Messages of Our Lord Jesus Christ to His favorite sons



"TO MY PRIESTS" BY CONCEPCIÓN CABRERA DE ARMIDA. 

CHAPTER CVI : PARTICIPATION IN THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS.


"And if My priests are transformed in Me, they will feel as I do the offenses done to Me; they will hurt them deeply as they hurt Me and their acts of atonement will be in My union purer, more acceptable to My Father, more true, making amends to that loving Father with My own groans and merits in favor of souls.  Those groans, that impetration and even those merits of mine, will be theirs by participation by the fact of their transformation in Me.


Then My priests, knowing with divine light all the deformity of sin, will abhor it; they will feel the sins of others with the delicacy with which I feel them and they will conceive more and more horror of sin and will cease to offend Me.


The delicacy of conscience will grow in them and the cleanliness of their hearts will glorify Me, so that My image will become clearer in their souls.  And it is not only useful, but even necessary that my priests feel in themselves that bitterness, the greatest bitterness for my Heart, which sin produces in me. How many acts of perfect contrition will I receive; how many tears and resolutions of amendment and how many conversions will console me!


And to feel My sorrows and the offenses done to Me as my own, will activate in My priests their zeal for souls and will sharpen their own delicacy for Me.  And it is natural that if they are other Me, they will feel more than their own, the ingratitude that men have towards Me, the ingratitude with which sinners and lukewarm souls wound Me and thorn My Heart of love.


It is a very great grace for souls to participate in My sufferings, it is a loving act of very great union with which I deign to give to very few souls on earth; but this grace will be familiar and due to the priests who are transformed in Me; because they, being other Me, will participate in Mine by right, and their reward in Heaven will be greater.


And besides the gratitude of this benefit of predilection, it will be very useful to My priests that they feel intimately the offenses that the world and even Mine lavish on Me; so that their love, their zeal and their sacrifices will grow and they will ask for pardons for guilty humanity.


This transformation in Me will bring incalculable advantages to My priests, especially for their own souls, because the pain of the offenses that I receive and that they will feel as their own, has a special virtue to attain the graces of Heaven.  And do you know why? --Because of the purity of the love it contains; because in it the creature dies to himself and only I remain in his heart, through the transformative union which is what produces that illustrious grace. The search for self, the natural selfishness of the soul ends, and the soul melts in Me, it hurts for what is Mine and suffers supernaturally for the offenses that are done to Me.


Then the soul does not care about its sorrows, but about Mine; and to spare Me a single offense, it would be capable of giving its life and a thousand lives if it had them.  Divine love, pure love, is refined to such a degree when the soul is transformed into Me, that it forgets itself and the creature no longer lives in its natural tastes and tendencies, but I live in it, and the soul is consummated in unity.


And to that point of transformative union I want My priests to reach, all other Me, all in Me, to feel what I feel, to want what I want, to love as I love, to sacrifice themselves as I sacrificed Myself and to continue My passion on earth, that interior passion, more meritorious than the one outside.


These kinds of atonements are for My Father the most excellent, the ones that disarm Him, the ones that attain more graces because, as I was saying, the souls have My infinite merits that I make theirs, so that in My union and with those deep sufferings produced by pure love when they see Me offended, they offer them with Me to the Father so that they may move Him and make Him pour out torrents of graces for the world.


This torment of the soul is very fine, because it is very pure and born of love in this intimate pain caused by seeing Me offended by others.  And it is clear that the soul that feels this torment avoids with great care its own offenses; it only hurts me and does not want to displease me even by far. Love has grown in it, refined by the transforming union, in which the soul, attracted by unity, lives only for God and loses itself in the Trinity; that is why it suffers and feels, as I Myself, God-Man, suffered and felt.


But, the step to reach that grace is the transformation in Me.  That is why the day that My priests will be another Me, they will feel as I do, they will love as I do, and they will lose themselves in unity as I lose Myself, who live only from My Father, and in My Father, and in union with the Holy Spirit.


May souls ask without ceasing, may they offer all that they are, have and can, so that I may be glorified in My priests, transformed into Me. Do they not see, do they not feel the infinite and divine riches with which these souls, the favorites of My Heart, would be adorned? Do they not understand the heavenly thrust that this world of souls, detained in or materially detained for lack of holy workers, active, zealous for My glory, who would see My interests as their own, who would suffer for what is Mine, as if it were I Myself who were suffering?


To watch over My honor in this intimate way and to feel in themselves the sins of the world, and not only an isolated priest, but all priests in Me, do you not think of the thrust that My Church would have in that intimate union of My priests, which would lead souls to Me to be the only target of their aspirations?


I hunger for cleanliness in hearts, I hunger to be pure love, selfless love, holy, unitive and transforming love, and I want it in My priests and from My priests, one with Me in the Father and in the Holy Spirit.


Moreover, when the soul becomes transformed in Me, it is when it perfectly fulfills the precept of loving God above all things and therefore the souls as itself.


When a priestly soul feels intensely and vividly the offenses committed against God and they hurt her as they hurt Me, and only because they are offenses against an all-good God who deserves only submission, adoration and love, then she is in her role, and her love is refined and purified of all human dross, of all self-interest. This most pure love has an intimate relationship with perfect contrition, which has the power to erase all sins, through the efficacy of living faith and charity which purifies everything for heaven.


This grace of feeling the offenses committed against a merciful God as one's own is almost a martyrdom, but it is a martyrdom of love; it is contrition that cleanses and consumes all the dross of the soul and reaches the most intimate union with God, from love to Love, from charity to Charity.


And it is clear that he who feels the pain of seeing me offended by others, much more feels his own offenses, and everything enters and is lost in the same fire, and everything is consumed in the same flames.


The soul cleanses itself of its own offenses and attains with its pain, united to my pain and to my infinite merits, atonements and graces for other souls.


But this pearl, this grace, is only given to souls transformed in Me, to a greater or lesser degree; to those who are no longer themselves but Me in them, with all My feelings and desires, consummated in the unity of the Trinity, which is what I am seeking above all in My priests; that communication which transforms and in which a new era of special and stupendous graces of the Father's love begins.


But these graces of the most increased love, of the highest secrets of the Trinity, do not come to souls before that consummation which is not an end but a beginning, which is only to leave the way free, the door open for the holy and adorable wastes of the Father's love and of the most fruitful communication of the Most Holy Trinity itself."


Messages of Our Lord Jesus Christ