priestly-society-saint-pius-x-82423

View my web page at www.frankrega.com.

 

In the “Our Father” the perfection of prayer is found.

If the world were able to live out the “Our Father,” the Kingdom of God would be in the world. But the world is unable to pray. It is unable to love.

 

Our Lord explained in depth the meaning of His prayer to the mystic Maria Valtorta on July 7, 1943.

In the “Our Father” the perfection of prayer is found […]. In saying it, you pray with all Paradise, during the first four petitions; then, leaving Heaven, which is the dwelling that awaits you, you return to the earth, remaining with your arms upraised towards Heaven to make entreaties for your earthly needs [in the last three petitions], and to ask for aid in the battle to be won in order to go back up above.

 

“Our Father, who art in heaven.”

Only my love could tell you, “Say 'Our Father'.” By this expression I publicly invested you with the sublime title of sons and daughters of the Most High and brothers and sisters of mine. If someone [...] may doubt that he is a child of God, created in his image and likeness, on considering these words of mine, he can no longer doubt. The Word of God does not err and does not lie. And the Word tells you, “Say 'Our Father'.”

 

To have a father is something sweet and a powerful aid. In the material order, I wanted to have a father on earth to protect my existence as a baby, as a boy, and as a young man. By this I wanted to teach you [...] how great the moral figure of the father is. But to have a Father of absolute perfection, as the Father in Heaven is, is the sweetness of sweetnesses, the aid of aids. Look at this Father-God with holy fear, but let grateful love for the Giver of life in heaven and on earth always be stronger than fear.

 

“Hallowed be thy Name.”

With the same movement as the seraphim and all the angelic choirs [...] repeat this exalting, grateful, and just praise to the Holy of Holies. Repeat it while thinking of Me − I, God, the Son of God, who, before you, pronounced it with supreme veneration and supreme love. Repeat it in joy and in sorrow, in light and in darkness, in peace and in war. Blessed are those children who have never doubted the Father and at every hour and in every event have been able to say to Him, “Blessed be thy Name!”

 

“Thy kingdom come.”

This invocation ought to be the pulsation of the pendulum of your entire life, and everything should gravitate around this invocation of Goodness […]. Accentuate your lives, then, with numberless appeals for the advent of this Kingdom. But let them be living appeals − that is, to act in life by applying your sacrifice of every hour, for to act well means to sacrifice nature to this end.

 

“Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”

The Kingdom of Heaven will belong to whoever has done the Will of the Father […]. Here, too, you unite to all of Paradise, which does the Will of the Father. And if the inhabitants of the Kingdom do it, won't you do so to become, in turn, the inhabitants of Heaven? Oh, the joy that has been prepared for you by the Triune Love of God! How can you fail to work with a persevering will so as to conquer it?

 

Those doing the Will of the Father live in God […]. Those making the Father's Will their own, while annulling their will, know and savor − while on earth − the Peace which is the endowment of the blessed. Those doing the Will of the Father, while killing their perverse and perverted will, are no longer men: they are already spirits moved by love and living in love. You must, with good will, tear your will out of your heart and replace it with the Will of the Father.

 

After having provided for the petitions regarding the spirit, since you are poor, living amidst the needs of the flesh, ask Him who supplies food to the birds of the air and clothing for the lilies of the field for bread. 

 

“Give us this day our daily bread.”

I said this day and I said bread. I never say anything useless. “This day. Ask the Father for help day by day. It is a measure of prudence, justice, and humility. 

 

Prudence: if you had everything at once, you would waste a great deal. You are eternal children and capricious, in addition […]. Furthermore, if you had everything, you would forget God.

 

Justice: Why should you have everything at once when I received help from the Father day by day? And would it not be unjust to think that it is well for God to give you everything together,[…] in the fear that God will not provide tomorrow? Distrust − you do not reflect on this − is a sin. God must not be distrusted. He loves you perfectly. He is the most perfect Father. To ask for everything at once affronts trust and offends the Father.

 

Humility: having to ask day by day refreshes in your mind the concept of your nothingness, of your condition as poor ones, and of the All and Wealth of God. 

 

Bread. I said “bread” because bread is the king of foods, the one indispensable for life. With one word and in that word I have enclosed − so that all of you would request them − all the needs of your stay on earth. But as the temperature of your spirituality varies, so does the extent of the word.

 

'Bread as food’ for those who have an embryonic spirituality, to such a degree that it is already a great deal if they are able to ask God for the food to fill their stomachs. There are some who do not ask for it and take it with violence […]. These are looked upon with wrath by the Father because they trample upon the precept from which the others come: “Love your God with all your heart; love your neighbor as yourself.'

