Baby Jesus visits Maria Valtorta.

January 2, 1946.

 

A monastery cloister, with a portico, paved with black and white square tiles. The long cloister fades into the darkness at the end […]. There is a small statue of Baby Jesus, about 28-30 months old. Blond, handsome, wearing a pale blue robe with golden stars, his right hand raised in blessing, his left holding a globe. An oil lamp illuminates the statue.

As I look at it, it comes to life and becomes real flesh. It smiles at me and gestures with its little hand, saying, "Come here! Come here!" And it becomes luminous, beautiful. The corner of the cloister glows as if with starlight. I move a little closer, smiling reverently. But I still stop too far away, and the Child insists with his voice and his little hand: "Come here! Here, close!" I approach him. He laughs happily and says: "Will you warm my little feet with a kiss? I'm so cold!" and he offers me his bare feet in turn, on which to warm them I place not only my lips but my feverish cheek.

He laughs. A clear, childish laugh, and says: "I am the Child of little Thérèse of Lisieux. This is Carmel. Do you understand? I am the Child Jesus of Sister Thérèse […]. " I contemplate him in ecstasy, now that I am so close to him. He is so beautiful! Then the light grows, grows, it is so violent, it obliterates the power of seeing, and everything disappears. Only the memory and the peace remain.

January 4, 1946.

And as the other day, the Child of the cloister of Lisieux appears to me again. He calls me close again. He consoles me, with his smiling beauty, for my sorrows, which are so many. He once again gives me his icy little feet to warm, saying again: 'I am so cold!', and I dare take them in my hands to warm them more. This makes him very happy.

But he seems tired of holding the globe in his left hand and takes it with both hands, holding it to his chest. I watch him as I warm his little feet in my hands. Perhaps he notices my surprise at his gesture and says, "It's heavy, you know? And this globe of the world is so cold. Hold it. Feel how cold and heavy it is. Hold it a little. I'm tired of holding it and always feeling it like this."

And he offers me the little globe, which at first glance seems to be made of golden glass, smooth and light. Instead, it is heavier than lead, rough, covered in prickles that dig into my skin, causing pain. I hold it with difficulty and anguish, because of the prickles and the chill it transmits. I look at the holy Child with pity.

"It's heavy, isn't it? And it's cold, isn't it! It even chills my heart. Yet I have to carry it. If I abandon it, who can hold it anymore?"

 

"But how can you, poor little Jesus, resist this torture? Because it's real torture..."

"Yes. Look. My little hands are bleeding. Kiss them to heal them." And he offers me his tender hands covered with tiny droplets of blood. I kiss them in the soft hollows of his palms. But they are cold, cold.

"Thank you, Maria. Give me back the globe. You can't hold it anymore. Only I can. But just finding someone to hold it for a few minutes is enough to give me relief. Do you know how you help me hold it, you who love me? With your sacrificial love. Victim souls hold up the world together with Jesus."

He glows as brightly as the other night and withdraws his little foot, saying, "Now they're both warm. And I feel better. Goodbye, Maria. Thank you also for Mom. She's happy when there's someone who loves and comforts me." And she fades into a blinding light.

 

January 6, 1946.

While I'm working on a piece for an altar, "Mom" comes with her Baby in her arms.

She says, "Here. Hold Him for me a little. I'll entrust Him to you," and she sits Him down on the bed, beside me.

Jesus is truly the Baby of Egypt […], because He is about two years old. Dressed in pale blue wool, a rather short tunic, even at the sleeves, so that His forearms and legs are exposed, plump, beautiful. He plays with His little hands and His little dress, and chirps or watches me work with His innocent, sapphire eyes. He spends the whole morning with me, and I am so happy about it.

Based on Maria Valtorta, The Notebooks 1945-1950, pp. 156-158.

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SSPX says they are the Catholic Church.

  

The SSPX Daily Newsletter for February 7, 2026 features a quote from their founder Archbishop Marcel Levebvre.  He clearly asserts his view that the SSPX is the Catholic Church. 

