IT TAKES some grace to understand why we on earth, especially children, can’t escape suffering in various ways. Parents in hospitals waiting for the outcome of a surgery being done on their children pray to God, but often with some rebelliousness in their hearts asking why must their innocent toddler bear the pain of some illness. Not to mention those children forcibly taken away from their parents at the US-Mexico border; those literally blown to pieces in wars; those slowly being eaten away by death because of hunger?
Suffering has always been a staple in the arguments of atheists obliterating God. And many who have held on to belief in God turn dumb when confronted for easy explanation.
There’s no shortage of theologians and philosophers who have advanced winding syllogisms to explain suffering, especially of innocent children. Theirs are sound reasoning, but when one is confronted with immediate personal suffering, their arguments lose adherence.
I am convinced that one has to pray for grace to understand fully the meaning and significance of suffering. And yes, Jesus Himself had some explanation for it, through His messages to mystic Maria Valtorta.
Here is what Jesus told the apostle Simon about the suffering even of the innocent: “But 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 its consent to the voices of the world, of the flesh and of Satan. A guilty, very guilty Mankind that, although it has likeness to God, having its 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 and do not praise the Lord enough. Hence the necessity of victimsouls 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.
“Before long – a year or a century is always a short time as compared to eternity – no more sacrifices will be celebrated on the altar of the great Temple of the Earth, that is, of victim-men, consumed with the perpetual sacrifice: victims with the perfect Victim.
“Do not be upset, Simon. I am not saying that I will establish a cult like those of Molech, Baal and Ashtoreth. Men themselves will immolate us. Do you understand? They will immolate us. And we shall face death happily to expiate and love on behalf of everybody. And then the days will come when men will no longer immolate men.
“But there will always be pure victims that love consumes with the Great Victim in the perpetual Sacrifice. I mean the love of God and the love for God. Truly they will be the victims of the future days and of the future Temple. No longer lambs and kids, calves and doves, but the sacrifice of one’s heart is what pleases God. David realised that. And in the new times, the times of the spirit and of love, only that sacrifice will be pleasant.
“Consider, Simon, that if a God had to become incarnate to appease divine Justice for the great Sin, for the many sins of men, in the times of the truth, only the sacrifices of the spirits of men can appease the Lord. You are thinking: ‘Why then did He, the Most High, order men to immolate the off spring of animals and the fruits of plants to Him?’ I will tell you: because, before I came, man was a stained holocaust and Love was not known. Now it will be known. And man, who will know Love, because I will give Grace back to him, and through it man will know Love, man will come out of his lethargy, he will remember, understand, live and he will replace kids and lambs, as a victim of love and expiation, on the model of the Lamb of God, his Master and Redeemer. Sorrow, so far a punishment, will turn into perfect love, and blessed are those who will embrace it out of perfect love. “
The apostle then asks, “But children?”
And Jesus replied thus: “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, as they are part of the wisdom written in the books of Life, and that only in Heaven will be read by the blessed souls. I said read, but in actual fact it will suffice to look at God to know not only God, but also His infinite wisdom…”
