Autobiography

26. “Lend without any hope of return.”

When I meditate on this Gospel counsel, I consider that throughout my life I have always given without receiving any earthly gain.

I have given to my family, especially to Mother, and from an early age have understood that I must not hope for anything in return for my giving. My giving has constantly increased in actions and affection, and I have received less and less.

As I write, I am—digesting, not food—which is quite reduced and certainly does not lie heavy—but a little scene, one of the numberless little family scenes which are the rosary of my day: one bead after another—a scene in which I was placed beneath the level of my dog.... But let’s pass over it.... I must repeat Jesus’ words to the point of stupefaction: “Father, forgive her, for she does not know what she is doing.” Woe to her if she knew! It is better for her to be irresponsible. That way she won’t be judged.

It is, of course, a great affliction for me. For me, personally, who until the end must be hammered, filed, and perforated by such a strange character, and what is more painful, by the character of the woman who, for the vast majority of human beings, is the earthly personification of goodness and love: “the mother.” If my father had not often spoken to me of my birth, if family friends had not confirmed it, I would think I am not her daughter, but a child adopted in a moment of enthusiasm. Her lack of love would be equally bad, but never as in my case as a daughter, her real daughter, born to her.

I have given with no hope of a return to acquaintances, relatives, poor and rich. Many have responded to my giving with offenses or indifference. But it does not matter.

Helping was and is an inborn virtue of my heart, a real need of my spirit. Even when I was not so taken up in the divine whirlwind, I always sought to give what I could, out of the natural tendency of my heart, which radiated its warmth of affection so as not to remain suffocated by it. And no harshness from others has availed to make me change. In the sadness of my life—for mine has been a truly gloomy life—I have found a counterpoise so as not to become bad under the continual biting tearing me to pieces in doing good; I have found a smile in my weeping in bringing a smile to the faces of those suffering.

To do good! It is not necessary to be rich to do it or poor to receive it. Being poor, one can benefit the rich, just as, being rich, one can prove unable to benefit anyone.

Man does not live on bread alone, and hunger is not the only need torturing us, the hunger for bread. People are hungry for so many things! A caress, advice, a good word, a silence which listens and understands. Yes, people are also hungry for silence: certain silences in which the lips are mute, but the heart speaks to another soul that weeps and narrates.... There are eloquent silences which are more active than all discourses! People are hungry for affection, prayer, and material, moral, and spiritual aid.... Oh, human beings are the eternally hungry, and very few are those who, managing to forget their own hunger, are able to feed their fellows! Very few, for very few are the compassionate.

My Ruysbroeck, in his chapter on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, when speaking of the gift of piety, says, “Piety produces compassion, which applies itself to Jesus and men. Compassion is born of the gaze of piety. It visits the unfortunate, exiles, the ill; it gives bread, wine, and hospitality. It consoles the living and buries the dead.... Piety may be compared to the rivers of the earthly

Paradise since it leads desire in four directions. The first river goes to heaven. It is the compassion which goes towards Jesus and the Saints who have suffered in his name. It is a merry and joyful torrent...since the sorrows it celebrates are past sorrows replaced by eternal joys. The second river flows towards purgatory. It is man’s compassion for the suffering souls paying their debt to Justice. The third river flows on the earth and expands over the needs of all Christendom. This interior act, full of an immense love and immensely intense, gives and does more than all exterior works gathered together. The fourth river, which is charity, properly speaking, flows over all the indigent. Here man gives his goods and pays in person. He gives alms, counseling and helping others to endure.”

On examining myself with impartiality and justice, I can state that I have possessed the gift of piety and scattered its fruit in the four directions described by the Belgian mystic. I have felt compassion for the sorrows of the Saints, from Christ to the last one who has now entered beautiful Paradise. I have prayed for the souls in Purgatory. I have prayed for the needs of Christendom, offering my secret immolations for it. Finally, I have displayed charity regarding all the indigence of my neighbor. No poverty has left me cold at the sight of it. I must acknowledge this out of love for truth. And in this effort to do all I can I have found the best medicine in order not to wither and become embittered under the constant hail of malevolence, disillusionment, and abandonment I have had to undergo.