 

 "We must maintain absolutely our firm opposition and not doubt for an instant the legitimacy of our position. We cannot remain indifferent before the degradation of faith, morals, and the liturgy. That is out of the question! We do not want to separate ourselves from the Church; on the contrary, we want the Church to continue! A Church that breaks with its past is no longer the Catholic Church. There is only one Catholic Church; it is the one that continues Tradition. That is why I do not hesitate to say that you are the Catholic Church! Why? Because you continue what the Church has always done." 

 

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Praying the Rosary with Our Lady of Fatima.

 

May 5, 1947. Maria Valtorta prays with Our Lady of Fatima:

 

The morning rosary, and then the three rosaries in the afternoon and the golden roses. Each Hail Mary is a rose that falls from the crown of 15 mysteries of Our Lady, because each bead has been transformed into a golden rose, and the Virgin detaches one with each Hail Mary I say, and lets it fall upon the world, in the places I have recognized and on the nations that are deserving of it. 

 

How beautiful it was to say the rosary with Her! I never tired of it. Now I still have in my eyes the luminous cascade of golden roses and in my heart the bliss of having been with the Mother of God for so many hours.

May 8, 1947. Our Lady of Fatima, appearing to me as she usually appears, says: 

 

“On the 5th, I gave you the intellectual vision of what a well-recited Rosary is: a shower of roses upon the world. With every Hail Mary that a loving soul says with love and faith, I let a grace fall. Where? Everywhere: on the righteous to make them more righteous, on sinners to bring them to repentance. How many! How many graces rain down because of the Hail Marys of the Rosary! White, red, and golden roses. White roses of the joyful mysteries, red roses of the sorrowful mysteries, golden roses of the glorious mysteries.  

 

“All powerful roses of grace through the merits of my Jesus. Because it is His infinite merits that give value to every prayer. Everything that is good and holy is and happens because of Him. I distribute, but He gives the value. Oh! Blessed be my Child and Lord!

 

“I give you the pure white roses of the great merits of the perfect divine Innocence of My Son, perfect because voluntarily chosen to be preserved as such by the Man. I give you the crimson roses of the infinite merits of the Suffering of my Son, so willingly endured for you. I give you the golden roses of His most perfect Charity. I give you everything of my Son, and everything of my Son sanctifies and saves you.  

 

“Oh! I am nothing, I disappear in His splendor, I only perform the act of giving, but He, He alone is the inexhaustible source of all graces! And you, my beloved souls, listen to these words of mine: Do the will of the Lord with a cheerful spirit. Doing His Most Holy Will with sadness is to halve the great merit of doing it. Resignation is already something that God rewards. But the joy of doing God's Will multiplies the merit a hundredfold, and therefore the reward, of doing this divine Will, always, always, always just, even if perhaps it does not seem so to man. Therefore, do with a cheerful spirit whatever God wills. And you will be pleasing to Him and most beloved to me, your Mother. Remain in peace under my watchful gaze, which will never abandon you.”

Maria Valtorta’s note:

 

Also today, the 8th, I said the Holy Rosary with Our Lady of Fatima! But today Our Lady didn't pick the roses [… as in] the symbolic gesture on the 5th. Now I know the value of a well-said Hail Mary! The rosary of 15 decades consisted of 5 white roses like pearls, 5 red roses like rubies, and 5 golden ones like the other day. And Mary, as she went through it, saying the Gloria and the first part of the Our Father, from "Our Father" to "on earth," and of the Hail Marys only "Blessed (she didn't say 'the fruit of your womb') Jesus," looked down at the world with her indescribable gaze of peace, love, and pity, and smiled a slightly sorrowful smile in its sweetness.

