96. Jesus Preaches to the Crowd at Bethsaida. 3rd February 1945. Jesus is at Bethsaida. He is speaking standing on the boat which has taken Him there and is now almost beached, tied to a pole of a little rough pier. Many people, sitting in a semicircle on the sand, are listening to Him. Jesus has just started His speech. « … and I see here also you people of Capernaum love Me, because you have followed Me, neglecting your business and comforts to hear the words that teach you the truth. I am aware that your behavior causes you to be insulted and may also do you social harm, worse than any financial loss, which may be the consequence of your neglecting your business. I know that Simon, Eli, Uriah and Joachim are against Me. Now they are against Me, in future they will be My enemies. And as I do not wish to deceive anyone, neither do I wish to deceive you, My faithful friends, I tell you that the mighty ones in Capernaum will make use of all means to harm Me, to make Me suffer, to defeat Me by isolating Me… They will throw out innuendos as threats and insults as slander. The common enemy will make use of everything to snatch souls from Christ and take possession of them. I tell you: who perseveres will be saved; but I also tell you that he who loves his life and welfare more than eternal salvation, is free to go away, to leave Me and take care of his petty life and temporary welfare. I will not hold anybody back. Man is free. I have come to make him more free. Free from sin, and that 96. Jesus Preaches to the Crowd at Bethsaida. 303 concerns the spirit. And free from the chains of a distorted oppressive religion, which with torrents of words, clauses and precepts suffocates the true word of God, a word which is clear, short, light, easy, holy and perfect. I have come to sieve consciences. I gather My corn on the threshing-floor, and I thresh it with the doctrine of sacrifice, and I sift it with the sieve of its own will. The light useless chaff, sorghum, vetch, darnel will be blown away and will fall heavy and harmful, and will be eaten by birds, and only the pure, selected, solid good corn will enter My granary. The corn: the saints. Satan has challenged the Eternal Father for centuries. Elated with his first victory over man, Satan said to God: “Your creatures will be mine forever. Nothing, not even punishment, not even the Law You want to give them, will enable them to earn Heaven, and that Abode of Yours, from which You expelled me, me, the only intelligent being in Your creation, will remain empty, useless and sad, like all useless things”. And the Eternal Father replied to the Cursed One: “You will be able to do that as long as your poison is the only thing to rule over man. But I will send My Word and His word will counteract your poison, it will restore hearts to health, curing them of the madness with which you made them wicked, and they will come back to Me. Like lost sheep that find the shepherd, they will come back to My Fold and Heaven will be filled with souls. I made it for them. And you will be grinding your horrible teeth, out of powerless fury, down there in your horrid kingdom, a cursed prisoner, and the stone of God will be turned over on you and sealed by the angels and darkness and hatred will be with you and with your followers, while Mine will enjoy light and love, songs and beatitude and infinite, eternal, sublime freedom”. And Mammon with a burst of sneering laughter swore: “And upon my Gehenna I swear that I will come when it is time. I will always be present wherever Your evangelized people are and we shall see whether I or You is the winner.” Satan, of course, lays snares for you, to sift you. And I also circumvent you to sift you. The contestants are two: I and he. You are in the middle. The duel of Love and Hatred, of Wisdom and Ignorance, of Good and Evil is over you and around you. I am sufficient to ward off any wicked blow against you. I come between the satanic weapon and you and I am willing to be wounded in your stead, because I love you. But you must ward off your internal blows, with your will, running towards Me, following My way which is Truth and Life. Who is not desirous of Heaven will not possess Heaven. Who is not suitable to become a disciple of Christ, will be like light chaff, that will be blown away by the wind of the world. Who is Christ's enemy is pernicious seed that will grow in the satanic kingdom. I know why you people of Capernaum have come here. My conscience is so clear of the sin I am accused of, on account of which non-existent sin people speak ill of Me behind My back, suggesting that to listen to me and to follow Me is to become associated with the sinner, that I am not afraid to make the reason known to the people of Bethsaida. Among you, citizens of Bethsaida, there are some elderly people, who for various reasons have not forgotten the