Transcription
Dearest friends, welcome back to our session of reading and reflection on the writings of the servant of God, Louisa Picareta. And today I would like to continue the discussion we began last Saturday reflecting deeply on the essential virtue of humility and its direct and dangerous opposite, that is, the destructive vice of human pride.
I would like to start precisely with a passage from January 27th, 1900, where Jesus speaks to Louisa. "Just like all other virtues, every single virtue must be carefully ordered and arranged within the depths of the soul with each one residing in its own room. Because every virtue has its own, we could say, specific and unique spiritual task to help us flourish and grow throughout our entire earthly life. Spiritual life."
Louisa writes, "I continue to remain almost deprived of my Jesus. My life seems to fail me because of the pain. I feel a weariness, a fatigue with life." I kept saying to myself, "Oh, how long my exile has lasted. Oh, what happiness would be mine. If only I could break the bonds of this body, then my soul would be free to fly to my highest good."
Louisa, precisely because she has made her union with Jesus the purpose of her entire life, when she finds herself deprived of Jesus' presence, she falls into crisis, feels lost, and even wishes to break away from this life so she can always be with Jesus. But Louisa always writes, "A thought said to me, 'And what if you go to hell?' And I, so as not to call the devil to fight me, immediately hurried to say, 'Well, then even from hell, I will send my sighs to my sweet Jesus, even there, I want to love him.'"
And while I was caught up in these and other thoughts, which would take too long to recount them all, the lovable Jesus, he appeared to me for a short time, but with a serious expression, and said to me, "Your time has not yet come." And then, with an intellectual light, he made me understand, "Here is the discourse on virtues, that in the soul everything must be in order. The soul possesses many small chambers where each virtue takes its place. Although it can be said that a single virtue contains within itself all the others and that the soul by possessing just one comes to be adorned with all the other virtues. Nevertheless, they are all distinct from one another. So much so that each one has its own place in the soul. And so all virtues have their origin in the mystery of the most holy trinity because while it is one, it is also three distinctly. And while it is three, it is one. And I also understood that these chambers in the soul are either filled with virtue or with the vice opposed to that virtue. And if there is neither virtue nor vice, they remain empty. To me, it truly seemed like a vast house with many different rooms, all of which were completely empty. Yet, I realized that one of those specific rooms is actually full of snakes. Another is filled with heavy mud. Another contains some old furniture covered in layers of dust. And yet another is entirely dark and cold. Ah, my dear Lord, only you have the power to put my poor soul back into perfect order."
Here is an incredibly interesting and profound reflection that Louisa makes regarding the various virtues and the specific rightful place that those virtues should always have within our soul. Virtues are fundamentally essential. We can truly say that they are absolutely vital and indispensable for making our life grow and mature, not only our spiritual life but through the very essence of our spiritual life, also our human life. This is because virtues are deeply connected to the daily behaviors we exhibit in our world and in the specific way we relate to our close friends and interpersonal connections. In her interactions with others, Louisa specifically explains and emphasizes that virtues are diverse and multifaceted because they have different roles from one another, but every single one of them must dwell in a perfectly orderly way within the human soul.
And this too is interesting. Either there is vice or there is virtue. And so it really all depends on how we choose to live these virtues. If we turn them into vices, that is, if we distance ourselves from the teachings that are given to us by the word of God, by the Lord, regarding these virtues, when we stray from them, they become vices that instead of filling our lives, ruin them. They are like a bad mood within our lives.
Jesus begins, let's move on to the next passage from January 28th, 1900, to speak about an important tool that helps virtues remain as such, to prevent them from becoming their opposites, to prevent them from living within us as their opposites. So, as vices. And this tool is mortification.
Now, on this point, we need to pause. Let's take a moment to understand what mortification is. Certainly, Jesus will explain it well in a moment, and Louisa will also share what she has understood about mortification. But we need to start from this premise. When we talk about mortification, we always see it from a negative perspective. Instead, in the spiritual experience, and especially in the mystical experience, mortification is a tool through which the soul is purified. It is about living through what happens to me. A humiliation, precisely a mortification, as that instrument which puts me to the test, and the test is what purifies my life.
