Jesus Teaches on Marriage

March 22, from THE NOTEBOOKS 1944

Jesus says:

"The families which are not families and which are the origin of serious misfortunes radiating out from within the family cell to ruin the structures of nations and, afterwards, world peace, are the families in which God does not rule, but, rather, sensuality and self-interest hold sway and, therefor, filiation with Satan.  Created on the basis of sensuality and self-interest, they do not rise to what is holy, but like unhealthy grass sprouting in the mire, they always crawl towards the earth.

The angel said to Tobiah, 'I will teach you who the devil has power over' (Tobit 6:16 Vulgate-Douay Rheims).

Oh, there really are spouses who are under demoniac power from the first hour of their marriage!  Indeed, there are people who are such even before getting married.  They are this way from the moment they make the decision to find a male or female companion and do not do so with an upright purpose, but with deceitful calculatons where selfishness and sensuality hold sovereign sway.

Nothing is healthier or holier than two people who sincerely love one another and unite to perpetuate the human race and give souls to Heaven.

The dignity of a man and a woman who become parents is second only to God's.  Not even royal dignity is like this.  For a king, even the wisest one, does nothing but administer his subjects.  These parents, on the other hand, attract God's gaze towards themselves and carry off from that gaze a new soul, which they enclose in the sheath of the flesh born to them.  I would almost say they have God as their subject, in that moment, since God immediately creates a new soul for their upright love forming a union to give a new citizen to Earth and Heaven.

If they were to consider this power of theirs, to which God assents at once!  The angels cannot do so much; rather, the angels, like God, are immediately ready to support the act of the fruitful spouses and become guardians of the new crature.  But there are mny who, as Raphael says, embrace the marriage state in such a way as to banish God from themselves and their minds and abandon themselves to lust.  And the devil has power over these.

What difference is there between a sinful bed and the bed of two spouses who do not refuse pleasure, but do refuse offspring?  Let's not engage in verbal acrobatics and deceitful reasoning.  The difference is quite small.  For if, because of illness or imperfections, it is advisable or permissible not to have children, people must then manage to be continent and deprive themselves of the sterile satisfactions which are nothing but sensual pleasure.  If, on the other hand, no obstacle to procreation intervenes, why do you make a natural and supernatural law an immoral act by deforming its purpose?

When any honest consideration induces you not to increase the number of children, manage to live as chaste spouses and not as lustful monkeys.  How can you want God's angel to watch over your home when you turn it into a den of sin?  How can you want God to protect you when you force Him to avert His gaze in disgust from your sullied nest?

Oh the families are wretched that are formed without supernatural preparation!  The families from which all searching for Truth has been excluded a priori and where, on the contrary, the word of Truth is derided which teaches what Marriage is and why it exists.  The families are wretched that are formed without any thought for what is superior, but only under the spur of sensual appetite and financial considerations!  How many spouses, after the inevitable custom of the religious ceremony--I said 'custom', and I repeat it, since for the majority it is nothing but a custom and not the soul's aspiration to have God with it at that moment--no longer have a thought for God and make the Sacrament--which does not end with the religious ceremony, but begins then and lasts as long as the life of the spouses, according to My thought, just as the taking of vows does not last as long as the religious ceremony, but as long as the life of the man or woman religious--and they make the Sacrament a party and turn the party into an outlet for bestiality!

The angel teaches Tobiah that, by having the act preceded by prayer, the act becomes holy and blessed and fruitful in true joys and offspring.

It would be necessary to do this.  For people to enter into marriage when moved by the desire for children, for this is the purpose of the human union, and every other purpose is a sin dishonoring man as a rational being and wounding the spirit, the temple of God, which flees in disdain, and to bear God in mind at all times.  God is not an oppressive jailer, but God is a good Father who exults in the honest joys of His sons and daughters and responds to thier holy embraces with heavenly blessings and with the approval which the creation of a new soul is proof of.

But who will understand this page?  As if I had spoken the language of an unknown planet, you will read it without perceiving its holy savor.  It will seem like old straw to you, and it is heavenly doctrine.  You, the learned of this time, will mock it.  And you do not know that Satan is laughing over your foolishness;  thanks to your incontinence, your bestiality, he has managed to turn to your condemnation what God created for your good: marriage as a human union and as a Sacrament.

I will repeat for you so that you will remember them and be guided by them--if you can still do so through a residue of human dignity surviving in you--Tobiah's words to his wife: 'We are the children of saints and we cannot unite like the gentiles who do not know God.'

