Among the revelations from Heaven to Maria Valtorta, an Italian mystic, there are some that come from her guardian angel, named Azariah, and that contain comments from the angel to the readings of festive masses. Today we share the comments for Palm Sunday Mass.
April 14, 1946
PALM SUNDAY
Readings of Apr. 14, 1946 (According to the Missal of Pope St. Pius V used at that time):
Introit: Ps 22(21):20, 22, 2
Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, who willed that our Savior should take upon Him our flesh and suffer death on the cross, so that all mankind should follow the example of His humility; mercifully grant that we may both learn the lesson of His patience and be made partakers of His resurrection. Through the same Christ our Lord.
Epistle: Ph 2:5-11
Gradual: Ps 73(72):24, 1-3
Tract: Ps 22(21):2-9, 18, 19, 22, 24, 32
Gospel: Mt 26:36-75; 27:1-60
Offertory: Ps 69(68):21-22
Secret: Grant us, we pray, Lord, that the gifts now offered in the sight of Your majesty, may win for us the grace of true devotion and the reward of a happy eternity. Through our Lord.
Communion: Mt 26:42
Postcommunion: By the virtue of this mystery, Lord, may our sins be purged away and our rightful desires fulfilled. Through our Lord.
Azariah says:
“The reading which precedes the blessing of the palms is not part of the Holy Mass, but it is part of today’s liturgy.
“One day, at the beginning of your instruction by the Most Holy Lord Jesus, He told you, ‘In the pages of the Book, in the History of my People, the events of the future are concealed under figures and actions.’
“Generally, people apply the figure of today’s palms to the seventy palms in the oasis of Elim. But my Lord grants that I may instruct you on the true figure of today’s Reading.
“The people of Israel, after the holy times of the patriarchs, who could be compared to fertile lands rich in every good, had grown corrupt, becoming a ‘sterile desert’ where only rare oases, and even rarer fountains, demonstrated that not everything had died and, as a reminder of celestial mercy, attracted those who were lost-but possessed good will -around the solitary spirits of the Just Ones of Israel. The patriarchs, judges, and Prophets, the great kings of Israel, the Maccabees, Judith, Esther, Joel, Tobit, Nehemiah, and the saints-these are the palms and the fountains rising in solitary fashion in the midst of the desolate aridity of the conscience of Israel, which was ungratefully drifting away from its Benefactor, forgetting his help.
“He who had given that formerly promised Land -whose rich beauty surpassed all hope of the patriarchs- to his People found his Land to be such. The Christ found it to be such when He descended to fulfill the second part of the great promises made to Abraham -that is, after having given him and his descendants the land seen in the vision and a posterity more numerous than the stars, the promise that he would be given the Messiah, born of the womb of a daughter of Abraham, to redeem the world.
“And the Christ gave the oasis with twelve fountains and seventy palms to the people languishing in the desert so that it would have refreshment and nourishment and camp in the oasis provided by the Savior.
“A true gift of Most Holy Jesus were the twelve apostles left to perpetuate Him in his magisterium and give souls the living water of the divine words, and the Food contained in the Sacraments. A true gift of Most Holy Jesus were the seventy-two disciples, who, as coworkers of the apostles, formed the initial core of the Apostolic Church along with them, the Oasis around which the multitudes of believers have become ever more numerous, the oasis which has spread out, fertilizing the soil, overcoming the desert, to the point of elevating its glorious palm trees in all points of the Earth. The restoring oasis, the saving oasis.
“See this truth in the first part of the reading on this moment of the Exodus and never be like the people that, when near the founts and palms of Elim, complained about this gift of Our Lord Jesus.
“The second figure: the Bread of Heaven. The Manna which man could not imagine or demand, which man could not give himself, but which the eternal Lord liberally gives his children so they will not die of hunger, the sweet-tasting, white Manna which is given in such measure that there will be enough for all who wish to feed upon it every day. And only rebellion against God’s commandments, infractions of the Law make it change from holy, Life-giving Food into Corruption. Not through Itself, for It is incorrupted, incorrupting, and incorruptible, like Him whom not even death corrupted and who is That Itself, with his Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, as He was in his days on Earth. But it becomes corruption through being received in sin; for accursed is the one who feeds on It in the spirit of Judas, the enemy of obedience and justice.
“Reflect on the words of God Most Holy: ‘And thus may 1 test whether or not he walks according to my Law.’ Indeed, he who in feeding upon the Most Holy Eucharist-food which is not given to the angels themselves, but which Infinite Love gives to mendoes not sanctify himself, but remains as he was or regresses to a worse state shows that he is not walking according to the Law, for with his soul obstinately at fault, more or less seriously, he must take that Food, since such Food does not come to transform him.