This is also present in the experience of the people of Israel. If we look at the journey that the people of Israel made from leaving Egypt to the promised land, there is that period of 40 years when the people wandered in the desert, lived in the desert, of course. And this is experienced by the people as a trial, as a moment in which they refined their relationship with the Lord. In fact, there is that admonition that the Jew must continually repeat, "Remember the journey that the Lord made you take in Egypt. He put you to the test. He made you walk among serpents, but to purify you, to lead you to the land, the promised land, that is the fulfillment of God's plan, of that promise that God had made to Abraham."
So I think that we too must learn to look beyond mortifications in this sense. That is, accept them because they are part of our lives. We cannot, so to speak, avoid them because they come to us. Life itself gives us these mortifications. But everything depends on the way we experience them. So I think that Louisa really teaches us to take everything negative, everything negative that we experience in our lives, and to live it as a trial, as that very instrument, mortification, that refines my spiritual life, purifies it, makes it more like that of Jesus, and gives me the strength to face all difficulties as well.
But as always, let's leave the floor to Louisa and to Jesus.
"I continue in the same way. This morning, Jesus transported me outside of myself. After such a long time, it seemed that I saw him clearly, but I felt so wicked that I did not dare to say a single word. We looked at each other, but in silence, in those glances, mutually. I understood that my good Jesus was full of bitterness, but I did not dare to ask him to pour it into me. And he himself came closer to me and began to pour it out. And I, unable to contain it, as soon as I received it, I cast it to the ground. Then he said to me, 'But what are you doing? Don't you want to share in my bitterness? Don't you want to give me relief in my sufferings?' And I said, 'Lord, it is not my will. It is not myself. What has happened to me? I feel so full that I have nowhere to contain it. Only one of your miracles can enlarge my interior more, and then I will be able to receive your bitterness.' And Jesus marked me with a great sign of the cross and poured out again. So it seems that I was able to contain them."
Here, Louisa continues, as we now know, to carry out her role as a victim. Jesus asked her if she wanted to share with him in the sufferings and to receive the bitterness that came from creatures, from the sins of creatures. It is she, for the love of Jesus and for the love of creatures, she offers herself as a victim. But there are so many that, in fact, she can no longer contain them. And so, when Jesus pours these bitternesses into her and they fall to the ground, it is not because Louisa does not want them, does not want to experience them, but because she is already full. So then the Lord, by making that sign of the cross, frees her. Yes, he empties her of those bitternesses so that he can fill her even more. In this way, Louisa can continue to carry out her role as a victim.
And here are Jesus' words regarding mortification. Jesus says, "My daughter, mortification is like fire. It dries up all the humors." In the same way, mortification dries up all the bad humors that are in the soul and it floods her with a sanctifying humor so as to make the most beautiful virtues blossom.
Here is the positive aspect of mortification. It is the instrument you have in your hands to be able to live what life gives you as a means to purify and refine your own life. I repeat, mortifications. We do not need to go looking for them because life itself already takes care of giving them to us. But we have this great opportunity. All these mortifications, these negative experiences, instead of discouraging us, instead of leading us to this attitude of constant complaining, complaining about everything, about everyone, and that's not good. Instead, let's live them as a test, as an opportunity I have to take this suffering that hurts me. Okay? It's bitter. It hurts me. But it is capable, as Jesus says, of removing all the bad humors in my soul and filling them with sanctifying humors. Ultimately, it is a powerful tool in our hands. Okay? And if we truly want to, we can certainly use this versatile tool for that specific purpose. It's a pity that so often we don't use mortification in this way, but instead, we use it as a weapon that wounds us even more because we say, "Not only do I have my own sufferings, now I have to deal with this too." And so our suffering increases, and our self-esteem decreases. Then it leads us further and further into the abyss.
Let us look. Here is the invitation the Lord makes to us. Let us look at mortification from another point of view, or rather, from God's point of view, who wants everything, as St. Paul says, to work together for good. And so, even these negative experiences, if we live them, if we, if we choose to interpret these challenges as an invaluable opportunity for growth and not as a mere distraction or temptation, then a profound transformation can truly occur in our lives.