Let them be your norm.  For, even if you were born where sanctity had already died, Baptism has still made you sons and daughters of God, of the Holy of Holies, and thus you can always say that you are the children of saints--of the Holy One--and be guided by this.  You will then have descendants in whom the name of the Lord will be blessed, and they will live in His law.

And when the children live in the Divine Law, the parents reap the benefits, for it teaches virtues, respect, and love, and the first to benefit therefrom, after God, are the fortunate parents, the holy spouses who have managed to make marriage a perpetual rite and not a dishonorable vice."

June 21, 1944

Jesus says:

"No.  Do not complain and do not grieve as if My love for you has changed.  This is not a decrease--it is an increase .  I am speaking to you and to all the spirits who have devoted themselves entirely to Me and find themselves in the same situation as you.  My eyes rest upon them and are consoled after all the disgraceful actions I see being performed on earth.

When someone has completed a hard task which is tormenting and even repugnant, doesn't he experience great joy of breathing pure air and looking at a beautiful meadow, green and flourishing?  His lungs expand, his eyes rest, and his mind finds recreation.  He seems to be reborn.

The same thing happens to your Jesus.  So afflicted, so disgusted!  And by so many!  Consider: I am Goodness and Love, and I receive offenses, continual hatred, and I must use severity to punish the guilty.  This wearies Me more than carrying the cross.  It is not that I then did not know I was dying in vain for many.  I was not ignorant of the fact, but I am speaking of the material fatigue and the moment.  This is continuous fatigue for My Spirit.  The blameworthy weary God's Spirit.  Consider this, and you will understand how serious sin is, if it is able to weary a perfect spirit, like the Divine One.  Well then, you, My beloved ones, bring Me rest.

And hear this parable for you.

A man loves a woman.  He has seen she is beautiful.  He has been told she is good, pure, and modest, and he has felt an affection rising in his heart and, with the affection, the hope of being able to possess that woman as a wife and make her the pearl of his house.

He has himself introduced to her relatives and aks them for the young woman.  They grant her to him.  And he, with a thousand attentions, tries to conquer her affection, for his love is already giant and wants to bring his beloved to the same point.  Every time he goes to her, he takes her something he knows she likes; when he is distant, he thinks of what he might take her, if he is far away from the town, he writes to her to tell her what he cannot say in person; and as soon as he comes back, he runs to her.  He does not mention his worries to her, but leaves them outside the door because he does not want to grieve her, and for him it is already a relief to see the smiling face of his beloved.

There passes in this way the the time you call 'engagement' and we Jews call 'the nuptial ceremony' which, however, in not being a consummated marriage, was at heart a very rigorous official engagement, to the point that the woman was called a 'widow' if her fiance died before the consummation of the marriage, leaving her as a virgin.

But then the time comes when the woman leaves her parents' home and enters her husband's house, to be 'one single flesh with him', according to the ancient command, and forever, according to My new command, which says, 'What God has joined may not be separated by man for any reason.'  For to separate means to push someone towards adultery, and the sin of adultery is committed not only by those sinning by this action, but by those bringing about the causes of the sin by placing a creature in the conditions fostering sin.

And this should be said not only to the husbands who abandon their wives and to the wives who separate from their husbands, but also to the relatives of the former and the latter who by their particular ill will or selfishness sow discord between two spouses, or to those deceitful friends of the family who with lies, or simply by fomenting a bad mood which would dissolve if not fomented, create phantoms between two spouses capable of making their life together unbearable.

In truth I tell you that, if spouses were able to live isolated in the circle of their affection and their love for their children, 90% of separations in marriage would cease to exist, for the same grounds of incompatibility which are adduced to obtain the separation of spouses are present in every form of shared life--between children and parents, among relatives, among brothers and sisters, and even among friends who have gathered together--and you do not make them so imposing as to arrive at a split.  And you break this bond, which is indissoluble in all respects, with the maximum facility.

You should never be unfaithful--never.  But this could be--not from My standpoint, but from yours--the only motive for a separation.  For the Supernatural One says 'If one of the two is already at fault, it is twice as much the duty of the other to be faithful so as not to deprive the children of affection and respect.  The parents' affection for their children, and the children's affection for their parents.  And the man or woman who, unable to forgive, sends away the guilty party and remains alone, then finds it hard to remain alone and passes on, in turn, to illicit loves whose consequences are felt in the immediate present of the children and their future morality.'  I thus say, 'It is not licit for man, for any reason, it is not licit for the Christian to separate what a Sacrament has joined in the Name of Christ.'

