"When Christ came into the world," says the Letter to the Hebrews, He said: "Behold, I come...to do Thy Will, O God" (10:7). The New Adam thus came to undo by His total obedience to God's Will -- even unto death -- the First Adam's death-bearing disobedience with all its other disastrous consequences for his posterity and for creation. It is therefore not surprising that in any revelations which Christ gives to His "voices", His prophets of today, teachings on obedience will figure prominently.

So it is in the mystical revelations of the great contemporary Italian mystic, Maria Valtorta (1897-1961†). Throughout her mystical revelations, teachings by Christ on obedience are often to be found. The three selections presented here therefore are compiled, among others, from three separate Dictations given Valtorta under the dates indicated. They have been translated for this presentation from the book of her revelations collected under the title I Quaderni del 1944 ("Notebooks for 1944"). Perhaps this sampling of the Master's instructions on a fundamental virtue of His own life on earth and, hence, of Christian discipleship, will inspire readers toward its cultivation and further reading of the immense treasures of Christian teaching bequeathed us in Valtorta's writings.

"I WANT to have you consider, Maria,² -- and with you many others -- a virtue³ from which there has come a great good: the greatest good. While from its opposite there has come so much evil: the greatest evil. I have talked to you already about it, but your suffering has not let you recall the words. I repeat them to you because it is important to Me that you have them.

Having loved all of you infinitely, I wanted to be your Redeemer. But I was not that only through Wisdom, nor through Power, nor even through Charity. These are three characteristics, three Divine endowments, all of which acted in the Redemption of the human race: because they instructed you, they jolted you with miracles, they redeemed you with the Sacrifice.

But I was Man. Being Man, I had to possess that virtue whose loss had lost man, and to redeem you with it. Man was lost for having disobeyed the desire of God. I, Man, had to save you by obeying the desire of God.

Paul says that I, 'having offered up prayers and supplications with loud shouts and tears in the days of My mortal life,' to save man from spiritual death, 'was heard for My reverence⁴.' And he adds that, having reached perfection through having learned (that is accomplished) through obedience, I became the cause of eternal salvation for all those who are obedient to Me.

Paul says then, with words which the Spirit verifies, that I, Son of God made Man, reached perfection with obedience, and through this fact I could be Redeemer. I, Son of God: I reached perfection with obedience. I redeemed with obedience.

If you meditate profoundly on this truth, you should experience what one experiences who, lying prone above a deep inlet of the sea, stares at its depths and at the immensity of the sea, and seems to sink into this liquid abyss of which he knows neither its depths nor limits.

Obedience! A sea, limitless and abysmal, in which I plunged Myself before any of you, in order to bring back to the Light those who had been shipwrecked in guilt. A sea into which the true sons of God must plunge themselves to be redeemers both of themselves and of their brothers. A sea which has not only great depths and great waves, but also low shores and light wavelets which seem to frolic with the sands of the beach, so dear to babes who play with them.

Obedience is not practiced only in those great hours in which to obey is to die, as I had done; in which to obey is to tear oneself from a Mother, as I had done; in which to obey is to renounce one's own dwelling, as I had done in leaving Heaven for all of you. Obedience is practiced also in the small things of each hour, accomplished without grumbling, and little by little as they are presented to you.

What is the wind? Always a whirlwind? which bows down the tops of age-old trees and bends them, breaks them, fells them to the ground? No. It is also the wind when, lighter than a maternal caress, it combs the grasses of the meadows and the tasseled grain and makes them ripple, just as if on top of their green stalks they quivered slightly for joy at being brushed by that light wind. The little things are the light wind of obedience. But how much good they do you!

It is Springtime now. If blood did not make it ugly,⁵ how sweet this season would be! The plants, the trees are putting on their new garments made of emerald and like brides, dress themselves up with flowers. The meadows seem an embroidery, a velvet quilted with flowers. The woods a plush fabric, sweet-scented beneath a vault of green and singing crests. But if there were not the delicate winds of April, and even the mad gusts of March, how many flowers would remain unfertilized and how many meadows without water! Flowers and grasses would then be born only to die without any goal. The wind pushes the clouds and thus it moistens them; the wind makes the flowers kiss, it brings to distant flowers the kiss of those afar off; and with its joyful running from branch to branch, from tree to tree, from orchard to orchard, fertilizes and makes those flowers become fruit.

So also the little obedience to all the little things which God presents to you through the happenings of the day, does what the wind does with the plants and grasses of the meadows and the gardens. Of each of you, the flowers, it makes fruits. Fruits of eternal life.