“Eucharist and good will -the Eucharist, God’s love, and good will, man’s love- when joined together can produce nothing but holiness. Good will clears the ground of what could make the Most Holy Seed sterile which germinates eternal Life. Good will places upon the altar what serves to consummate the holocaust-that is, what the Eucharistic fire can set aflame, burning the material man to ignite the spirit, purify it, and make it nimble as a flame tending towards Heaven, rising up with its gleams and its perfumes to Heaven to rejoin the Fire which has set it aflame: Fire with fire for the union of love.
“But when good will is lacking and disobedience is presentthat is, a state of sin-what can the Eucharist do? Nothing more than the Manna could when gathered in a way contrary to the one commanded by God. It remains inert in its action and becomes harmful, in its effect, in whoever receives it. Nor 1 am 1 speaking just of the truly sacrilegious, but also of the lukewarm and the proud, who feed on it out of habit, virtually saying, ‘It is we who show this condescension towards God, we who carry out this custom.’
“‘On the sixth day they must prepare what they have brought, and let it be double the amount they usually gathered day by day.’
“On the sixth day-that is, the eve of the Lord’s Day (and every day of Holy Communion is the Lord’s Day for the soul)-souls must prepare what they habitually possess: fervor, repentance, and resolutions, so as to go worthily and fruitfully to receive the Bread of Heaven. Blessed are those who do so. And blessed are those for whom every day is the eve of the Lord’s Day, and in perpetual preparation for the wonderful, sanctifying, vital encounter their lives transpire. When they have arrived at the eve of the great day of their rest: death in the grace of God, they will hear themselves being comforted by the Priests of God, by the voice of their heart and of the Guardian Angel, with these words: ‘Tonight (death is the night) you will know that the Lord is the One who has led you out of the land of Egypt (that is, from the earthly life, which is exile and sorrow). And tomorrow morning (that is, having overcome death) you shall see the glory of the Lord’: that is, Heaven, your dwelling-place as saints eternally.
“This is what the reading of the Blessing of the Palms ought to say to you. And now let us meditate on the Holy Mass.
“Supplicate with your true and perfect Master. You are truly cast, like metal liquefied by heat, in his form and take on the likeness of Him in his passion. Your humanity has melted in the heat of charity, the spirit has become soft in order to be remodeled, and hour by hour a sign of your beloved Jesus in his Passion is being impressed upon you. His desires are yours, his sorrows are yours, his moments of solitude, his bitter observations of what men are; his desolation on seeing Himself not understood, rejected, and mocked in that way is yours. And yours are his moans and his prayers to the Father.
“Holy Week, week of pain. But for having always given you his loveliest gems in this week, which is the perfection of his many weeks as a Man-nor does any of all the 1737 weeks which saw Him in the world equal this final one as a Man subject to painbe grateful to Him as you would be for the most beautiful proof of love. Do not wonder, ‘What torture will this one bring me? What chalice will I drink between Thursday and Friday? What agony? What death? What discomfort? What betrayalT
“Do not ask yourself. Abandon yourself to your Father. One hour will be spared you: that of abandonment by God. You have already experienced it, when it was necessary to come to the aid of the souls led to despair and restore Heaven to them and restore them to Heaven, and that torture is not liued through twice.
“The Eternal and Holy Father will therefore reject no longer his little ‘voice,’ and you can cry to Him, certain of being heard: ‘Oh! Lord, do not withhold your aid from me, come to my defense, free me from the lion’s mouth, free me, who am so weak, from the buffalo’s horns.’
“He has already heard one prayer of yours in these days. But persevere in that aim, for there is still a great deal to do for that soul. And there is even more to be done for you, who really see the horrendous mouth which would like to devour you opening wide over you and the threatening horns leveled at you of the diabolical buffalo that would like to terrify you to blot out the work of God. Nor are you defended by the one who has the duty of defending you, as a fellow, as one of the faithful, and as an instrument.
“You are familiar with this aspect of your Master as well: the flight of the apostles, of his friends, when the storm raged over the Innocent One, the selfish thought of man in all such cases: ‘May I be saved,’ and with it abandoning, without heroism and without justice, the defenseless one to his accusers.
“But God, even if He seems absent, is present. But God judges and measures. But God defends. And human injustice, I repeat once again, cannot affect divine Justice.