 

'Bread as help’ in moral and material needs for those living not only for their stomachs, but who are able to live for thought as well, possessing a more highly-formed spirituality.

 

'Bread as religion; for those who, even more highly formed, place God before the satisfactions of sense and of human sentiment and are already capable of spreading their wings in the supernatural.

 

‘Bread as spirit, bread as sacrifice’ for those who, once the full age of the spirit is reached, are able to live in spirit and in truth, concerning themselves with the flesh only to the extent that is strictly necessary to continue to exist in mortal life, until it is time to go to God.

 

“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

There is no one, among the number of those created, except for my Mother, who has not had to seek the Father's forgiveness for more or less serious sins, according to each one's capacity to be a child of God. Ask the Father to erase you from the list of his debtors […]. But an essential condition to receive, to be forgiven, is to forgive. If you only seek mercy and do not grant it to your neighbor, you will not experience God's forgiveness. God does not like the hypocritical and the cruel, and whoever refuses to forgive his brother refuses the Father's forgiveness for himself.

 

Consider, moreover, that no matter how much you may have been wounded by your neighbor, the wounds you have inflicted upon God are infinitely more serious. Let this thought spur you to forgive everything, as I forgave through my Perfection and to teach you forgiveness.

 

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

God does not lead you into temptation. God tempts you with gifts of Goodness alone, and to attract you to Himself. You, interpreting my words incorrectly, think they mean that God leads you into temptation to test you. No. The good Father who is in Heaven permits evil, but does not create it […]. But Evil exists. It existed from the moment Lucifer set himself up against God. It is up to you to make Evil a Good by overcoming it and by beseeching the Father for the strength to overcome it.

 

This is what you request in the last petition. That God may grant you enough strength to be able to withstand temptation. Without his aid temptation would bend you, for it is cunning and strong, and you are dull and weak. But the Father's Light illuminates you, and the Father's Power strengthens you, and the Father's Love protects you, so that Evil dies and you are left freed from it.

 

This is what you ask for in the “Our Father” which I have taught to you. 

 

Observe: no act is absent in the brevity of the formula. Faith, hope, charity, obedience, resignation, abandonment, entreaty, contrition, and mercy are present.

 

Therein everything is comprehended; everything, understood; everything which it is just to request and grant, requested. If the world were able to live out the “Our Father,” the Kingdom of God would be in the world. But the world is unable to pray. It is unable to love [...].

 

But I did not give and make this prayer for the world, which has preferred to be the kingdom of Satan. I have given and made this prayer for those whom the Father has given to Me because they are his, and I have made it so that they may be one with the Father and with Me, beginning in this life, so as to reach the fullness of union in the other.

From The Notebooks 1943, Maria Valtorta, July 7, pp. 150-154.

 

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God Cannot Cease to Love You

 

Do we really believe that since God is love, He cannot cease to love us? 

The following paragraphs are taken from Meditations for Layfolk, a book by Father Bede Jarrett, that first appeared in 1915. Devotion to the Holy Ghost was a notable feature of Father Bede Jarrett’s spirituality. 

The Holy Ghost (Love)

God’s Love Personified

The Third Person of the Blessed Trinity is the most mysterious. About Him, we seem to hear the least and to understand the most vaguely. The work of Father and Son, their place in the economy of the divine plan, is simple and evident, at least in its main lines. However, of the Holy Spirit, it appears as though His precise purpose has not been sufficiently described to us. He is the equal of the Father and the Son, of the same nature, power, substance, and eternally existent with them, participating in the same divine life, and forming with them the ever-blessed Three-in-One. He represents to our human point of view that wonderful mystery, the personified love that proceeds from Father and from Son forever, and by this act completes the perfections of God.

 

We can conceive of no further addition to that being, save power, knowledge, and love. Yet we know also that He has His place, not only in the interrelation (if the word may be allowed) of the Godhead, but in the relationship (though this phrase is certainly inaccurate) that exists between God and us. Since God is one and indivisible, His love for us cannot be other than the love that He has for Himself. In Him, there can be no distinction at all. Therefore, we discover that He loves Himself and us in the love of the Holy Ghost.

 

We see His love to be nothing else than Himself—unchanging, undying, without shadow of alteration. Sin as we may, we cannot make God love us less. Though we be children of wrath, He cannot help but love us, for the gifts of God, especially the supreme gift of Himself, are without repentance.