And so we now come to the specific passage from January 31st in the year 1900, where Jesus speaks deeply about the nature of grace and how, in actual fact, this divine grace can truly dwell within the human soul whenever there is a sincere and faithful correspondence. Humility is the essential and sacred passport to enter the kingdom of grace. As we were saying earlier, it is about graciously welcoming these small daily mortifications that make the soul humble, seeing them as the very instruments that God's divine grace has given me to transform my entire life into something far more beautiful and radiant.
"After he had come several times, but always in silence, I felt an emptiness and a sorrow because I did not hear the sweetest voice of my Jesus. And he, returning almost to please me, said to me, 'Grace is the life of the soul.' Just as the soul gives life to the body, so grace gives life to all for the soul. But it is simply not sufficient for the human body to have life just by possessing the soul alone. It also requires consistent nourishment and sustenance in order to develop and expand to its full and intended physical stature. And so it is for the soul. It is not enough to have grace to have life. It also needs food to nourish it and bring it to its proper stature."
And what is this food? Jesus asks. Interesting. The spiritual nourishment and sustenance that allows the divine and sanctifying grace of God to flourish and take deep root within our souls is found in our active and faithful correspondence to His holy will. Divine grace and faithful correspondence form that interconnected and sacred chain which steadfastly guides the human soul toward the gates of heaven. And as the soul diligently corresponds to this call, grace goes on forming the links of this chain.
Here is the answer. "Are you struck by life, by the negative experiences of life, by suffering, by pain? Cultivate correspondence with the grace of God because this makes grace grow within you and allows you to face and overcome these difficult moments. On the other hand, when there is a lack of correspondence to the grace of God, seeing everything as if God has abandoned me, as if God has punished me, chastised me, or left me. In this state, there is a lack of correspondence. This bond is missing. In everything, we must always seek the bond with Jesus because he is our strength. 'The Lord is my light, my salvation,' says the psalm. 'Of whom shall I be afraid?' 'The Lord is the support of my life.' 'Of whom shall I be afraid?' This is correspondence. This is what the Lord expects from us. Of course, he doesn't send us these things. They are part of our lives. But he tells you, 'Look at them as the tools you have in your hands to overcome them, to go beyond.' And the nourishment for the grace of God that is already within you is correspondence."
And then he added, "What is the passport to enter into the kingdom of grace?" Here it is. Humility. "The soul," says Jesus, "always looking at its own nothingness, knowing that by ourselves we can do nothing. We hope, we want to solve everything ourselves, but we are not able to solve anything because on our own we are not capable of doing anything because evil is much stronger than our own strength. So Jesus says, 'The soul always looking at its own nothingness and realizing it is nothing but dust. So you are nothing. But this being nothing of yours should not serve to discourage you even more. Instead,' he says, 'you should place all your trust in grace.' So much so that it makes her master, and grace taking possession of the whole soul leads her along the path of all virtues and brings her to the summit of perfection."
Consider the vast range of possibilities we have when we are forced to face the profound evil that strikes us, that deeply wounds our spirits, and that seeks to humiliate us. If we choose to respond with grace, but above all, if we truly bring humility into play, then we will find that this is the ultimate passport. Humility allows us to enter into the grace of God and to let the grace of God work within us so that when faced with evil, evil can do nothing. Evil vanishes. It disappears in the presence of God's grace. This is why in times of difficulty, we must turn to the Lord. We turn to the Lord so that he will solve everything. But here Jesus says, "No, you must come to me. You must come so that the grace of God may enter into you, into each one of us, and let it take charge. Our lives must be taken over by the grace of God. And then, yes, grace can oppose evil. It can stand against all difficulties."
And so Louisa, faced with these words of Jesus about grace, about correspondence, and about humility, reflects on them. "And who will the soul be without grace?" Louisa asked herself. "It seemed to me like a body without a soul, which becomes foul-smelling and produces worms and decay everywhere, to the point of becoming an object of horror even to human eyes. In the same way, the soul without grace becomes so abominable as to be horrifying, not to the eyes of men, but to the eyes of God thrice holy. Ah, Lord, deliver me from such disaster and from the abominable monster of sin."