 

I understood why Our Lady of Fatima attracts me so much, even more than Our Lady of Lourdes, whom I also love so much. Because she is more ours, more of a Mother. Our Lady of Lourdes looks at Heaven; she seems eager to return there, to lose herself in God: she is the Immaculate Conception, the Woman of Heaven. But Our Lady of Fatima looks at us, looks at this poor Earth where she was a woman like every creature and whose sorrows and needs she knows, this poor Earth that needs her so much, and she is all pity for us: she is our Mother, she is the Heart of Mary that loves and watches over us. The first is for the Lord and for the Angels. But this Our Lady of Fatima is for us sinners. She prays for us. She is truly "the Mother," the purest and most compassionate.

Based on Maria Valtorta, The Notebooks 1945-1950, pp. 390-392.

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A visit from the Little Flower.

 

"Do not be afraid. God is pleased with you.” 

 

Maria Valtorta has been feeling very ill because of her heart problems. Unexpectedly, she hears the voice of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus saying to her: “Yes, it is I who come to spend this hour of agony with you, and to spend it remembering Jesus, whose face is altered by the bloody sweat and begins to assume the painful expression that makes us, His little victims and brides, delirious with compassionate love. It is I. I too come to caress you. It is my hour. Because when the ‘great silences’ are about to begin, which are the touches of perfection of the divine Artisan on our soul, it is necessary to have a friend nearby who knows them.

“Do not be afraid. Our Jesus also died of thirst [for souls]. Oh! divine thirst! Yet, even though He could hardly speak anymore because of His dry mouth, He spoke the words that save. And He said the prayer that saves: ‘Father, forgive them,’ ‘Today you will be with me,’ ‘Into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Almost mute from thirst and agony, almost blind from the crust of blood on His eyelids and from approaching death, He was able to say the prayers that save, and still see the will of the Father and adore it.

“It is not necessary to do much when you are close to immolation, little sister. It is enough to remain faithful. And to see God beyond the crust of pain that wounds our heart, and to tell God that you still love Him, always. Do not be afraid. God is pleased with you. He sends me to tell you. Do you think you are not a ‘child in spiritual infancy’? You are. Because you do everything with simplicity. Even your imperfections. And you do not try to veil them with adult cunning to clothe them in a false garment of righteousness. You are a ‘little one’ in the way that I have taught, because Jesus likes ‘little ones’ and He said that the kingdom of Heaven belongs to them.

“And you are a ‘victim.’ An adult, therefore. Because the spirit that voluntarily chooses to be sacrificed, even if it is the spirit of a child, is an adult spirit. Yesterday you were wondering what the ‘double love’ is that I asked for myself. For you, little sister, it is this: to be a child and love Jesus with the simplicity of a child, and to be a victim and love Him with the heroism of a martyr. With Him in the poor straw cradle, with Him on the rough cross. Always with Him. So as never to leave Him alone. To make Him smile. To drink His tears and die with Him. How He loves you! He has given you His two holiest beds: the cradle on which the Mother watches, and the cross on which all of Heaven is bowed. These are the places where His love calls you to a divine appointment of love. From there you will take flight to Heaven.

“Now rest, little sister. I am here praying with you. But believe that it is enough to love, to love very much, and it is enough to say only: ‘Jesus, I love you!’, and to say it with true love, to be not only justified but loved by God with a love of predilection. Happy are those who at every beat of their heart can say: ‘I love you.’ They will breathe their last with this profession of love in their mind, in their heart, and on their lips. And it will open Paradise for them. Because God loves those who love Him and gives Himself to those who love Him.”

Maria Valtorta: I was uncertain, feeling these new caresses from a gentle hand [...]. I could only see the hand covered almost to the back by a wide brown sleeve. A beautiful, slender hand. I felt it touching my head from time to time. I was happy about it. My physical suffering, which is very intense, was comforted by that touch. But I didn't dare say to myself, "It's Saint Thérèse." But when it wasn't just a caress but also a sight of the hand, I had no more doubts. However, I didn't see anything else. The hands and the voice, very beautiful and sweet, and a great peace, a certainty, a warm sense of friendship. I can't explain it well. Her words, then, made me even happier. I've been feeling so ill since yesterday afternoon, because of my heart […]. But it doesn't matter. I am very happy to have had a visit from my beloved little saint, so happy that the physical pain seems like nothing to me.