God’s Love Eternal

God cannot cease to love me. That is the most startling fact that our doctrine reveals. Sinner or saint, He loves and cannot help Himself. Magdalen in her sin, Magdalen in her sainthood, was loved by God. The difference in her position made some difference also in the effect of that love on her, but the love was the same, since it was the Holy Spirit who is the Love of the Father and the Son. Whatever I do, I am loved. Then, if I sin, I am unworthy of love? Yes, but I am unworthy always. He cannot love me for what I am, since in that case I should compel His love and force His will by something external to Himself. 

 

In fact, really, if I consider, I should find that I was not loved by God because I was good, but that I was good because God loved me. My improvement does not cause God to love me, but is the effect of God loving  me. Consequently, even when I am punished by God, He cannot hate me. It is His very love itself that drives Him (out of the very nature of its perfection) to punish. So, Dante spoke truly when he imagined over the portals of Hell the inscription: “To rear me was the work of Immortal Power and Love.”

 

Each of us is, therefore, sure that he is loved eternally and that God’s love can suffer no change from God’s side. How, then, is it that we grow evil, or lose the familiar intercourse that we once had with Him? It is because He has given us the terrible power of erecting, as it were, a shield between ourselves and His love. He loves forever the same, but it is we who, by our sins, have the power to shut off that love from effecting anything good in our souls.

God’s Unchanging Love

As I was deep in His love when I was a child, so also does He love me now.

Link to the full e-booklet:  https://servi.org/weekly-featured-ebooklet/

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Jesus is nailed to the Cross.

An edited excerpt from Maria Valtorta’s 28-page description of the Crucifixion.

The two malefactors to be crucified with the Lord will be fastened to their crosses with ropes, rather than being nailed. The executioners offer the condemned men three rags, so that they may tie them round their groins. […] Jesus, Who strips Himself slowly because of the pangs of the wounds, refuses it. He perhaps thinks that He can keep on the short drawers, which He had on also during the flagellation. But when He is told to take them off as well, He stretches out His hand to beg for the rag of the executioners to conceal His nakedness. Valtorta remarks that He is really the Annihilated One to the extent of having to ask a rag of criminals.

 

The Blessed Virgin has noticed everything and She removes the long thin white veil covering Her head under Her dark mantle, and on which She has already shed so many tears. She […] gives it to John so that he may hand it to Longinus for Her Son. The centurion takes the veil without any objection and, when he sees that Jesus is about to strip Himself completely, facing the side where there are no people, and thus turning towards the crowd His back furrowed with bruises and blisters, and covered with sores and dark crusts that are bleeding again, he gives Him His Mother's linen veil. Jesus recognizes it and wraps it round His pelvis several times […]. And on the linen veil, so far soaked only with tears, the first drops of blood begin to fall, because many of the wounds, just covered with blood-clots, have reopened again [...] and blood is streaming down.

 

Jesus now turns towards the crowd. And one can thus see that also His chest, legs and arms have all been struck by the scourges. At the height of His liver there is a huge bruise, and under His left costal arch there are seven clear stripes in relief, […] a cruel blow of a scourge in such a sensitive region of the diaphragm. His knees, bruised by repeated falls that began immediately after He was captured and ended on Calvary, are dark with hematomas and the knee-caps are torn, particularly the right one, by a large bleeding wound.

 

The crowds and bystanders scoff at Him in chorus: […] “Oh! Oh! the Perfect One! Are You the Son of God? Certainly not. You are the abortion of Satan! At least he, Mammon, is powerful and strong. You... are in rags, You are powerless and revolting.”

 

The robbers are tied to the crosses with ropes and they are carried to their places, one to the right, one to the left, with regard to the place destined to Jesus. They howl, swear, curse, particularly when the crosses are carried to the holes, and […] their oaths against God, the Law, the Romans, the Judaeans are hellish.

 

It is Jesus' turn. He lies on the cross meekly. […] He lies down and places His head where they tell Him. He stretches out His arms and His legs as He is told. He only takes care to arrange His veil properly. Now His long, slender pale body stands out against the dark wood and the yellow ground. Two executioners sit on His chest to hold Him fast. Valtorta laments as she thinks of the oppression and pain He must have felt under that weight. A third one takes His right arm, holding Him with one hand on the first part of His forearm and the other on the tips of His fingers.

