June 6, 1943
Jesus said to Maria Valtorta:
Jesus said to Maria Valtorta:
"Today I want to speak to you about grace. You will see that it is related to the other topics, even if at first it doesn't seem that way to you. You are a little tired, poor Maria, but write all the same. These lessons will be of use to you in the days of fasting when I your Master, do not speak to you.
What is grace? You have studied and explained it many times. But, I want to explain it to you in My own way in its nature and in its effects.
Grace is to possess the light, power, and wisdom of God in yourselves—that is, to possess intellectual likeness to God, the unmistakable sign of your filiation in God.
Without grace, you would simply be animal creatures that had reached such a point in evolution as to be endowed with reason, with a soul, but a soul on an earthly level, capable of acting in the curcumstances of life on earth, but unable to rise up to the regions where the life of the spirit transpires. Little more than beasts, then, that act by instinct alone and, in reality, surpass you quite often in their way of acting.
Grace is thus a sublime gift, the greatest gift that God, My Father, could give you. And He gives it to you freely, for His love as a Father, for you, is infinite, as He Himself is infinite. If He wanted to state all the attributes of grace, it would require writing a long list of adjectives and nouns, and We would still not explain perfectly what this gift is.
Remember this alone: Grace is to possess the Father, to live in the Father; grace is to possess the Son, to enjoy the infinite merits of the Son; grace is to possess the Holy Spirit, to benefit from His Seven Gifts. Grace, in short, is to possess Us, the Triune God, and for your mortal person to be surrounded by the hosts of angels who worship Us in you.
A soul that loses grace loses everything. The Father has created her to no avail; the Son has redeemed her to no avail; the Holy Spirit has infused His gifts into her to no avail; the Sacraments exist for her to no avail. She is dead. A rotten branch which, under the corrosive action of sin, becomes detached and falls from the tree of life and in the end rots in the mud. If a soul were able to preserve herself as she is after Baptism and after Confirmation—that is, when she is literally soaked with grace—that soul would only be a little less than God. Let this tell you all.
When you read the prodigies of My saints, you are astonished. But, my dear one, there is nothing to be astonished about. My saints were creatures who possessed grace; they were gods, therefore, for grace deifies you. Did I not state in My Gospel that My followers would work the same prodigies as I did? But to be Mine, it is necessary to live by My Life—that is, by the life of grace.
If you wanted to, you could all be capable of prodigies—that is, of holiness. Indeed, I would like you to be, for that would mean that My Sacrifice had been crowned by victory and that I had really torn you away from the empire of the Evil One, banishing him to his Hell, and riveting hell's mouth shut with an irremovable stone, and placing it upon the throne of My Mother; the Only One who kept Her heel upon the dragon, who was powerless to do Her harm.
Not all souls in grace possess grace in the same measure. Not because We infuse it to different degrees, but because you managed to preserve it in yourselves in different ways. Mortal sin destroys grace; venial sin causes it to crumble; imperfections make it anemic. There are souls, not entirely bad, that languish in spiritual consumption because, by their inertia, which spurs them to commit continual acts of imperfection, they increasingly thin grace out, turning it into a most slender thread, a fading little flame. When it should be a fire, an intense, lovely, purifying Blaze. The world is collapsing because grace is collapsing in almost all souls and languishing in the others.
Grace yields different fruits to the extent that it is more or less alive in your hearts. The richer a terrain is in elements and the more it is helped by the sun, the water, and the air currents, the more fertile it is. There are sterile, meager plots of land which are sprinkled with water to no avail, warmed by the sun, traversed by the winds. The same holds for souls. There are souls that with all application take on vital elements and thus manage to benefit one hundred percent from the effects of grace.
The vital elements are to live according to My Law—chaste, merciful, humble, loving God and one's neighbor; it is to live by 'living' prayer: Then grace grows, flourishes, sinks in deep roots, and rises up into the tree of eternal life. Then the Holy Spirit, like a sun, inundates you with His seven rays, His Seven Gifts; then I, the Son, penetrate you with the divine rain of My Blood; then the Father looks at you with pleasure, seeing His likeness in you; then Mary caresses you, clasping you to Her breast, which bore Me, along with Her little children who are lesser, but very, very dear to Her Heart; then the nine angelical choirs crown your soul, the temple of God, and sing the sublime 'Gloria'; then your death is Life and your Life is blessedness in My Kingdom."
— The Notebooks: 1943
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