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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Venerable Antonietta Meo.

“Pain is like fabric, the stronger it is, the more value it has.”

Antonietta Meo, affectionately known as Nennolina, was born in Rome on December 15, 1930, and died when she was only six years old, on July 3rd, 1937. It may be hard to imagine that a six year-old child would be declared Venerable by the Church, but Pope Benedict XVI did so in 2007, extolling her heroic virtues. This honor was made possible when the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of Saints declared in 1981 that even young children are capable of heroic virtue. If canonized, she would become the youngest non-martyr Saint of the Church. 

 

She was born to a devout family, and her parish church was “The Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem,” one of the Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome. It houses pieces of the True Cross and two thorns from Crown of Thorns, among many other sacred relics. It now also contains the tomb of Venerable Antonietta Meo. 

 

Nennolina was a happy and playful child. When she was four, her parents noticed a lump on her knee, and attributed it to a simple fall, but the swelling would not go away. It was eventually diagnosed as an aggressive cancer of the bone, and her left leg was amputated when she was only five years old. She was outfitted with an artificial leg, and was soon back playing with her friends. Although in pain, she remained cheerful. 

 

The power of God’s grace was evident in the way she accepted her suffering. When her father asked her if she was in pain, she reportedly answered: “Daddy, pain is like fabric, the stronger it is, the more value it has.” One day she said to her mother: "When I suffer, I immediately think of Jesus so I don't suffer anymore! It's simple not to suffer: don't think of your pain, but think of Jesus', because He suffered so much for us that you won't feel anything yourself". 

 

Shortly before her death, Professor Aminta Milani, the chief physician of Pope Pius XI, came to examine her at the request of her doctor. The professor spoke with Antonietta and was astonished that she could endure such pain without complaining. Her parents told him about letters she had been writing to God, and at his request they provided him with the most recent one, which her mother had crumpled up and thrown into a drawer because she was so upset at seeing her daughter suffer so much and so close to death. 

 

On the next day an auto from the Vatican stopped at their house, and a personal messenger from the Holy Father greeted the family and imparted the apostolic blessing upon Nennolina. He related that the Pope had been very moved upon reading the child’s letter to the Crucified Jesus. He also gave them a note from Professor Milani, in which he asked the dying girl to remember him in her prayers. 

 

Following is the text of this letter: 

 

May 2, 1937; Letter No. 162 [spelling and format retained].

Dear Crucified Jesus,

I really wish You well and I love You so much.

I want to be on Calvary with You and I suffer with joy because I know how to be on Calvary.

Dear Jesus. Thanks that You have sent me this illness because it’s a way to arrive in Paradise.

Dear Jesus, tell God the Father that I love Him so much, Him too.

Dear Jesus, I want to be Your lamp and Your lilly dear Jesus, dear Jesus give me the strength necessary to stand the pains that I offer for sinners [at this moment she was taken to vomiting].

Dear Jesus, tell the Holy Spirit to illuminate me with love and fill me with His seven gifts.

Dear Jesus, tell the Madonnina that I love her so much and that I want to be with her on Calvary because I want to be Your victim of love dear Jesus.

Dear Jesus, I entrust to you my Spiritual Father, and do for him all the graces necessary.

Dear Jesus, I entrust to you my parents and Margherita [her sister].

Dear Jesus, I send you lots of greetings and kisses.

Antoinetta of Jesus.

In June of 1944 Our Lord spoke to Maria Valtorta about Nennolina. He said that this little child, who had barely reached the age of reason, now, in heaven, “...possesses an intelligence and a knowledge not at all inferior to those of the most-learned and long-lived of the mystical doctors.” St. John the Evangelist, “...who died at the age of one hundred, after having known the highest mysteries of God; Paul, the scholarly Apostle; Thomas the angelic doctor and […] all the giants of true knowledge, cannot add light to that Little One, my saint.”