When someone does not love me, is not grateful to me, my heart suffers, but not from selfishness, the disappointment of not being reciprocated. It suffers because it sees its fellow degrading himself in useless malice. Why do I suffer so on seeing Mother so wicked? Not for my sake, for in a short while I shall be sheltered from all her malevolence. But on account of the uselessness of it for her. When I think of how she will be left alone when I am no longer here, I suffer terribly.... I cannot force anyone to stay with my mother. No one would, however, since no one who knows her loves her and feels like living with her. But this is a knife thrust into my heart....

As I suffered on seeing people observe Father diminished in intelligence, I suffer even more deeply on hearing how people judge my mother. I would give anything to keep them from realizing that she is so uselessly, constantly wicked. And, even at the cost of dying after having drunk the last chalice of pain, I would like to die after her to be sure that she is cared for until the end and loved until the end by the only one capable of loving her: by me.

Yes, on account of my mother I suffer for myself and for her. And she does not believe it. Among those I have helped, she is certainly the most ungrateful of all. But that does not harm my love. If my heart sweats blood as well, crushed down as it is by her way of acting, I am able to turn this sweating into a balm to love her more and serve her in a thousand needs. God will repay me in heaven.

Other people helped were also ungrateful. But that hurts less because they were outsiders. Others did not even say “Thank you” to me. But they are not to blame because they did not know I had helped them. I laugh when I think, “That person doesn’t imagine that I, a poor woman, have given him so much!”

In January 1939 I gave a desperate father faith and his daughter. He was the young father of a very delicate little girl of fourteen months. An only child, for others could not be born of that rather unhappy union. Born to parents who were not very healthy, she was quite frail. A little flower with a very slender stele and lacking sap. And yet she was the cement of that union, which was unhappy and rendered even less happy by the resentment of all their relatives.

This little girl became seriously ill at the beginning of 1939. The malady, a form of lung infection, degenerated into pulmonary gangrene. The child was dying. A month of illness had consumed her tender strength.

One evening, now condemned by the doctors and consultants, the poor little angel was really in extremis. She was expected to die in the night. The father, in despair, came to us to get cotton wool and I don’t know what else. It was Sunday evening, and the pharmacies were closed, except for the one on Regia Street. That poor father did not want to get too far away from his little dying child. He was truly desperate. He had prayed, had altars lit up, sent offers to who knows how many sanctuaries. Now, faced with the uselessness of his prayers, seeing his little one in agony, he felt faith dying in his heart.

The moment in which we tell ourselves, “It is useless to pray!” is tremendous. One must have experienced it to be able to understand. I have. I know what it means not to hope any more. It is such a horror that to keep souls from experiencing it I willingly give my life.

That evening, after the father—to whom I had spoken words of comfort which nothing bore out, for the child was at a point from which one does not come back—had left, I wanted to save a soul from spiritual death. Isn’t despair the death of the soul? And what a death! I made an offer to God, then, to take the child’s illness upon myself provided she would get well and her father would not doubt concerning God, since even doubting is an indescribable torture.

And the child got well. “A miracle, a miracle,” they all said. The miracle was her being replaced by a poor creature who did not want to have that father’s soul die in despair. Not only did little AnnaMaria get well, but she had no more problems in her lungs, reduced like a sieve by such an intense, long illness. And since then, since that night, I’ve had pleurisy.

That child, now five years old, even came to see me some days ago, and on kissing her I thought, “You’re more mine than your mother’s, for I have given you a more robust life.”

Many would say, “What a fool! Didn’t you have enough adversity upon you?” Oh, I had more than enough! But what could I do to prevent despair? I had no way except to offer myself to obtain healing. And I did. And I am very happy to have done so.

There are heroic creatures who offer themselves to save souls expiating in purgatory. I have read of others, even more heroic, who say, in an outburst of love, “Lord, provided there is one who loves you in hell, I would agree to go there, on condition that your love remained amidst those torments.” They are the giants of spiritual heroism. I am a poor flower, however, and cannot do so much. And I work, then, while I am on earth, to save the souls of my brothers and sisters. At the price of my pain I purchase them for true Life. And it is sweet to think that by my holocaust other creatures are saved....