Most blessed those who, caught by the whirlwind of Love, and of their own love, consummate the total sacrifice of self, those little redeemers who perpetuate Me, who complete the supreme obedience by drinking My same chalice of suffering. But blessed also those who, not having the bravery to say to the whirlwind of Love: 'I love You, here I am, take me,' yet know how to bend themselves to the light wind of Love which knows how to regulate Its force for man, Its son, and how to give to each just that much pressure that it is possible to endure.

It seems to you, O sons -- and never as now does it seem to you -- that the trial⁶ is so much above your strength. But it is because you stiffen yourselves. It is because you are proud and distrustful. You want to do for yourselves and do not abandon yourselves to Me. I am not an executioner. I am He Who loves you. I am a good Father. And if I cannot annul Justice, to compensate I increase Mercy. So much the more do I increase It as Justice grows the more from the swamp of crimes, blasphemies and disobedience to My Law which cover the earth.

You are shipwrecked on earth. The innocent, the nearly innocent, the guilty, the greatly guilty: you are shipwrecked there. But if for these last the end of their shipwreck will be at the bottom with Satan (such is the end of their life with the tearing to pieces of their conscience that bites them and gives them no peace, despite their pretending to have it), --for the other two categories, their end will be in My Mercy: it is in My Mercy for the nearly innocent, and it is in My Heart for the innocent. But [My] Mercy and Heart are already Heaven and for these latter, after the consolations on earth which I do not deny them -- and you know it, Maria -- Heaven is prepared.

I said something else to your spirit, Maria, but your spirit was unable to make your exhausted flesh write it, and [so] I repeat it to you.

In all this teaching of Mine there is not a lesson or vision given in which I do not follow an educational plan of Mine which none of you understand, or you understand it slowly and partially. If you meditated with the lucidity of intuition, your would see that the lessons which I give to you all with the Dictations or Contemplations of My mouthpiece⁷ are always related to imminent events soon to come. I act thus to give you supernatural help. These pages, given so that the world may not go completely mad, will do much good for souls even in the future, because they contain teachings of an eternal Science. But for all of you living in this fatal hour, they are also a guide and comfort for these hours in which you live.

You too, like Paul's first Christians, 'have become a little feeble in understanding... and you have again a need to be taught anew the first rudiments of the Word of God, reduced as you are to having the need of milk and not of solid food (Heb. 5:12).' You have turned back again into babies, not through innocence and simplicity, not through a sure faith, but through your incapacity to walk in faith and to understand its truths.

You have so regressed! The words of Justice are only a sound that strikes your ear and sometimes your ear does not even perceive it. You do not make of it a food of Life. You cannot make it that because you do not assimilate it. Through your culpable indifference, through your culpable sympathy with your fault, your spirit is struck by infantilism and no longer has that [digestive] juice that renders it capable of taking its nourishment from the robust food of adults in the faith. Either you have no religion, or you have a religion made up of a choreography of practices and sentimentality.

But do you know what that word means: 'Religion'? It means to follow God and His Laws, not just to sing beautiful hymns, to make beautiful processions, have beautiful functions, to go to elegant sermons, to be member A or B of such and such an association. --All things which titillate your feelings. --And nothing more.

Religion means making of an animal-man, a man who is a demi-god. Through religion it is necessary to annul that animality which in its various forms comes from the flesh into thought. Down with gluttony, down with lust, away with avarice, down with laziness, let lying and pride be slain. Be chaste, charitable, humble, honest: be, in short, as God wants you and as I taught you to be. Then you will be adults in religion, in faith, you will have become men, having 'your faculties trained for the discernment of good and of evil⁸.'

It is for this reason that, leaving aside elementary teaching, I come to instruct you all on what is most perfect, because I want to bring you to it. You are few: those of you who hunger for Justice, for Truth, for Wisdom. But for these, My blessed ones, I give a bread which helps them to taste always better the other Bread which I am: the Eucharistic-Me. Even in My public life I made the bread of the Word precede the bread of the Sacrament ⁹. It is always the former which must prepare for this Latter. The teaching Church is there for this reason: to perpetuate My ministry as Master and to make all of you capable of drawing from the Sacrament the maximum of vital power.

Woe therefore to those who, after being illumined, prefer to return to the darkness. Woe to those who, after having tasted this Heavenly food, prefer the scraps of Satan. Woe to those who, after having been made aware of the Truth of the Holy Spirit, turn back into brute beasts, profaning themselves. It is not possible for them, after having hurled themselves down, to return to repentance. Because if I am so forgiving of man's weakness, I am yet inexorable toward whoever remains in Evil after having spontaneously chosen Evil as his king.