… My God, turn to me. Why have You abandoned me! Yes, that is the moaning of the soul in the hours of darkness. But it is not condemned by God. But it is not an offense to God. But it does not denote despair of God. Otherwise the Most Holy Word would not have cried thus, both in Gethsemane and on the Cross. In his lament, which to the superficial may appear a reproach against God and despair, is faith. Faith in his help, in his presence, in his justice, even if the forces of evil, triumphing for their brief hour, seem to negate everything and so lead the soul to tremble like a guilty man before the Perfect Judge.
“The forces of evil that hurl the anathema against the innocent and accuse them of crimes to crush them in the spirit as well and ‘separate them from salvation.’
“Oh, soul of mine, even if you were burdened with sin, a victim expiating and redeeming the sins of men, a victim offering herself to continue the work of Jesus the Redeemer, burdened with accusations of sins as was the Christ in those tremendous hours, consider that it is an external weight, external garb. It is not the fault of the spirit, not leprosy upon it, not filthy clothingall of which would cause you to be thrown out of God’s banquetbut on that spirit there are only the glorious wounds of the victim soul, and those wounds are an ornament, not a dishonor. The angel apostle stated who the ones before the throne of God and the Lamb are: ‘These are the ones who come from the great tribulation and have washed and whitened their robes in the blood of the Lamb.’
“Those robes whitened with the Pain of pains, with the Victim of victims, and with the great tribulation of the true faithful, of the ‘victims,’ of those martyred to be co-redeemers, are adorned with the gems of your sufferings, including the gem of unjust accusations.
“Do not fear, soul of mine. And do not moan if you are humiliated and crucified. The Prayer says so: because He humbled Himself in taking on mortal flesh and subjected Himself to death on the cross, the Most Holy Word became the Savior. Little voice, voluntary host, join and even surpass the Prayer’s request and ask not only to deserve to receive the teachings and fruits of the vital and mortal sacrifice of Christ, but rather to be like Him and humiliated and crucified with Him to save a great number of souls.
“To save is greater than to be saved. For it is an affirmation that the little savior is already saved, since only where God lives in the fullness of his graces is there heroic virtue; and love for the cross, for pain, and for holocaust through love of that great love possessed by ‘whoever lays down his life for his brothers’ is heroic virtue. And because to save means to be ‘another Christ.’ Through patience you will arrive at Glory and the resurrection in Heaven, in God, forever, after the death which is life on Earth.
“Let us read Paul: ‘Have the same sentiments as Jesus Christ in yourselves.’ That is the model. Paul does not say, ‘The same as this or that saint.’ He says the same as Jesus Christ.
“Christ said, ‘Be perfect as my Father in Heaven is perfect.’
“It is obvious, even for upright human reflection, that even if Christ had been only a great prophet, he would have been the first to strive to reach the perfection of the Father, according to what He taught. And in truth Jesus is the mirror reflection of Heavenly Perfection, of the Triniform God. Not a single fault in Him in thirty-three years of life, to the extent that the Truth, living in mortal form, could state, ‘Who among you can convict me of sinT And, when near death, in the hour when not even ordinary men lie, but only those who are servants of Deceit can maintain deceit, He repeated before the Pontiff, ‘I have spoken in the hearing of all and have said nothing in secret. Why do you question me? Question those who have heard me about what I told them.’
“Oh, blessed are those who can repeat these words to their accusers without blushing, certain that they have not performed reprehensible actions! Blessed! Most blessed! Slain, but not contradicted by the facts, they ascend to God, already crowned, and if in time men change their judgment of those they one day condemned, it is indeed not they who raise the crown from the dark Earth to place it on the head of the blessed one, but it is a crown which descends and in its celestial splendor speaks and causes those to tremble who raised their hands and opened their mouths against the one God loved and who loved God and served Him with perfect service.
“‘Have in yourselves the same sentiments as Jesus Christ, who, though existing in the form of God, did not regard this equality of his as plunder.’
“Jesus, on account of being the One Born to Mary, was no less God than He was as the Word in Heaven. The Flesh did not annul the Divinity in Christ. As True God and True Man, He had not one, but two perfections in Himself. That of the Divine Nature, hidden, but not diminished by the Flesh, and that of the Human Nature, retrieved and indeed superperfected from what was Adam’s nature, for to the gift of a perfect human natureGod’s gratuitous gift to Adam-He had joined his own will to superperfect human nature. The First-Born from among the dead wished to redeem fallen man not only with his Blood, but by bearing Humanity-once perfect, then fallen-to a superperfection so that Hell and the blasphemers of the Truth would be left defeated and confused.