Secret sacrifice donated with no hope of a return, how dear you are to me! When the works of the just are made known, what astonishment there will be among those I have helped, quite far from realizing that I was the source of their present joy!

I am dying. I am dying of this, too. But what does it matter? I am full of defects. But what does it matter? At one time I was even worse. But what does it matter? Charity covers a multitude of sins. And what charity towards my neighbor is loftier than to give my life for him, not only to obtain his union with God, but also to heal him of his moral pains and physical infirmities? I thus trust in this plenary indulgence which covers a multitude of sins and will cover mine as well.

The charity of the present time, which I use, petiole by petiole, thinking of nothing which would be selfish calculation, but looking only to my God, will be nothing alongside the charity which will submerge me in the blessedness of contemplation in holy Paradise. Then I shall possess Charity itself. And who will be richer or happier than I? Poor Maria, Maria hungry for love, Maria the beggar for affection will become the owner of the very wealth of her King, will be satiated with You, my divine Beauty, and your divine affection will compensate her for all her earthly indigence.

I am going through desolate days. I am really in Passion Week. God wants me to drink his sadness in those days preceding his suffering. And I suffer so much that I am morally and physically broken. Only my soul flaps its wings, rising up over all human sadness and ugliness, and merges with God. Even if God does not let Himself be felt sensibly—this is one of those hours of pain which comes from the lack of the sensible presence of God I spoke to you about—I draw together my strength and hurl it by myself towards Him.

I resemble one of those convolvuluses appearing by babbling brooks which, nearly borne by the wind, go to embrace the slender stem of a marsh reed or the prickly one of a young false acacia, and by continual exertion, with the stele as subtle as silk thread ever sprouting upwards, manage to reach the summit and there give off perfume, with their light calyxes caressing the stem holding them up, which they embrace with all their strength. I, too, by turning continual acts of faith and love into as many launching strips, shall we say, rise all by myself to twine around my God. Do I care if He is mute, if He seems as rigid as a stone? I don’t care at all. I speak and tell Him all that He tells me in the hours of joy; I say, “I love You.” I place my mouth on his Heart and kiss it. I place my arms around his Body and clasp it.

Oh, I well know why I am suffering so in these days. I asked Him for it myself, eight days ago! I know why I’m suffering. I know why He is so mute and cold. This is necessary to have me suffer in unsurpassable fashion. Everything else would otherwise not be real suffering, complete suffering, as is needed in this tremendous hour for us Italians. Since the moment I understood that the present war was approaching—that is, many years ago—I have worked to obtain God’s granting that in its spasmodic grips of horror the war not occasion the death of many souls.

Unfortunately, bodies die in war. It’s inevitable. But for all the combatants destined to die alone on blood-stained fields calling for help in vain; all those shut up in a submarine which can no longer surface; all the shipwrecked clinging to drifting flotsam and jetsam; all those burned in an airplane crash; all those languishing in hospitals whose flesh gradually dies amidst horrendous gangrenes and tremendous mutilations; all deprived of their hands and their eyes—the two most terrible disabilities, especially the former, which makes man an object at the mercy of others; all the prisoners in the disheartening homesickness of a concentration camp; all the mothers who do not know how their sons died; all the wives who no longer have their mates; all the orphans who no longer have their fathers; all the civilians under the aerial storm destroying houses and belongings; all the innocents who from childhood on see the inferno of this hour; all, all the desperations which the war arouses and maintains—I have continued to work, suffer, and offer—that’s my job—so that despair will not grip hearts and kill them with its venom.

No, if only for this reason alone, I could not, cannot improve or get well. I am in torment for this purpose and must remain there more than ever. Especially now, especially in this hour.

I have told you today that, besides, in my dark jail—since when I am in these periods, I am really inside an obscure mew—the good Jesus always lets a ray of sunlight filter in.

Sunday the choir of sailors (“Star of the sea...”) had descended upon my storm to placate and give peace. You cannot believe how much confidence that song brought. It broke through the dark horizon I was staring at in my tears and showed me heaven and, in heaven, Mary, the Morning Star, the Star of the Sea, the one who with her smile can make all the hardest things lovely and obtain everything she wishes for from God. Those seafaring soldiers of ours were singing with such composed faith. It seemed to me that the angels themselves joined the choir to celebrate Mary and infuse hope and peace into me.