And those of you to whom I give a taste of the sweetness of the Word of God which is newly poured out to provide for too much priestly silence, for too many tepid ashes just where there should be a living fire, and which is poured out to neutralize in My new disciples the venom of Satan which circulates on Earth, you for whom I raise even the veils of the secrets of My day as Man and on the mysteries of the future age, --you be worthy of the gift. Become ears of grain and not dry straw ready for the fire. Ears for the eternal Granary. Be reborn in Heaven.

Oh! Joy of being out of the world! Joy of being where God is! When after having exhaled My spirit, I was able to return to see the Father, I tasted a bliss as I had never tasted from all eternity. And it perdures because I know, now, what it means to be separated from Heaven, from God. I have suffered all experiences in Myself. In order to be able to defend each of you near the Most High. But truly I say to you that My own bliss will be yours when you are here, out of exile, with Me, near the Father, in the Fatherland of Love.

--Of Love, sons. There where there is no more hate and crime, no more weeping and terror."

"WHEN you saw the eternal Paradise, Maria, you asked why souls just formed had gradations of different color¹¹.

It is not that these spiritual soul-sparks really have a color. But in order that your senses could understand it, and your attention take notice of it, and your reason ask about its truth, this sensible variety of color was shown to you. But it should serve only to make you ask: 'Why such differences if the Source is One?'.

God the Creator is unlimited in His power. God the Creator is perfect in His creating. God the Creator is foreseeing in His works.

He did not make only the stars for the sky. They would have served only for your nights. He did not make only the moon for a planet. It would have served only to indicate to you the passing of the months. He did not make only the sun, or only so many suns. They would have burned there, shining night and day without interruption.

But He made the sun for the day and had regulated the rotation of the other planets around it so that by means of guiding laws, these latter would have regulated light and warmth. He made the moon for the first measure of time, and so that it might regulate the tides and other more intimate creative laws. He made the stars so that you might have a compass in the dark nights.

He did not make only the grasses of the meadow. Nor only the harvests of the field. Nor only the vine and the olive tree, nor only the fruit trees. But He made both these and those and combined for you the trees of pleasure, [with] the flowers, the useful trees which give you wood for your houses, the medicinal plants which give you necessary juices to heal your illnesses.

He did not make only the peaceful ruminating animals, but also the swift horses. Nor only the birds, but also the [various] fishes. Nor only the easily domesticated animals, but also those which in their wild life are useful for cleansing fields and forests. Even the serpent, the cursed serpent loaded with venom, is useful for this venom which cures some of the most painful infirmities.

And all these species obey the reason for which they were made, the order which was given them. From the sun to the gnat, there is not one which says: 'I want to do what I like.' But with the voice of their heat if they are stars, of their saps if trees or plants, with sound if they are animals, with their darting about if animals without voice like the fish, they all say: 'Yes, Creator, here we are. You made us for "this," and we do "this" for Your glory.'

Think, O men, what would happen if the earth, an immense bolide, balked, and did not want to plow its trajectory through the heavens anymore? Behold: one hemisphere would burn and the other would freeze. Over one there would be eternal darkness, and therefore death for animal and vegetable life from the darkness and the cold. Over the other would be eternal light and heat, and therefore death for life through the excess of life and warmth.

Think, O men, if the sheep did not give you wool anymore, the cows their milk, the fruit trees, and so on. And yet if animals, plants and stars followed your example, the chaos would make you perish in an inconceivable horror. But now all, except you, proceed in the order they have from God.

As the Creator, provides for this [order], so He provides for order with regard to humanity. His Most Holy Mind thinks that for the good of the earth there are needed so many thinkers, so many scientists, so many warriors, so many laborers and , with regard to temperaments: so many bold men, so many meek, so many active, so many contemplatives. And so on.

[When] souls cease to animate a body they return to God to be destined according to their merits. God creates new souls to maintain the number of creatures which should populate the earth: the first operation of Divine order. The second is that of creating, according to the need that He sees, this special category rather than another, whence all may be harmonious in the race and one may serve the other like the teeth of one gear serve a neighboring gear, making the gigantic machine move without wear and without harm.

Thus does God do. And if you men would obey thus, according as He has ordained, all would proceed. But you rebel.

Who among you is content with his lot? No one. At least, very few. Always restless, ruled by passions, forgetting God, or very lukewarm in fervor: see how you follow the voices of disorder and create disorder.