“Bend your heads, O men who want to explain the unexplainable with the poor science created by you, dark and devoid of supernatural lights and guides. Annihilate yourselves, O you that know only how to discover Error, or Harm. You are defeated. Jesus Christ, the Man, with the flashing of his Humanity, destroys your axioms, annuls your calculations, shows you up for what You are: the maniacally proud who measure God-if you accept Him-by your pettiness, and, if you do not accept Him, go on raving about impossible self-creations of matter, about degrading and impossible lines of descent.
“Jesus Christ is the Man. And there is no philosopher or mad founder of sacrilegious religions who can create a superman that is more so than the Man not born by carnal will, but by the Will of God.
“And this Perfect One, in whom was the Fullness of the Divinity and that of the Holy Humanity, did not think that because of the former He could abuse all power for the sake of the latter…. ‘But He annihilated Himself, taking the form of a slave and becoming similar to men, He appeared as a simple man and humiliated Himself, making Himself obedient unto death, and death on the cross.’
“This, O dear voices, O dear victims, is where you must arrive, precisely so that God may shine forth more brightly in you. Honor entails obligation. Being extraordinary instruments must not give you pride or pretensions of enjoying material benefits, pretensions of immunity from pain, offenses, calumnies, unjust accusations, disdain, abandonment -from everything, in short, which Jesus, the God-Man, suffered. But rather, deeming yourselves more than compensated for all sacrifice by the extraordinary gifts which God grants you and by acceptance of your sacrifice-for there is no greater honor than to be judged worthy to be ‘hosts’ -you must perfect yourselves in humility and in obedience, heroic obedience unto death, and death on a cross.
“But listen to what Paul says in concluding: ‘For this reason as well, however, God exalted Him and gave Him a Name above every other name, so that in the name of Jesus every knee must bend in Heaven and on Earth and in Hell, and every tongue must confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.’
“In due measure -oh, fear not, dear victim souls and voices you will be given by God a name which is above the one men have given you, a name already written in Heaven. And a day will come when, at least for a period of time, the knee of every man that did not deserve to be at the right hand of the Lord and Judge will have to bend before the victors, and your name will be known, and more than one of those who judged you, with mistaken judgment, will change his tune before the truth. They will kneel not to honor you spontaneously, but crushed by the flashes which from Christ the Judge will go out to his saints, forming a blinding sea of light entirely written in words of Truth, with the names of truth. And the Truth will separate forever the voluntarily blind from the willing seers, and the Light will establish Himself in glory with his chosen ones, while Darkness will swallow up darkness, and in the Abyss there will be the howl of anguish and despairing recognition from those who have failed to know God and recognize God in his servants and God in the works of those same servants. The reflection of the Name of Jesus written on the brows of the saints! And not one will then be unknown. One hundred and forty-four thousand times the Name of Jesus written on the foreheads of the saints! Arrows of flashing light to wither the one hundred and forty-four thousand times 144,000 guilty ones who denied God in his dearest creatures and and tortured them with their denials!
“Dear soul, it is worthwhile to suffer the Cross for that hour. Place your right hand in the hand of the Lamb going up to his Calvary and let yourself be led with his approval so as to be welcomed with honor afterwards where those marked with the Name of Jesus await the hour of the triumphal review.
“How good the Lord is to the upright of heart! How good He is! But keep awake and watch so that your steps will not stray from the path and your heart will not Frumble against justice on seeing the momentary triumph of sinners.
“Christ, too, saw it and wept, shouting, ‘I cry to You and You do not hear me. But, in this hour, I am a worm and not a man, the disgrace of men and dregs of the people. All who see me deride me, mutter with their lips, and shake their heads, saying, “He hoped in the Lord. Let the Lord free him, then, and save him, since He loves him so much!” And they strip me after having derided me, and divide my possessions, drawing lots on my Truth, almost as if it were a matter for wagers…!
“Oh, holy modesty of Christ, not only because of the covering of the Flesh left uncovered, but because of the Truth ill-treated, mocked, and altered to render it ridiculous and sacrilegious, like the work of a madman or a demon.
“Your torture, crucified extraordinary instruments. Your torture! You await someone with respect and compassion and find no man to console you. You ask for charity, and they give you gall. You beg for the refreshment of a fraternal word, of holy understanding, and they give you vinegar to sharpen the pain of your wounds.
“Prostrate yourself and with your Guardian pray, ‘Father, if this chalice cannot be separated from me without my drinking it, Thy Will be done.’ The great word which many, who are severe to their brothers, are unable to say as far as they are concerned. But say it yourself, to bend the Lord to the fulfillment of your just desires.
“Let us bless the Lord!”
“Thanks be to God.”
“Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.”
Maria Valtorta
THE BOOK OF AZARIAH
Translated from the Italian by David G. Murray
CENTRO EDITORIALE VALTORTIANO