The slightest thing suffices to restore vigor to a heart bending under an avalanche of memories and trembling before the prospect of new moral sorrows.... What’s important is not to reject the offering coming to us from all things which God allows things to give us. They are minuscule graces, but still “graces.” And we must not reject any grace, even the least, which God lavishes upon us. It would be pride, and pride is what prompts God to go away. I always receive everything with joy. I humbly acknowledge that I am a poor, shaky person in need of a thousand aids to stand erect, and on receiving every help—even microscopic—I say, “Thank You, Lord.”

Moreover, in my role as a violet I do not need torrents of water to keep myself alive. The imperceptible droplets of the dew suffice. Provided I am able to gather them in my corolla, stretching like a chalice towards heaven. If I wanted only the great graces, I would become incapable of receiving even the little ones. I must humbly ask for everything, acknowledging my nothingness and then, nourished by the least graces, given minute by minute, supplied by a thousand channels all issuing forth from the loving Will of God, I become capable of obtaining the great graces as well for myself and for my brothers and sisters.

Love, humility, and sacrifice. These are my preferred weapons. Love, which gives all daring. Humility, which keeps the fumes of pride from dimming us. Sacrifice, which purifies and bends us. As a good violet I love to grow under and amidst the thorns. Don’t the loveliest and most sweetly-scented violets grow and blossom right there, under the hedges of prickly hawthorn? Indeed, they nourish themselves with the sap of the leaves falling from the stinging bramble bush and decaying on the ground, and the thorns forming a tangle of aculeuses protect them as well from the summer showers and the cold winter frosts.

I love thorns very much. I don’t know if you have observed the sprig of thorns intertwined on the olive branch over my bed. That bare branch with the long, stiff aculeuses tells me so many things! It speaks to me of Jesus’ forehead, lacerated by identical thorns. It speaks to me of the need for pain as a thorn pricking our souls.... That thorny branch tells me so many things! If I were my own mistress, I would like to be laid out like that in the tomb, waiting for the resurrection: a long white or pale ash gray dress, a cord around my waist, shoeless, bare feet, a crown of thorns on my head, and a crucifix in my hands. I have been a penitent, a Franciscan, and one in love with the crucified Savior. What toilette could be better than this to sleep the final sleep?

But I won’t be able to see this wish of mine come true. Well then: never mind. As in pain I have had and have all the sacraments—for pain is a continual baptism, continual penance, communion with my King, confirmation in his doctrine, marriage with Christ, priesthood for the benefit of my brothers and sisters, and anointing purifying the senses—so in pain I shall have the thorns which others will deny me as a final crown. And in heaven those thorns will blossom into roses.

There would be many more things to say about this period going from 1935, Father’s death, to 1940. But then I would never finish. And so I shall refer to them succinctly.

On my part, continuous suffering from a constant increase of misfortunes and temptations I did not always resist. The flesh is a weight nailing us down, and the soul, like a butterfly pierced by a cruel hand and hammered to the ground, in certain hours flaps and flaps its wings without being able to rise in flight.

But when the spirit does not concur, but, rather, feels repugnance at the fault, which gets the better of us just the same, for the sensuality of our first parents, in spite of all baptisms, always tosses about within us like a cropped serpent, is there real blame? How many imponderables must be calculated in the fall of a soul! That’s why it is hard to judge, and it is well to refrain from it when it can scarcely be done.

How I have wept over my weakness, which did not always allow me to resist the call of the senses! I have punished and reproached myself, made a thousand promises, and begged God and men to have mercy on me.... But I have had to live through the tremendous hour of temptations in its full duration and with assaults such that, when I emerged victorious, I was left like rag.

On the part of the doctors, there was nothing to help me to appease the turmoil brought about by a malady. On the part of the priests, the virtually complete absence of spiritual aids. With the placid excuse that “I had no need of it,” I was left without Communion. I could say what I liked about my state! It was like saying it to my sparrow. A little smile, a “Don’t worry about it,” and I was taken care of. And I was struggling in the straits of a battle which, if viewed, would have made people afraid.... On the part of God, I was heard regarding everything except this....