But I do not want to speak to you about this.  I want to speak to you, soul of Mine, who are joined not to a man, but to God, with the offering of charity which He has accepted.  I want to speak to your sister souls in total love for Me.

When the bride leaves her parents' home then, and becomes the wife of the man she loves, she rises to a greater degree of love.  They are no longer two who love one another.  They are one loving himself in his double.  One loves himself reflected in the other, for love fastens them into such a tight knot that the joy unnuls personality, and the two individuals relish a single joy.

These correspond to the first two periods in mystical betrothal.  First you are loved and become fond of God, who loves you.  You then penetrate into a higher love and rejoice in His joys, which become yours.  But this is not the perfection of the bride.  I have already told you this and now repeat it to you in response to your question.  'Why, now, do You no longer speak those words of such secure peace, of such an affirmative promise that You would spare me certain pains?'  you asked a short time ago while rereading the pages in October.

O Maria!  Why?   Because I have taken you higher.

Men accuse Me of repeating Myself in My statements.  But if I must repeat Myself with you, that are entirely intent on listening to Me and seem to Me like a little bird in its nest with its mouth wide open, waiting for the food which its father offers it--your food, which is My Word--how can I fail to repeat Myself when speaking for those who are not attentive to Me?  I must reiterate the same truths once, twice, a hundred or a thousand times to get a morsel of them into their hearts and arouse light there.  And if that light later goes out, I am not to blame, and they cannot accuse Me of their blindness.

Now I tell you this.  When the exciting period of love has passed, love matures into a dignified strength in both the man and the woman, shortly before nothing more than two inhabitants of the earth and later becoming one single flesh, and it makes them a father and a mother who love one another over a cradle and look at each other, saying, saying as God the Creator said on observing man, 'We have made a creature who is eternal, who belongs to the Heavens, to God'.  This is man's destiny, and if his will does not pervert it, this is his glorious goal.  But when they arrive at this perfect union, doesn't the wife also become a mother, sister, and friend to her husband?

Oh, what a sweet comfort for man is the woman able to love him with such perfection that he can convey all his thoughts to her and be sure they are understood and will find consolation!

Oh, blessed is the house where the sanctity of the Sacrament lives in the true sense of the word and produces an inexhaustible flowering of acts of love.  Not only love in the flesh, but more in the spirit.  A love which lasts and, indeed, grows, as the years and concerns grow.  A love which is true love.  For it is not limited to living for enjoyment, but embraces a spouse's pain and bears it with oneself to lighten its weight.

Do two who weep together love one another less than two who kiss each other and smile?  No, Maria.  They love another more.  A man shows he esteems his wife greatly if he entrusts everything about himself to her to receive her advice and comfort.  A woman shows she loves her husband greatly if she is able to understand him in his thoughts  and willingly helps him to bear his concerns.  There will no longer be fiery kisses and words of poetry.  But there will be careses from soul to soul and secret words which spirits murmer to each other, giving one another the peace of true love.  Of true marriage.

Well then, soul of Mine.  You are now in this state.  With your love fused to Mine, you have given birth to children.  All those who have known Me, or known Me better, through your active love are children you have given Me.  You will meet them one day and rejoice.

Now that I love you many times more for every child you have given Me, now that I know that you love Me to the point of wanting to take upon yourself the cross of what I am concerned about, for the glory of your Lord spurs you more than your life.  I thus act with you as a Husband who is sure of his wife.  I no longer show you only a smile, but my tears as well.  I no longer caress you with roses, but impress roses of blood upon your heart, leaning against you My brow crowned with thorns; I no longer kiss you with My lips soaked in honey and wine, but with My mouth bitter with the venegar and gall which was My last beverage and with which there was mixed the acrid taste of the blood rising from My lungs, broken in the last death rattle.  If I treat you like this, it is because I regard you as a 'strong woman', in the biblical sense of the word.

Oh, how restful for Me to have hearts like these!  You generous ones who are able to love--give this rest to the Eternal Beggar, who goes on asking you for love and receives only indifference and offenses.  Give it to Me, Maria.  And do not be afraid that you have descended.  If you had the wings of an angel, you would always rise less swiftly than you do with the wings of generous love."

Written by Maria Valtorta.

http://valtorta.org/

Copyright 1998 by Centro Editoriale Valtortiano, srl, Isola del Liri, Italy.  All rights reserved in all countries.