I FEEL compelled anew to profusely devote most of this column to quotes because of the extreme importance of its message, no less than from Jesus Christ as conveyed to mystic Maria Valtorta. It’s all about the universal question that has, over time, created spiritual rebels and atheists: the question of pain, suffering, most especially those that befall the innocent, nay, innocent children.
If God is just, how can He allow the guiltless and helpless suffer?
Here, Valtorta writes about her witnessing a conversation between Jesus and Peter who complained about the difficulty of answering a mother asking why her young daughter had to die so painfully from an illness. Jesus replied as follows:
“Listen. It seems an injustice, but it is a great justice that the best should suffer on behalf of everybody. Now tell Me, Simon. What is the Earth?… The Earth is an altar, Simon. A huge altar. It was to be the altar of everlasting praise to its Creator. But the Earth is full of sin. Therefore, it must be the altar of endless expiation and sacrifice, on which the victims are consumed. The Earth, like the other worlds with which Creation is strewn, ought to sing psalms to God Who created it…
“Consider this, Simon. What benefit does God get from Creation? What profit? None. Creation does not make God greater, it does not sanctify Him, it does not make Him rich. He is infinite. He would have been so, even if Creation had never existed. But God-Love wanted to have love. And He created, to have love. God can get only love from Creation, and that love – which is intelligent and free only in angels and in men – is the glory of God, the joy of angels, the religion for men. The day that the great altar of the Earth should cease to give praises and entreaties of love, the Earth would cease existing. Because once love is extinguished, expiation would cease also, and the wrath of God would destroy the Earth that had become an earthly hell. So, the Earth must love, in order to exist.
“Also, the Earth must be the Temple that loves and prays with the intelligence of men. But which victims are always offered in the Temple? The pure, spotless, faultless victims. Those are the only victims agreeable to the Lord. They are the early fruits. Because the best things are to be given to the Father of the family, and the first fruits of everything, the choice things, are to be given to God, the Father of the human family.
“I said that the Earth has a double duty of sacrifice: that of praise, and that of expiation. Because Mankind that has spread over the Earth sinned in the First men, and continuously sins by adding – to the sin of estrangement from God – the other countless sins of his consent. These are to the voices of the world, of the flesh, and of Satan. A guilty, very guilty Mankind that, although he has likeness to God – having his own intelligence and divine help – is more and more sinful. Stars obey, plants obey, elements obey, animals obey – and they praise the Lord as best they can. Men do not obey the Lord, or praise the Lord, enough. Hence the necessity of victim-souls, that may love and expiate on behalf of everybody. They are the children who, innocent and unaware, pay the bitter punishment of sorrow, for those who can do nothing but sin. They are the saints, who willingly sacrifice themselves for everybody… “
(At this point, Peter underscores children as sufferers as a form of question to Jesus who replies as follows.)
“You mean those who cannot yet off er themselves… And do you know when God speaks in them? The language of God is spiritual. A soul understands it, and a soul has no age. Nay, I tell you that a child’s soul – as it is without malice, with regard to its capacity of understanding God – is more adult than the soul of an old sinner. I tell you, Simon, that you will live so long as to see many children teach adults, and even yourself, the wisdom of heroic love. But in those little ones who die for natural reasons, God acts directly, for motives of so high a love that I cannot explain to you…”
Peter asks further: “Is it right for me to say to someone who suffers, that sorrow is not a punishment, but a… grace, something like… like our vocation, beautiful even if toilsome, beautiful even if it may seem an unpleasant and sad thing to people who do not know?”
And Jesus replies: “Yes, you can say that, Simon. It is the truth. Sorrow is not a punishment, when one knows how to accept it and use it rightly. Sorrow is like a priesthood, Simon. A priesthood open to everybody. A priesthood that confers great power on the heart of God. It is a great merit. Sorrow, that was born at the same time as sin, can appease the Justice. Because God can also use – for good purposes – what Hatred created to give sorrow. I did not choose any other means to cancel the Sin. Because there is no means greater than this one.”