Based on Maria Valtorta, The Notebooks 1944; 07/13/44; pp. 430-432.

 

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Padre Pio’s encounters WWII GIs, and more.

 

After you click on the link below, please page down until you come to a photo of actor Gary Sinise reading from the book Padre Pio and America. Just below that picture is a video produced by the St. Pio Foundation and EWTN about Padre Pio and the American troops, featuring vintage photos and clips from that era.

Included is a brief movie of Padre Pio offering the Mass. Viewing this you can get a glimpse of why the Traditional Latin Mass was the crowning glory of Catholic religious practices until the changes after Vatican II.

https://tanbooks.com/products/books/padre-pio-and-america/

St. Francis receives the Stigmata.

From the visions of the Catholic mystic Maria Valtorta.

 

Above, against the pure, so blue and gentle sky, stands a flaming figure that seems to be made only of incandescent fire. A fire whose brilliance is more vivid than that of the sun, which emerges from behind a wooded mountain range with a splendor of rays and glories that sets everything ablaze with joy. This being of fire is clothed in feathers. […] It looks like an angel because two immense wings hold it suspended and fixed against the immaterial cobalt of the September sky, two immense open wings that form a cross, supported by the resplendent body. 

 

Two immense wings that are the whiteness of incandescence, open against the shimmering incandescence of the body, clothed in other wings that completely envelop it, gathered with their supernatural feathers of pearl, diamond, and pure silver, around the person. It seems that even the head is wrapped in this singular feathery garment. Because I cannot see it. I only see, where that seraphic face should be, a glimmer of such vivid splendor that I am left as if dazzled. […] The cross of burning feathers stands fixed in the sky with its mystery.

 

Below, a gaunt little friar, whom I recognize as my seraphic Father [Francis], prays on his knees on the grass, not far from a bare, rough cave, frightening like a precipice of hell. The ravaged body seems not to inhabit the […] overly large habit. The neck emerges, a pale brown, from the grayish cowl, a color between that of ash and certain slightly yellowish sands. The hands emerge with their thin wrists from the wide sleeves and are extended in prayer, palms turned outwards and raised as in the "Dominus vobiscum". Two hands, once brown, now yellowish, of a suffering and emaciated person. The face is a thin face that seems sculpted in old ivory, neither beautiful nor regular, but possessing a particular beauty made of spirituality. 

 

The brown eyes are beautiful. But they do not look upwards. They look, wide open and fixed, at the things of the earth. But I don't think they see. They are open, resting on the dewy grass; they seem to be studying the grayish embroidery of a wild thistle and the feathery one of a wild fennel, which the dew has transformed into a green, diamond-studded "aigrette" [headdress]. But I am certain that he sees nothing. Not even the robin that descends with a chirp to look for some small seed on the grass. 

 

He prays. His eyes are open. But his gaze does not go outwards, but inwards, into himself. How and why and when he becomes aware of the living cross that is fixed in the sky, I do not know. Whether he felt it by attraction or saw it by an inner calling, I do not know. I know that he raises his face and searches with his eyes, which now come alive with interest, confirming my conviction of his previous lack of external vision. 

 

The gaze of my seraphic Father meets the great, living, flaming cross. A moment of astonishment. Then a cry: “My Lord!”, and Francis falls back slightly on his heels, remaining in ecstasy, with his face lifted, smiling, shedding the first two tears of beatitude, with his arms more open. And behold, the Seraph moves its shining, mysterious figure. It descends. It approaches. It does not come to earth. No. It is still very high up. But not as it was before, midway between heaven and earth. And the earth becomes even more luminous because of this living sun that in this blessed dawn unites with and surpasses the other sun of every day.