 

The fourth executioner, who already has in his hand the long sharp-pointed quadrangular nail, ending with a round flat head, as big as a large coin of bygone days, watches whether the hole already made in the wood corresponds to the radius-ulnar joint of the wrist. It does. The executioner places the point of the nail on the wrist, he raises the hammer and gives the first stroke. Jesus, Who had closed His eyes, utters a cry and has a contraction because of the sharp pain, and opens His eyes flooded with tears. Valtorta comments that the pain He suffers must be dreadful...

 

The nail penetrates, tearing muscles, veins, nerves, shattering bones… Mary replies to the cry of Her tortured Son with a groan that sounds almost like the moaning of a slaughtered lamb; and She bends, as if She were crushed, holding Her head in Her hands. In order not to torture Her, Jesus utters no more cries. 

 

But the strokes continue, methodical and hard, iron striking iron […] The right hand is now nailed. They pass on to the left one. The hole in the wood does not correspond to the carpus. So they take a rope, they tie it to the left wrist and they pull it until the joint is dislocated, tearing tendons and muscles, besides lacerating the skin already cut into by the ropes used to capture Him. The other hand must suffer as well, because it is stretched as a consequence, and the hole in it widens round the nail.

 

Now the beginning of the metacarpus, near the wrist, hardly arrives at the hole. They resign themselves and they nail the hand where they can, that is, between the thumb and the other fingers, just in the middle of the metacarpus. The nail penetrates more easily here, but with greater pain, because it cuts important nerves, so that the fingers remain motionless, whilst those of the right hand have contractions and tremors that denote their vitality. But Jesus no longer utters cries, He only moans in a deep hoarse voice with His lips firmly closed, while tears of pain fall on the ground after falling on the wood.

 

It is now the turn of His feet. At two meters and more from the foot of the cross there is a small wedge, hardly sufficient for one foot. Both feet are placed on it to see whether it is in the right spot, and as it is a little low and the feet hardly reach it, they pull the poor Martyr […] so that the coarse wood of the cross rubs on the wounds, moves the crown that tears His hair once again and is on the point of falling. One of the executioners presses it down on His head again with a slap...

 

Those who were sitting on Jesus' chest, now get up to move to His knees, because Jesus with an involuntary movement withdraws His legs upon seeing the very long nail, which is twice as long and thick as those used for the hands, shine in the sunshine. They weigh on His flayed knees and press on His poor bruised shins, while the other two are performing the much more difficult operation of nailing one foot on top of the other, trying to combine the two joints of the tarsi.

 

Although they try to keep the feet still, [...] the foot underneath is shifted by the vibrations of the nail, and […] is to be moved a little closer to the center. And they hammer, and hammer, and hammer... Only the dreadful noise of the hammer striking the head of the nail is heard, because all Calvary is nothing but eyes and ears to perceive acts and noises and rejoice...

 

The harsh noise of iron is accompanied by the low plaintive lament of a dove: the hoarse groaning of Mary, Who bends more and more at each stroke, as if the hammer wounded Her, the Martyr Mother. And one understands that She is about to be crushed by such torture. Valtorta remarks that while crucifixion is dreadful, equal to flagellation with regard to pain, it is more cruel to be seen, because one sees the nails disappear in the flesh. But in compensation it is shorter, whereas flagellation is enervating because of its duration.

 

The cross is now dragged near the hole and it jerks on the uneven ground shaking the poor Crucified. The cross is raised and twice it slips out of the hands of those raising it; the first time it falls with a crash, the second time it falls on its right arm, causing terrible pain to Jesus, because the jerk He receives shakes His wounded limbs. But when they let the cross drop into its hole and before being made fast with stones and earth, it sways in all directions, continuously shifting the poor Body, hanging from three nails – the suffering must be atrocious.

 

All the weight of the body moves forward and downwards, and the holes become wider, particularly the one of the left hand, and also the hole of the feet widens out, while the blood drips more copiously. And if that of the feet trickles along the toes onto the ground and along the wood of the cross, that of the hands runs along the forearms, as the wrists are higher up than the armpits, because of the position, and it trickles down the sides from the armpits towards the waist [as indicated in the Holy Shroud]. When the cross sways, before being fastened, the crown moves, because the head falls back knocking against the wood and drives the thick knot of thorns, at the end of the prickly crown, into the nape of the neck, then it lies again on the forehead, scratching it mercilessly.

 

At long last the cross is made fast and there is only the torture of being suspended.

This edited excerpt is based on Chapter 605 of The Poem of the Man-God, by Maria Valtorta. At one time placed on the Index primarily because it was published without an Imprimatur, the work has now garnished Imprimaturs from a number of Catholic Bishops.

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