Jesus
comments on the Our Father and the Hail Mary prayers.
“The
Our
Father is
the
prayer
to your Father.
The Hail
Mary
is the
prayer to your Mother.”
Jesus
is Speaking:
You
are all so weighed down by your humanity that you never know how to
pray by rising above the human, and you give the words of the prayer
only a relative sense. But prayer opens up infinite horizons, O sons.
Those horizons will be your dwelling, after returning to God — if
you have known how to keep your spirit in God and god in your spirit.
Even when you reflect on what you say — and it is
already much if you do this — you give yourselves the limited range
of the Earth and the flesh. With much difficulty do you raise your
mind beyond the present moment and your daily needs.
Do
not shut your spirit up within the opaqueness of material things.
Your spirit is of God. And it should see God, know God, live from
God, in God. He is Life for your spirit. And if you separate yourself
from God with a fault, you kill your spirit;
if you keep it far from God, you make it feeble and quench it like a
lamp deprived of oil.
There is nothing that can keep your
heart saintly if it is not fused with the Saint of Saints. Science,
country, affections, works, become discouraging things which are
served with wretched service, if you take away from yourselves that
agent which makes you perfect in your sentiments and in your labors:
union with God.
As
inhabitants of this globe—who come from only a single stock and
from only one Creator — you hate each other among yourselves. As
citizens of a single Fatherland you are hostile among yourselves —
as if you were of a different race. As relatives and spouses you are
egotistical and unfaithful. And why? Because you have forgotten God,
Who does not crush you under the avalanche of your copious human laws
and human instruction, but Who summarizes all His law and His perfect
instruction in these words only:
"Love God with your whole self and your neighbor as yourself"
[Mt
22:35-40].
This is the summary of the whole Divine Law and the font of every
good of earth and beyond the earth. But you do not put it into
practice. And from that come the chastisements which strike
you.
Maria [Valtorta] — you who love the Divine Light
more than yourself, and feel you are happy the more it penetrates
into you—today I want you to know the supernatural meaning of a
phrase that you say, but do not understand well.
As the
Pater
[Our
Father]
should
be said with supernatural reference — and foolish would he be who
said it while applying to it only a human meaning and human request —
so the
Ave
Maria
[Hail
Mary]
should be said, not with your mind fixed on the Earth and on your
flesh — which is dust that will return to dust — but should be
said with your spirit lifted toward Heaven, beyond life, beyond the
Earth.
It
is where Most Holy Mary, My Mother and yours, lives in body and soul
after having lived on Earth with Her soul always soaring into
Heaven.
The
Our
Father is
the
prayer
to your Father.
The Hail
Mary
is the
prayer to your Mother.
The first part of the
Our
Father
is praise of God. The first part of the Hail
Mary
is praise to Mary.
The second part of the Our
Father
is
a request — to the Father — for all your needs as sons
of God, in your temporary stop on Earth, but destined for Heaven. The
second part of the Hail
Mary
is a request — of your Mother — for your needs as mortals and as
immortals in your
spirit.
Your Mother should be invoked like your Father.
You should not think that She is without Mercy and Power and cannot
help you in your battles, in your pains, and in your needs and
temptations.
One must know how to pray. And one must know
how to pray in moments of peace, in order to invoke help in the hours
of struggle.
He is a fool who says:
"When the time comes I will do it." Do you know if you will
be able to do it then? If God will give you time to do it?
Necessities, misfortunes, and even death, often come like a sudden
lightning flash. Death is sometimes like a thunderbolt that strikes
unexpectedly.
The Mercy of God is infinite. But it is said
in the words of the Law:
"Do not tempt the Lord your God" [Deut
6:16].
And, truly, you do tempt Him when you lead a life completely
human,
without thinking of what awaits you in the Beyond, in which you will
be judged for your actions.
In the
Hail
Mary it
is said:
"Pray
for us now and in the hour of death." Here, Maria. Let us read
together these words which many, too many, say with their mind lifted
by only one degree from the mud of Earth. With their heart they worry
about the unknown only at their last moment — a moment which makes
them fear because they are not sufficiently "sons of God".
If they were and perfectly so, death would cause no fear.
Death
is the last trial. And it merits all your attention, so that it
becomes a "death in the Lord". For you, a death in the Lord
merits every pardon, gives eternal life in the Lord, and with its
power annuls the consequences of even a culpable existence. So you
have done well up till now to invoke My Mother and yours for that
hour, and in that hour. But know how to pray better. Not just from
fear
of that
hour, but for so many other hours in which true
death looms over you.
I
have already explained to you many times, Maria, what that true
death is. It is that of the spirit. And you all kill your spirit so
often, if not always by your direct will,
certainly through indifference toward that most select part of
yourselves:
the soul.
In
the Our
Father
I instructed you to say: "Lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from the Evil
[one]". In
the Hail
Mary
I make you say: "Pray for us now and in the hour of
death."
Now:
this is the
present, which lasts but a moment of eternity. It is the life of the
flesh waylaid by sickness, accidents, by the very course of time
itself which brings you to the "mouth" of your life as men,
and sends you into eternity.
"In
the hour of death":
that
hour which stops your heart, and that hour — always threatening —
which paralyzes your spirit and leads it to death.
I want
you to think of this
true,
eternal
death,
when you invoke Most Holy Mary. From the first death you will rise
again if you have died in Christ. But from the second you will never
rise again.
Do not cause the infernal Enemy, the
fascinating Serpent, the roaring Lion who always prowls around you to
knock you down — do not cause him to seize hold of you like sure
prey. So that even though you are now alive, you are already of those
dead in spirit.
Mary is the Conqueress of Satan, and
the
gleam of Her smile suffices to put him to flight. Against the snares
of Satan and the weakness and appetites of the flesh, call on
Mary.
If you invoke Her for that sleep from which you
immediately awake, or about heavenly peace or infernal damnation —
both these latter two being eternal — why should you not invoke Her
about
this
atrocious sleep which brings death:
the death of the fallen spirit — a sleep which, if not conquered,
extinguishes you in the arms of Satan?
When death prowls
around your spirit, let these invocations, made to Mary with the
fullness of their significance, rise up as a defense. Every time the
hour of spiritual death looms over you, pray to the universal Mother:
for all Her poor children;
for the spirit of these Her poor children;
for that
spirit made and given to creatures by that same God Who had created
and chosen Her for His Spouse and Mother.
Pray for that spirit made and given in order to make these
creatures Her children, and subjects of His eternal Kingdom.
Upon
all of you there is the most pure and beloved Blood. That Blood which
came from Her Immaculate Heart, and which has been the Seed for the
Flower born of the love of God with the Virgin, and of Her perfect
obedience to the Divine Will. It is the Seed of Me, the Word, become
flesh in order to be Master and Redeemer, whence to be able to wash
you in His Blood, wholly poured out for you all. And upon all of
you there is also all the weeping of Mary, My Mother and yours:
another washing of
Her co-redemption.
Through
Her nature as Mother of the Savior, She has the power of salvation.
Invoke Her with true faith and She will save you:
now, and at the hour of death.
Based
on an English translation made especially for the entry of Nov. 8,
1944 in Maria Valtorta’s Little
Notebooks [The Quadernetti].
Maria
Valtorta, Quadernetti
(Edizioni Pisani / Centro Editoriale Valtortiano srl, Via Po 95,
03036 Isola del Liri (FR), Italia, 2006):
49-53.
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