Beauty of Korazim. There are men who sinned with her, there are women who cried because of her. They cried – I had not yet come to say: “Love those who hurt you!” – they cried and they rejoiced when they heard that she was bitten by putrefaction which transuded outside from her impure intestines, on to her magnificent body, and which is the symbol of that more serious leprosy that had corroded her soul of an adulteress, a homicide and a prostitute. An adulteress seventy times seven, with anyone who was a “man” and had money. A homicide seven times seven of her illegitimate conceptions; a prostitute for pleasure not for need. Oh! I understand you, wives, whose husbands were unfaithful! I understand your rejoicing when you were told: “The flesh of the Beauty is more fetid and putrid than a carrion lying in the ditch of a main road, a prey to crows and worms.” But I say to you: you must forgive. God took your vengeance and then God forgave. You must forgive, too. I forgave her also on your behalf, because I know that you are good, o women of Bethsaida, who greet Me shouting: “Blessed the Lamb of God! Blessed Who is coming in the name of the Lord!” If I am the Lamb and you know Me as such, if I, Lamb, come amongst you, you must all become meek sheep, also those whom the pain of an unfaithful husband, a pain of a long time ago, provides with the instinct of a beast that defends its den. If you were tigers and hyenas, I, the Lamb, could not stay with you. He Who has come in the most holy name of God to gather just people and sinners and lead them to Heaven, went also to the repentant woman and said to her: “Be cleansed. Go and expiate”. I did that on a Sabbath. And that is what I am accused of. A formal accusation. The second accusation is that I approached a prostitute. A woman who had been a prostitute. But now was a soul bewailing her sins. Well, I say: I did it and I will do it. Bring Me the Book, pry into it, study it, examine it thoroughly. Find, if you can, one passage that forbids a doctor to cure a sick person, or a Levite to take care of the altar, or a priest to listen to a believer, only because it is the Sabbath. And if you find it and show it 96. Jesus Preaches to the Crowd at Bethsaida. 304 to Me, I will beat My chest and say: “Lord, I have sinned before You and before men. I am not worthy of forgiveness. But if You have mercy on Your servant, I will bless You as long as I live.” Because that soul was diseased. And sick people need a doctor. It was a desecrated altar and a Levite was required to clean it. It was a believer going to cry in the true Temple of the true God, and it needed a priest to introduce it. I solemnly tell you that I am the Doctor, the Levite, the Priest. I solemnly tell you that if I do not My duty, and I lose only one of the souls anxious to be saved, God the Father will ask Me to account for it and will punish Me for losing it. That is My sin, according to the mighty ones in Capernaum. I could have waited till the following day to do it. Yes. But why delay twenty four hours to grant a contrite heart the peace of God? in that heart there was true humility, pure sincerity, perfect repentance. I saw into her heart. Leprosy was still on her body. But her heart had already been cured by the balm of years of repentance, of tears and expiation. Only My reconsecration was needed to draw that heart near God, without contaminating the pure air around God with its nearness. And I did it. She came out of the lake cleansed also in her flesh. But even more cleansed in her heart. How many of those who entered the water of the Jordan to obey the Precursor's exhortation have not come out as cleansed as she was! Because their baptism was not the voluntary, sincere, heartfelt action of a soul eager to be ready for My coming. It was only a formality to appear perfectly holy in the eyes of the world. It was therefore hypocrisy and pride. Two sins that increased the mass of faults already existing in their hearts. John's baptism is but a symbol. It means: “Get rid of your pride by humiliating yourselves and admitting that you are sinners; get rid of your lust by washing yourselves of its mud.” Your souls are to be baptized by your will to be clean and ready for God's banquet. No sin is so grave that it cannot be removed first by repentance, then by Grace and finally by the Savior. There is no sinner so bad that he may not lift his humbled face and smile at the hope of redemption. It is sufficient for him to forgo sin completely, to be heroic in resisting temptations, to be sincere in his desire to be born to a new life. I will now tell you something which is true, and yet may seem blasphemy to My enemies. But you are My friends. I am speaking with particular regard to you, My disciples already chosen, and to you all who are listening to Me. The angels, pure and perfect spirits, living and