Here, Louisa has understood this teaching of Jesus. She has understood that mortification, as well as responding to the grace of God, and above all, humility, are the paths that allow God to dwell within us. And this is the beginning of that life in the divine will which Jesus will later explain even more clearly to Louisa in the following volumes, especially in volumes 13, 14, and 15, where it speaks of acting in the divine will, or rather, in the divine vol, that is, in the divine will at work in the life of man. These are the prerequisites. If there is no correspondence, if there is not a life lived in humility, a life of grace as a consequence, if this is lacking, we cannot think that we can live in the divine will.
Let us learn from these first steps. These first volumes, we are only at the third out of 36, but the first 10 volumes are very important because they are like the foundation. And then we discover that the foundation is the normal Christian life. These are not new things being told to us that Jesus says to Louisa. These are things that are part of the heritage of the spiritual tradition of the Church. Jesus does nothing but tell Louisa, and through Louisa's writings, tells us, "Don't go looking for who knows what path or solution." As we Christians often do, we latch on to the first guru, the first apparitions that seem amazing, and then we throw ourselves into that. He says, "No, take what is the ordinary life of faith, the life according to the virtues. Start from there because if you build your foundations well there, then you will be able to understand the gift that I want to give by letting you live in the divine will." So we are at the basics. We are taking the first steps, but these are fundamental.
Louisa's experience is yes, an extraordinary experience, but it is an experience that the Lord, Lord made Louisa go through. But the beauty of these writings is not that we have to do everything she did. Louisa, do we have to stay in bed like Louisa did? Do we have to suffer as Louisa suffered? That is her experience, which is unique, and no one, in fact, we would be mistaken if we tried to have the same experience as Louisa. However, through Louisa, Jesus shows us the way, the method, which is to start from a solid Christian life, a Christian life anchored in Jesus and in his word. And so we can see that the Lord, gradually and step by step, just as he did with Louisa, can construct a magnificent and holy edifice, the very house where God truly desires to dwell, to dwell there, because life in the divine will is absolutely nothing else besides the experience of living with God, for God, and eternally in God.
So at this point, let us continue together with our reading of Louisa's writings, and then we shall move forward to explore the passage from the fourth day of February in the year 1900. Here, in fact, Jesus explains in great detail to the servant of God, Louisa Picareta, exactly what happens when the human soul does not live according to the divine grace of God, or rather, when the soul does not live in a state of perfect correspondence with that same grace of God, and the tragic consequences that follow, which is precisely discouragement, lack of confidence.
February 4th, 1900. "Finding myself in my usual state, in a state full of discouragement." So it's not as if Louisa was exempt. She too experienced moments of discouragement, just as we all do. But those moments, Jesus takes advantage of them to give her important teachings. If only we too could have this openness toward the Lord, so that even in these moments, we could hear his voice, his word, which is comfort, which is encouragement, which is support for our life.
"Finding myself in a state full of discouragement, especially because of being deprived of my highest good. This morning, as he appeared to me, he immediately said, 'Discouragement is a contagious mood. It infects the most beautiful flowers and the most pleasing fruits and penetrates all the way down to the root. So that this infectious mood invading the whole tree makes it wither and become bleak. And if it is not remedied by watering it with the opposite mood, since that bad mood has reached even the root, it dries it out and it makes the tree fall to the ground. The same happens to the soul that soaks up this infectious mood of discouragement.'"
These are deeply significant and life-giving words. They are truly a great help to us all if we accept them into our hearts when we fall into the trap of discouragement. It's true that everything becomes infected and everything starts to rot because there is no longer any perspective left. We begin to see everything as utterly dark. We see everything as being completely over, and everything is finished. We find ourselves with no hope, and we live in a state of deep despair, which is the exact opposite of the hope we are called to have.