Oh, I have suffered in such fashion that, now that I am much further along on my way, if I turn my gaze to those twists and turns bounded by ravines and hissing snakes, I still shudder. It’s tremendous, you know? To feel myself fused with my Redeemer and not to want to cause Him pain ever because He is my All, and at the same time to feel the brute flesh so rebellious to every law and desire from on high! It’s enough to drive you mad!

Now that it’s past, though, at least I hope so, I understand that tremendous period was not without benefit.

First of all, it kept me and keeps me from getting proud. If the ever-reviving pride of the children of Adam attempts to whisper to me that I am “somebody” in the eyes of God because of the good I have done, the ever-present memory of my weaknesses keeps me quite low in the opinion I have of myself and enables me to acknowledge that I am not “somebody,” but “wretchedness.” A contemptible wretchedness that only the goodness of Jesus, who came to save sinners, can love. That is why I am present before the eyes of God: because He must work a prodigy of mercy to love me and make me worthy of his Paradise.

In the second place, my weaknesses have been of use to me in exercising charity towards so many other guilty, weak creatures, whom I cannot condemn because I am like them: weak and guilty. We are all led to think ourselves perfect, we poor human beings, who so very often flatter and praise ourselves rightly and wrongly, similar in all respects to the Pharisee, who, standing erect, before the Temple altar, issued a bill of Perfection to himself. Oh, it’s better, much better to acknowledge what we are, perhaps exaggerate in underestimating ourselves, and, from the back of the temple, sunken in the dust of which we, too, are formed, to cry out our repentance to God, the recognition of our faults. If we, too, dare not raise our eyes, annihilated as we are by the observation of our animality, the Lord will be the one to descend from his throne, lift us up again, clasp us to his heart, dry our tears, wash away our filth, and, holding us closely to Himself, introduce us into his dwelling. “He who humbles himself shall be exalted.”

The third beneficial effect of my being at fault is that it has given me a weapon for victory. St. Catherine says, “We must arm ourselves with our sensuality.” Profound words which should be deeply meditated upon.

Sensuality is always alive in man, even if latent. Let us, then, make ourselves an instrument for glory rather than defeat out of this burden which we cannot remove. It is necessary to be patient with ourselves as well—indeed, with ourselves, above all—and with the spirit made of light guide matter made of darkness, with the spirit, capable of flight, lift up matter, which tends to collapse to the ground. It is necessary to do so without ever growing weary. To endure oneself without becoming dismayed. To look at the Master, who endures us and does not weary of healing us every time we wound ourselves.

To endure oneself does not mean to consent. Quite the contrary! It means: to watch over oneself attentively, to guide oneself tirelessly, keeping the light of God as one’s pole star. If the clouds sometimes cover over that light and we go off the road, as soon as it clears up again, we must look on high all over and get back on the right course without discouragement or impatience. Sailors and aviators also do so to take the ship or airplane entrusted to them, and their lives along with it, to a safe place. And shouldn’t we, too, do so for something worth so much more, which is not made of wood or machinery and fleeting flesh, as is the case with our souls?

We have placed sensuality beneath our feet and feel secure and happy to have overcome it.... We get distracted for an instant, and there it is all over again, like those little automatic devils that pop out of boxes by surprise. Then it’s back to work from the beginning. We seize this seven-headed monster and push it down! It’s a titanic job on account of the effort it requires and at the same time a minute one, like the work of a goldsmith. But how much merit it will obtain for us.

“Whoever has no battle has no victory,” further states the mystic of Siena, in whom the manly voice of Paul of Tarsus seems to echo with feminine grace: “Fight the good fight....” “Every athlete who struggles in the arena....” If sensuality were dead in us, how much less motive we would have to be victors! Even in the grip of this untamable monster, then, let us say, “Thank You, Lord, for this test. But help me that I may not perish!”