rejoicing in the light of the Most Holy Trinity, although perfect, are inferior to you men, who are far from Heaven, and they admit their inferiority. Their inferiority consists in their impossibility to sacrifice themselves and suffer to cooperate in the redemption of man. What do you think of that? God does not take an angel and say to him: “Be the redeemer of mankind!” But He takes His own Son. And although the Son's sacrifice is of incalculable value and His power is infinite, the Father, knowing that there is still something missing from the amount of merits to be opposed to the amount of sins that mankind accumulates hourly, does not take other angels to fill the measure and does not say to them: “Suffer to imitate Christ”, but He says that to you, men. Such is His fatherly goodness that He makes no difference between the Son of His love and the children of His power. He says to you: “Suffer, sacrifice yourselves, be like My Lamb. Be co-redeemers… !” Oh! I can see cohorts of angels who stop rotating for an instant in their adoring ecstasy round the Trine Fulcrum, and kneel down, looking towards the earth and say: “Blessed are you who can suffer with Christ for your and our Eternal God!” Many will not yet understand such greatness. It is too superior to men. But when the Victim will be sacrificed, when the eternal Corn will rise from the dead never to die again, after being reaped, threshed, husked and buried in the bowels of the earth, then the super-spiritual Enlighter will come and will enlighten the spirits, even the most backward ones, but still faithful to Christ Redeemer, and then you will understand that I have not blasphemed, but I have announced the highest dignity of man to you: to be co-redeemers, even if before you were sinners. In the meantime get ready for such dignity with pure hearts and intentions. The purer you are the more you will understand. Because impurity, whichever it may be, is always smoke that dims and makes heavy both your sight and your intellect. Be pure. Begin with your bodies and then pass on to your souls. Start from your five senses and then go on to the seven passions. Start from your eye, the king of senses, that makes way to the most painful and complicated appetites. The eye sees the body of a woman and it lusts after a woman. The eye sees the wealth of rich people, and it lusts after gold. The eye sees the power of rulers and it lusts after power. Let your eyes be peaceful, honest, sober, pure and your desires will be peaceful, honest, sober and pure. The purer your eye is, the purer your heart will be. Keep a watch on your eye, a greedy discoverer of tempting apples. Be chaste in your looks if you want to be chaste in your bodies. If you possess the chastity of the flesh, you will possess the chastity of riches and power. You will possess all chastities and be the friend of God. Do not be afraid of being mocked at because of your chastity. Be afraid only of 96. Jesus Preaches to the Crowd at Bethsaida. 305 being God's enemies. One day I heard someone say: “You will be scoffed at as a liar or a eunuch if you show no lust for women.” I solemnly tell you that God instituted marriage to make you His imitators in procreating and His assistants in filling Heaven with people. But there is a higher condition, before which the angels bow down, as they see its sublimity which, however, they cannot imitate. A condition, which is perfect when it lasts from birth to death, but from which are not precluded those who are no longer virgins, who forgo their fecundity, whether male or female, and give up their sensual virility, to become prolific and virile only in the spirit. It is the condition of a eunuch without any physical imperfection or voluntary or violent mutilation. The condition that does not prohibit a person from going near the altar, on the contrary, in future centuries, the altar will be served and surrounded by such persons. It is the highest eunuch condition: where amputation is brought about by the will of belonging only to God, of preserving one's body and heart chaste for Him, that they may forever be refulgent with the purity so dear to the Lamb. I have spoken for the people and for those chosen among the people. Now, before entering Philip's house to share his bread and salt, I bless you all: the good people as a reward, the sinners to encourage them to come to Him Who came to forgive. May peace be with you all. » Jesus comes off the boat and walks through the crowd pressing around Him. At a corner of a house there is Matthew who has listened to the Master, from that spot, not daring to go nearer. Jesus stops when He arrives there and as if He were blessing everybody, He blesses once again, looks at Matthew and then goes away, surrounded by His disciples and followed by the crowd and disappears into a house. It all ends.
No comments:
Post a Comment