  

“The Holy Spirit, whose precocious bride she was on earth, taught her in embraces of fire what He does not teach to the proud humanly learned, and in uniting her to Himself in this blessed Country […] He infused into this Little One the perfection of knowledge, just as He infuses it into adults and the learned.” [Maria Valtorta, The Notebooks 1944, June 14, p. 357.]

 

Less than a month later, in July of that year, Nennolina herself appeared to Maria Valtorta while she was at prayer. As background, it is necessary to know that Italy was in the midst of the Second World War, and Valtorta had been forced to leave her own home in Viareggio due to a mandatory evacuation. She was bedridden with a number of serious ailments, but did not want to take the risk of asking the German Command for an ambulance; consequently she was placed as comfortably as possible on the back seat of an automobile. For eight months, she was obliged to take refuge with some others in the small Hamlet of St. Andrea di Compito, where she had a room in the home of a married couple. Infirm and in pain, she was extremely unhappy there, especially since she was left without her spiritual director. 

 

One evening, at 3 a.m. while crying desolately, she began to pray. “Afterwards I made my usual offerings. And when I came to the one for Nennolina, I said to her ‘Nennolina, give it yourself to Jesus and tell Him to have me go back to my house. If you say so, He will listen to you...and you can understand – you that were so sick – what what the suffering of an infirm woman means.’”

 

Antonietta (Nennolina) then appeared to Maria, dressed in white, with “...her thoughtful, shining eyes, smiling and luminous, with a sash of light at her side, in the place where the big wound was.” 

 

“Is it you?” Maria asked, and Nennolina replied with the smile of a happy girl. Maria asked her if she was happy, and the girl smiled once more.  

 

Maria then asked about her leg. Nennolina now gave a spoken answer: “It’s no longer of use. Here, where I am, nothing is of use any longer. Love is enough.” And then she pirouetted half-way around with the act proper to a girl, laughing all the while. 

 

Maria: “Do you love me, Nennolina?” The reply: a smile of assent. 

 

Maria: “Remember to tell Jesus that poor Maria has only Him and hopes in Him alone.”

 

With a farewell smile, “...the figure dissolved into light.”

 

[Maria Valtorta, The Notebooks 1944, July 6, pp. 421-422.]

A longer version of this blog post appeared online in The Remnant Newspaper, Saturday, September 10, 2022, titled “Nennolina’s Letters”.

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House Calls – A Proposal.

 

The Medical establishment has quietly replaced “house calls” with walk-in-clinics, ER rooms, 911 calls, and ambulance services.

 

But are all 911 calls made because of true emergencies? How many are made to seek treatment for non-life-threatening situations that would have been resolved by house calls in prior years?

 

A 911 call is currently the only alternative for an ill person who has become so bed-ridden and debilitated they cannot make a trip away from their own home. 

 

Sometimes a patient is so weakened, perhaps with a fever and some vomiting, that she cannot suffer to get out of bed, get dressed, walk outside to a car, enter a Doctor’s office or walk-in Clinic, sign in, and then sit on a chair and wait until called. How many ER resources and ambulances are committed to support such very ill patients, who have non-urgent symptoms, that could instead be treated by a Doctor on a house call? 

 

Fortunately, the innovative Beebe Healthcare System has taken the initiative to combine their Primary Care Intern program with limited house call visitations. Thanks to specially equipped vans operated by professional drivers, Interns who may be accompanied by their senior medical advisers, are able to diagnose and treat many of these cases in the patients’ own homes, leaving 911 resources free to be used in life-threatening situations. 

 

Such visits are limited to situations where the only other alternative for the infirm bed-riddden patient would be to phone 911 for an ambulance visit to an emergency room. It is understood that said patient’s symptoms would not be life-threatening, such as having heart pains or an unusually high fever. 

 

Why house calls may grow further – according to ChatGPT, an AI site: 

 

“Modern healthcare systems have discovered that home visits can:

• Reduce ER visits

• Reduce hospitalizations

• Improve outcomes for chronically ill patients

• Lower costs for insurers

So house calls may become much more common again.”

 

The above example for Beebe Healthcare is currently only fictional.

https://frankrega.com/index.html