It has not been granted to all to be crucified like the Redeemer. But it is granted to all to crucify their own flesh “with all its passions and desires” to belong to Christ, who has overcome concupiscence and redeemed the flesh. Not all can be martyred by tyrants. But what tyrant is more tyrannical than our covetous flesh? Whence I am certain that the martyr’s palm falls not only to those immolated by persecutors, but also to those who martyr themselves to destroy sensuality in themselves and confess their loving obedience to the law of the Lord.

I thus tell myself and tell those tempted who confide in me to be guided: “We must never become discouraged if we see we always go back to the starting point. Doesn’t a shipwrecked person struggle to the utmost to reach the saving shore? We are among the shipwrecked at the mercy of the wind and breakers. Our humanity flings us into the midst of a real raging sea. Struggling against the waves, eddies, and rollers, holding out against the currents of air and water, we must proceed towards the port.... We are not spared collisions against hidden reefs; we are not spared sinking between the waves, so that ruin and death seem certain. Whoever does not lose faith will win out.”

And then, personally, weak by nature and weakened even further by illnesses, more than ever I want to be the humble flower spreading perfume while dying on the steps of the divine throne.

A flower does not lose heart if a wicked wind bends it into the dust, if a violent downpour sprays it with mud, if a slimy slug slavers over it. It trustingly waits for the dew to purify it, for the sun to dry it, for the breeze to raise it up and make it wave like a censer overflowing with aromas. And even if an imprudent curiosity spurs it to bend its stele, which should tend towards the sun alone, to the ground, it afterwards lifts itself up straighter than before, disenchanted with the foolish desire to kiss the earth—one that is made for the kisses of the sun and the pure dews. Only greenhouse flowers can claim not to be familiar with certain realities in life. But the little flowers of the forests and banks cannot aspire to so much.

The large greenhouse flowers, the precious flowers, sheltered from every earthly danger, are to me the predestined ones to whom the good Lord freely grants all gifts to remain chaste, innocent, and holy. Their whole life, by way of a series of events predisposed by God, flows through them as if between the inviolate and inviolable walls of a mystical tower against which the world futilely hurls its attacking hordes, against which the sirens’ song and the mirages of seductions futilely come to die. Creatures of a special fiber, the sublime, perfect founder of whose family is Mary, they are and are not of this earth, on which they live, in a manner of speaking, supported as they are by cohorts of angels holding them quite above our mire. They, too, are needed to convince men of the existence of angels and of our celestial origin.

But the little flowers are the courageous souls that hour by hour must fight against all the snares of life, society, and the flesh. They are the solitary souls no one looks after that must get along by themselves. These little flowers will know a great deal, much of what the precious greenhouse flowers are ignorant of. They will know and suffer a great deal from the wind, the ice, the summer heat, the frosts, the footsteps trampling on them, the herds nibbling on them....

But let the courageous little flowers of the fields and slopes be consoled. They are the real “children of God.” He alone sows them, waters them, warms them, admires them, and picks them for his joy. Men do not even realize they are walking upon their perfumed silk. Men are so deaf to the prodigies of God! But God sees these humble flowers He has sown along the ways of the world which have blossomed and go on blossoming out of love for Him, to please Him alone, caring about nothing else. And for these He has a special place in heaven. It will be the flowerbed of the humble. But who is the head of the humble? Christ, who told us to be meek and humble as He is.

Let the little flowers be consoled. Under the feet of Jesus wandering through Palestine and up to the foot of the cross it was they, the humble flowers, that gave off perfume, loving the Lord. From the cradle to the grave Jesus’ gaze rested upon them. They received the caresses of his little child’s hands, the praise of his divine word, the weeping of his heart in agony amidst the olive trees, the blood dripping from his members hanging on the cross.

It thus suffices for them to want to continue to be humble flowers, and they will always be God’s favorites. It suffices for them to want to stay by the cradle of the Christ Child, along his path; it suffices for them to want to act as a pillow for his aching head and gather the tears from his eyes; it suffices, above all, for them to want to remain at the foot of the cross and gather that Blood redeeming all, to be certain they will not perish. They will live here below, providing perfume for Him. They will live up above, more lovely, still supplying perfume for Him.