 

As it descends, with wings always outstretched in a cross shape, cleaving the air not by the movement of feathers but by its own weight, it gives off a sound of paradise. Something that no human instrument can produce. [...] And now, while Francis laughs, and cries, and shines even more in ecstatic joy, the Seraph opens its two wings – now I understand well that they are wings – that are towards the middle of the cross. And the most holy Feet of my Lord appear nailed to the wood, and his long legs, of a splendor, in this vision, as vivid as his glorified Limbs have in Paradise. And then two other wings open, right at the top of the cross.

 

And my sight, and I believe also that of Francis, however much he is aided by divine grace, suffers from the joy of the blinding light. Behold the trunk of the Savior that pulsates with breath, and behold, oh! behold the Fire that only grace allows one to gaze upon, behold the Fire of his Face that appears when the shroud of the sparkling feathers is fully opened. 

 

The fire of all volcanoes and stars and flames, surrounded by six sublime wings of pearls, silver, and diamonds, would still be little light compared to this indescribable, inconceivable radiance of the Most Holy Humanity of the Redeemer nailed to his cross. The Face, then, and the five wounds find no comparison to describe them. I think of the most resplendent things […], this is a condensation of the sun multiplied by an incalculable number of times. 

 

The peak of La Verna must appear as if a thousand volcanoes had opened around it to crown it. The air, because of the light and heat, which burns but does not consume, emanating from my crucified Lord, trembles with waves perceptible to the eye, and stems and leaves seem unreal, so much does the light penetrate even the opacity of bodies and makes them light. […] Francis, then, upon whom the light pours and invests and penetrates him, no longer seems a human body. But a lesser seraph, brother of the one who gave his wings to the service of the Redeemer. 

 

Now Francis is almost prostrate, so much is he bent backward, with arms completely open, under his Sun God Crucified! He is immaterial in appearance, so much do the light and joy penetrate him. He does not speak, he does not breathe, materially. He would seem a glorified dead man if it were not for that pose that requires at least a minimum of life to subsist. The tears that fall, and perhaps serve to temper the human aridity of this mystical flame, shine like streams of diamonds on his thin cheeks.

 

I hear no words from either Francis or Jesus. An absolute, profound, astonished silence. A pause in the world surrounding the mystery. So as not to disturb. So as not to profane this sacred silence where a God communicates with his blessed one. Contrary to what one might expect, the birds do not burst into more acute trills and joyful flights for this celebration of light, no butterflies or dragonflies dance, no lizards or geckos dart about. Everything is still in an anticipation in which I feel the adoration of all beings towards Him for whom they were made. Not even that gentle breeze that made a sighing sound among the leaves remains. Not even that slow, arpeggiated sound of water hidden in some hollow of stone, which before occasionally cast its notes, like rare pearls, on a tonal scale. Nothing. There is Love. And that is enough. 

 

Giotto

Jesus looks at and smiles at his Francis. Francis looks at and smiles at his Jesus. But now, the glorified Face, so luminous as to appear almost as lines of light, like that of the Eternal Father, materializes a little. His eyes take on that blazing sapphire brilliance as when He performs a miracle. The lines become severe, imposing, as always in those hours, imperious, I would say. A command from the Word must go to His Flesh; and the Flesh obeys. And from the five Wounds shoot five arrows, five small lightning bolts, I should say, that descend without zigzagging in the air but perpendicularly, very quickly, five needles of unbearable light that pierce Francis.

 

I do not see, naturally, the feet, covered by the robe and limbs, and the side covered by the tunic. But I see the hands. And I see that, after the fiery points have entered and passed through – I am as if behind Francis – the light, which is on the other side, towards the palm, passes through the hole on the back of the hand. They look like two open eyelets in the metacarpus, from which two threads of blood descend, flowing slowly down the wrists, onto the forearms, under the sleeves.

 

Francesco lets out a sigh so deep that it reminds me of the last breath of the dying. But he doesn't fall. He remains as he was for some time longer. Until the Seraph, whose face I have never seen – I have only seen his six wings – spreads these sublime wings like a veil over the most holy Body and hides it, and with the two initial wings he ascends, ever higher, into the sky, and the light diminishes, finally remaining only that of a serene sunny morning. And the Seraph disappears beyond the cobalt of the sky that swallows him and closes upon the mystery that has descended to bless a son of God and that has now ascended to his kingdom. 