The first disorder is in your rebellion to the Divine Law which says to you: 'Love and respect God, serve Him only, love and respect your parents, do not steal, do not murder, do not slander, do not be corrupt.'¹² From this initial disorder springs all other misfortunes, and you become slaves of yourselves, or of one among you who abusively proclaims himself to be what he is not. This you become for not having wanted to be -- not slaves -- but sons of a Father than Whom none is more good.

Consider that even the angels have different tasks. This one, for example, is a Guardian for a man, and that one an Announcer, and that other one an adoring Seraph. So then, do not be the only ones in all that was created who want to govern yourselves according to your miserable will.

'Our Father..., Thy Will be done.'¹³Thus says the soul just created, and if later it is true that the Original Fault injects it with the opposing will of the rebel Lucifer, it is also a truth of Faith that the Sacrament of Baptism returns all of youl to the whiteness of your Heavenly beginning, and the Holy Spirit confirms you in it, and the Eucharist fortifies you in it.

Disown, then, the voices of whatever comes from concupiscence and return, return, return to obedience. Unite yourselves to the joyous stars in their obeying, to the flowers and to the crops, to the trees and to the animals, all cheerful in their obedience -- oh! how superior to you in this! -- and desire to follow the way which God has assigned each of you.

And do not say: 'How can I know it?'. If from your tenderest years you remain faithful, the way will sparkle before you like a golden ribbon. If, after going astray, you 'want' to follow it, it will shine again. Because God is good and wants your good, individually and collectively. He is ready to forgive and to help your moral and spiritual resurrections.

Those varied colors [of souls], Maria, were meant to make you understand that not from God comes the uncounted souls of this or that category -- a fact that makes you suffer. They are souls who spontaneously leave the class in which the Lord had placed them and disturb the harmony of human fellowship, following appetites the least wicked of which are those that are only egotistical, so that they might have relative well-being. While the most culpable [appetites] are those which, even just to be satisfied, tear their fellowmen to shreds by annihilating their liberty, affections, faith. An avalanche moved by Satan in hatred of God."

[John 9:31]                                                                                                        [July 28, 1944]¹⁴

"The power of doing the Will of God! It makes God unable to deny us anything. It cannot be said, given the majesty of the Lord, that He makes Himself a servant of the obedient man, but it truly does seem that before His obedient servant, the Most High wants to surpass him in promptness, and in all that is good He hears his servant with prompt solicitude.

It is not many prayers which obtain [an answer]. It is doing the Will of God. Prayer, and resistance to this Will, means rendering one's prayers null. How can you in justice demand that God bend Himself to your will which desires one thing, when you do not bend yourselves to the desire of His [Will] which asks you for another thing?

Think how powerful over the Heart of God is obedience to His Will: I Myself did not redeem you with any act of My own. I would have been able to, since I was God as the Father, and all is possible to God. I would therefore have been able with only a word to cancel out the guilt of the world, just as I canceled out sickness, sin and death for individuals. But in order to teach man to turn back into a son of God, I, God become Man, had wanted to redeem by obedience to the Will of God. And consider what kind of obedience was Mine! When I had totally consummated it -- totally -- then Heaven was opened upon fallen man and Forgiveness came forth from It.

Disobedience had disinherited man, while obedience made him again an heir of God. All that is eternal and infinite was yours anew through obedience.

Learn therefore the way to be heard: 'To do the Will of God for love of Him.'

Go in peace."

  1. Maria Valtorta, I Quaderni Del 1944 (Edizioni Pisani / Centro Editoriale Valtortiano srl, Via Po 95, 03036 Isola del Liri [FR], Italia, 1985): 261-265.

  2. Christ is here addressing Valtorta, and her future readers.

  3. "A virtue..." --the Italian here is "virtu" and comes from the Latin "virtus" whence also derives our English "virtue." The Latin, like the English, etymologically means "strength" or "power," "virility."

  4. Hebrews 5:7. The bible version quoted here by Christ is an old Italian version used by Valtorta. [Interestingly, Christ here cites "Paul" as the author of Hebrews, whereas most modern biblical scholars today disclaim St. Paul's authorship of this Epistle.] --Trans.

  5. A reference to the blood being shed in the 2nd World War then in progress.

  6. A probable reference again to the 2nd World War which was then devastating Italy.

  7. "My mouthpiece" --Christ is referring here of course to Valtorta.

  8. Hebrews 5:14.

  9. Luke 24:27-31.

10. Maria Valtorta, op. cit., 398-400.

11. Christ is addressing Valtorta here, referring to a previous Vision He had given her on May 25, 1944.

12. See Exodus 20:1-17; Deuteronomy 5, 6-22.

13. Matthew 6:10.

14. Maria Valtorta, op. cit., 553-554.