Here is where Jesus tells us, "Let's be careful because when the soul lives in discouragement, in the end, it's like a tree. When it absorbs that bad sap, it reaches the roots, causes rot, and makes the tree fall."
And Louisa, despite all this, "I still felt discouraged, completely withdrawn into myself. And I saw myself as so bad that I didn't dare to reach out to my sweet Jesus. My mind was so preoccupied that for me it was useless to hope as I once did. His constant visits, his graces, his gifts for me, everything was over." And he, almost scolding me. That's why Louisa, even while listening to Jesus teaching, to Jesus' words that wanted to support her in her ongoing discouragement, now Jesus begins to reproach her a little. "What are you doing? What are you doing? Don't you know that lack of trust makes the soul languish? Thinking that it must die, it no longer thinks about anything, neither about gaining, nor about putting things to use, nor about humbling its own life to remedy her ailments. She thinks of nothing else but that for her, it's all over."
He is describing not only Louisa's soul in that moment but also many situations that we experience ourselves. It's true, when we lack trust, we lack everything. It seems like everything is over, that everything is ending, that there is no more hope. But if we keep following these thoughts, it's over. And not only that, Jesus continues, "It makes the soul moribund, but distrust brings all the virtues close to dying as well. It is the poison that taints even the most beautiful virtues we possess. It ruins them. It doesn't, it doesn't give them that, that, that nourishment that makes them grow because the grace of God is missing. Because we have driven grace away from our lives. We've kept it far from us."
And here is Louisa. Our Lord, I imagine seeing this spectre, the spectre of distrust, gaunt, emaciated, fearful, and trembling all over. And all its cunning lies not in any other cleverness, but solely in fear, and in leading the soul to the grave. But what is worse is that this spectre does not present itself as an enemy in such a way that the soul can mock its words or its fear, but rather it appears as a friend and slips so gently into the soul.
How many times do we, this is self-pity, that is, we constantly feel sorry for ourselves, "Poor thing, of course, all sorts of things are happening to you one after another, you really have been abandoned." And on this deep sense of overwhelming self-pity, we settle in and start slowly digging and building our very own metaphorical grave because it keeps dragging us further down into a dark place and it drains our motivation while constantly discouraging us from moving forward. But more than this, that spectre, in fact, does not appear as an enemy. We become friends with our fears, friends with our self-pity. And as Louisa says, this infiltrates so gently into the soul that if the soul is not careful, seeing it as a faithful friend who suffers and even dies together, it will hardly be able to free itself from its cunning mastery. And then you enter into this continuous cycle.
So I would like to conclude with this passage from February 5th, 1900, where Jesus explains to Louisa that virtue needs its own opposition in order to be strengthened in its exercise of being virtue.
"Continuing in the same state with a bit more courage, but not completely free. My dearest Jesus, upon coming to me, said, 'My daughter, sometimes the soul feels an obstacle in some virtue, and the soul, by making an effort, overcomes that obstacle. Then the virtue becomes more radiant and more deeply rooted in the soul. But the human soul must exercise extreme caution to avoid herself handing over the very rope to be tightly bound and constrained by, that is, by her own deep distrust. And she will do this by always remaining within, never leaving the circle of truth.'"
Here Jesus says to Louisa, "The struggle in virtues must serve as a stimulus for you." So I think that the message these passages we've listened to today, that we've read together and commented on together, carry is a positive one. Even though they speak about realities that are negative for us, they help us understand that our life must be a life of struggle, but not a struggle we face alone. They invite us to struggle together with God, to live all our experiences together with him. We want God only for the good things. But instead, the Lord fights alongside us even in negative experiences. And he shows us the way, mortification, the means, humility, and the right attitude. God's grace must be nourished by this humility, by our response, not by discouragement.
So, dear friends, let us part with this invitation. When faced with negative experiences that make us suffer in life, instead of distancing ourselves from Jesus, let us seek Jesus, not so that he will solve our problems, but so that the Lord may come to be with us and fight alongside us, just as he was able to fight.
May almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. I wish you a pleasant rest of the day, a good Saturday, and see you on the third Saturday of August.