 

Then Francesco feels the pain of the wounds and with a groan, without getting up, he moves from his previous position to sitting on the ground. And he looks at his hands and uncovers his feet. And he opens his garment on his chest. Five streams of blood and five cuts are the memory of God's kiss. And Francesco kisses his hands and caresses his side and soles, weeping and murmuring: "Oh, my Jesus! My Jesus! What love! What love, Jesus!... Jesus!... Jesus!..."

And he tries to stand up, pressing his fists to the ground, and succeeds with pain in his palms and soles, and he sets off, a little unsteady like someone who is wounded and cannot lean on the ground and stumbles from pain and weakness from fainting, towards his cave, and falls to his knees on a stone, with his forehead against a cross made of only wood, two branches tied together, and there he looks at his hands on which a nail head seems to be forming, penetrating and piercing, and he weeps. He weeps for love, beating his chest and saying: “Jesus, my sweet King! What have You done to me? Not for the pain, but for the praise of others, this gift of Yours is too much for me! Why me, Lord, me unworthy and poor? Your wounds! Oh! Jesus!”

Maria Valtorta, The Notebooks 1944, September 16, pp. 554-559.

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A Vision of Christmas Angels.

 

Maria Valtorta had been beseeching St. Lucy for a certain favor, but instead the saint brings her this heavenly vision. It begins while Maria has been praying the Rosary and the Fatima prayers alongside her housekeeper Marta.

She writes: “I see a night-time sky that is teeming with stars. It is a beautiful oriental sky of a very dark sapphire, containing clusters of luminous stars. A nocturnal landscape is sleeping in the night, dotted with little white houses closed and silent. There is one special home, with a terrace and kind of a small dome, a house so clear that I could draw it in the minutest detail. The landscape is slightly undulating, as if it were in a gentle hollow between hills.

Then from the sky descends a procession of angels of a luminous whiteness, although incorporeal they are still perceptible to the human eye. They make a curve, heading from the sky towards the earth, towards the quiet and sleeping town, and the night becomes brighter because of the light of the angelic bodies. The leading two angels are beautiful beyond words as they descend rapidly, without however moving their wings. Their hands are crossed on their chests, with their faces turned towards the town and sparkling with supernatural love.

 

Christmas Angel by Maren Devine

Behind them follow all the others. An incalculable number! I don't know if it was the cleaving of the atmosphere or a palpitation of love that produced such wonderful music. Perhaps both things together produced it. Certainly it was not material singing, for which words, vocal cords, uvulas and art are used. And, being a supernatural event, it was infinitely, indescribably beautiful. I cannot but consider this singing non-human. My heart is full of it and my spirit is exalted; all my pain is annihilated by it, but I cannot repeat even a single note. I think, and I don't know why, of that song that beloved St. John the Evangelist says will be sung only by those who follow the Lamb, by the 144,000 saved who have not defiled themselves with sensuality.

And then I hear Jesus Himself speak, without appearing to me: "Behold, to your suffering is given the first comfort of the Christmas season: the song that filled the horizons the night I was born. The angels sing, with their love, 'Peace on earth to men of good will'. They sing peace to you. Enjoy it. I bless you."

I add now, that is, 24 hours later, on the evening of December 14th – that I am still blessed by this radiant, peaceful, and harmonious angelic vision; and I am also in a joy, lesser but still joy, because in my very brief sleep I dreamed something festive, like a promise which was to be fulfilled in ten days [Christmas Eve]. I don't remember what it was about or who made it, because Toi [Maria’s dog] woke me up so suddenly that I couldn't see the rest or remember exactly. But I don't know... I also have this spark of joy in my heart. I know from experience how the future has been announced to me, since I was a little girl, in my sleep.”

Based on The Notebooks 1944, by Maria Valtorta, December 13, pages 636-637.

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