This morning you saw me crying. Those tears were squeezed out by many things. In the first place, a complete lack of the presence of God.

When I feel alone, everything takes on such a sad and fearful color that it makes me cry. Those are the hours of Gethsemane—and it is not astonishing if they are quite frequent. There are so few Christians who want to stay with Christ in Gethsemane to pray and expiate for sinners! They are the most meritorious and the most crucifying hours. Much, much more than all the others. Words cannot even be found to describe them. One suffers to the point of stupefaction. One is no longer able to do anything but suffer and love and say to the Lord, “I love You!”

The only exception was that after Communion I felt a vein of peace increasing in me. One vein, for the others were still alive and active. The anxieties of these days have wrinkled the surface, but not altered my depths, where the peace of God is. But now a new channel of peace has come to sweeten my bitter waters. More than to sweeten, to calm them down.

It is just a question of remaining here, on the cross and in darkness.... This is the office of victims. This remaining in darkness is not for no purpose. It brings light to those deprived of the divine ray. To pray for those who do not pray. What mission can make us more closely resemble Jesus and Mary, whose lives were a single prayer? To pray in fervor, to pray when sensible fervor falls, to pray with a single word when we are unable, because of illness or some other reason, to pray at length. To pray with a simple sigh, with a glance uplifted to heaven, to pray with tears descending from our eyes, to pray with our agonies....

I look at my Jesus, who reached the apex of prayer when He was raised up on the scaffold. And in these hours of my Gethsemane, in which I am so alone and crushed by this solitude, I imitate the Redeemer’s prayerful silence.... The prayerful silence which is more pressing than all the mechanical, prolix prayers uttered with one’s soul elsewhere.

I look at Jesus on the cross. He is in front of me. Tall, white, slender, made livid by the blows and the agony. He feels observed and raises his head, bent over his chest under his blood-stained crown. He looks at me. I look at Him. Our glances meet through a veil of tears. He teaches me to pray in these hours of passion, of expiation. And I learn all by looking at Him.

I follow his gaze, which turns, scanning the world. A gaze of infinite compassion for all the wretchedness of human beings. I follow his gaze, which, after having gathered together, as if in a bundle, the spectacle of all human miseries, lifts itself up to heaven and offers them, with that gaze of love alone, to the love of the Father so that He will relieve them.... Host-souls must live this way. Scattering love, gathering in pain, offering love and pain to obtain mercy. And the unspeaking conversation of the gazes continues.

“I am thirsty for souls.”

“I am thirsty for You!”

“When this hour is past, I shall come. You must now remain alone. Be content with my looking at you and being your Master.”

“Jesus, I am alone.”

“I, too, am alone. Souls do not love me.”

“Jesus, dismay is attempting to overwhelm me.”

“Do not fear. It shall not prevail.”

“I feel I’ve been uprooted by the Three of You.”

“No, if our Father has withdrawn to the depths of the heavens, I am by you, and Love, the Paraclete, is spreading his wings over you. Remember, creature, that our Father—I say ‘our’ because I am your Brother—does Himself violence in order not to clasp you to his heart. One day you will know what this suffering of yours is worth.... Look down: see the throng of unfortunates that needs holocausts to be saved. Look to heaven and see the punishments which an act of love restrains. And smile, my sister, my poor sister. What you can do is not granted even to the angels. You, that immolate yourself, worship, and expiate. The angels only worship.”

“I am afraid I shall not accomplish my task properly....”

“My infinite merit makes up for your imperfections. I do not ask you, little host, to be perfect. I ask only that you seek to be so as far as possible.”

“Are you content, Jesus?”

“I am content, Maria. Your effort dries my tears.”

And then? And then what can I say? “Father, free me from this hour”? “But I have come precisely for this hour.” All that remains for me, therefore, is to live through it in its full austerity.

This morning, after having prayed in my fashion I heard a kind of voice say to me, “Be assured. Your wishes shall not remain unfulfilled.” I thought of Our Lady, whose sorrows are celebrated today. She, too, saw her wishes fulfilled, but first she had to suffer.... I trust Her, who is my Mother and Queen, and would like to think that morning whisper came to me from Her, the Mother of Jesus, our Mother.