"TO MY PRIESTS" BY CONCEPCIÓN CABRERA DE ARMIDA CHAPTER CXIII: DIVINE INTIMACIES
**Messages from Our Lord Jesus Christ to His favored sons.**
"Another point of my charity—of the tenderness of my Heart which suffers upon seeing suffering—is this resource of infinite value in my Church: **Indulgences**. This is the currency at the disposal of the Church’s treasury for the benefit of all souls, which they may gain for themselves and for the souls in purgatory.
The Church uses the value of my infinite merits, which gives life to everything, as well as the good works, sacrifices, and pains of souls and bodies—many of them innocent, like those of children. She does not waste the slightest atom that carries a supernatural germ, applying it for the very good of souls as a kind of currency or derivation of the **Communion of Saints**.
And behold, even more and more outpourings of my tenderness: In saving a sinner in the final moments of a wicked life, my infinite charity—seeing him guilty of so much punishment for his faults, even those already forgiven—causes Indulgences to condone or diminish said punishments. Thus, he reaches purgatory with fewer debts to pay, so that he may be received—as soon as he pays my Justice—into the arms of his Savior, of Jesus the Redeemer; of the Heart that does not forgive halfway, but opens its immense bosom of merciful goodness to him and introduces him into heaven as a trophy of its victories.
My tenderness reaches souls even beyond death. I do not wish to see; I close the eyes of my Justice, so to speak, and I open—how often!—those of my limitless goodness; because the tenderness of my Heart toward souls, the love I have for the righteous and for sinners, betrays me.
This is, if one could say so, the **weakness of a God**: His love, His infinite and eternal love, which created souls for heaven and which weeps for the strayed; which calls them like a Shepherd with loving whistles and seeks them in a thousand ways without ever tiring; which pursues them until the last instant of life, and still lessens their deserved punishments through indulgences even beyond mortal life. The God-man has so many resources of love!
In these intimate confidences, from heart to Heart, I am going to entrust to you a secret I have allowed to be glimpsed: the weakness—we shall call it that—of the Heart of a Savior God, of Jesus the Redeemer. And what is this divine weakness? It is **Love**. Love that conquers me, that dominates me, that places itself above my very Justice; which makes me stoop and forget, and erase, and forgive, and kiss, and press against my burning Heart the sinful souls, the ungrateful souls, those who have offended and forgotten me, and even hated me!
*'Why did You let me become man?'* I say to my beloved Father. *'Why did You give me this Heart so full of love, with the heartbeat of a God who is all infinite goodness? Why, my Father, did You gift your divine Son to fallen humanity? Why did You make me Jesus, the Savior, and of the same flesh as those whom I loved so much during my time on earth?'*
And if I say this to my Father while my Heart trembles with love for all sinners, can you not imagine what I say in favor of my **strayed priests**, my fallen priests, those who are lukewarm, or indifferent, or tempted, or weary, or in danger—mediate or immediate—of being lost?
Then I redouble my caresses as a Son; I interpose my sufferings from Calvary; I plead my holy mission as Eternal Priest; I place before His sight the union they have with Me through their holy vocation in the very womb of Mary; and I ask Him, and I beg Him, and I move Him as God-man, with all the fullness, tenderness, and strength of my human Heart, and... **I triumph.** I triumph over that beloved Father, over that Just Judge—one with Me in the Divinity—and I obtain delays, and I delight in retarding the sentence. I interpose myself before the punishments and I tear open my sacrosanct chest with the most intense fire of my love for man, presenting it thus to my Father until He ends by looking at me disarmed, smiling at me kindly, and pressing to His loving bosom the Man-God, Jesus the Savior—the one He permitted to take a human Body to be a Victim and wash the crimes of the world with all His blood!
I show Him, in favor of priests and my Church, my wounded Heart; I make Him feel what I feel in favor of my guilty ministers; I offer Him for them whatever He asks of me, whatever He wishes—another Redemption and another Cross—but... **He only asks me for love!** And I overflow into the infinite abyss of HIS VERY BEING! And... I triumph, I triumph over the adored Father, and I obtain extensions, and graces, and delays—I repeat—as God-Man, from the infinite charity of the Father and of the Holy Spirit!
If you could only see these 'quarrels'—I shall call them that in your language—of Love to Love, of Justice to Justice, of the Son to the Father, of the Father to the Son, with Love always triumphing—the Divine Person of Love, the Holy Spirit, who contemplates in ecstasy these struggles between Justice and Love!
If my priests realized these struggles of love within the unity of God, in the very bosom of God, born in the Heart of the Man-God struggling in favor of my priests in the very august bosom of the Trinity!
Oh, they would feel themselves dying of emotion, of gratitude, and of love! How their tears would flow to see God struggling with God Himself in favor of their souls, and for love alone! How they would understand at least something of the great dignity of the priest, seeing the Eternal Priest struggle to save that dignity in them and in the Church, through the tender and loving fibers of the Heart of the Word made flesh!
And do you know what I say to my Father, what I plead as God-man, with which I move my beloved Father?
I present to Him the **Eternal Priest**, in whom my holy Church participates. This fiber moves Him, disarms Him. Furthermore, I offer Him my promises—for I am the Promise of the Father—that all priests are going to be transformed into Me: the good and the not good, the fervent and the lukewarm.
And I repeat to Him, moved, enthusiastic, inflamed with love: *'Do You not see, my Father, that they are other "Me's"? Do You not hear them almost every moment saying on earth: "This is my Body, this is my Blood," being then Me? How can we not forgive, not wait, not overlook sins and defects and coldness so typical of man, if those priestly souls are capable of reacting, of flying toward perfection, of rising, of being transformed into Me?'*
*'Do they not look at You, beloved Father, at every moment from the earth with My gaze, enveloping You in a world of respect, adoration, tenderness, submission, and love? Are they not perhaps Your souls of choice, Your favored souls, in whom the Trinity has its seat and its hope on earth to save souls?'*
Thus I speak to my beloved Father; and my role as Redeemer and Savior does not cease for a moment in favor of my priests. And they, alas! they know not what they owe me, nor do they thank me for the activity of love that consumes my soul in their favor.
Those struggles happen at all hours, for in God there is no time: my human Heart, united to the Divinity, cries out without words, because I am the **Word**, the Eternal Word that communicates in a divine silence, from Understanding to Understanding, from Heart to Heart, and in a single divine substance, in a single Unity.
And in the Bosom of my Father, the purest Mirror, I reproduce all my desires, petitions, and loves in a single love, in the Holy Spirit. Everything I say to the Father is with a single act of my divine will, which reverberates in the softest waves and vibrates in each Divine Person.
This is how one speaks in heaven: thinking, feeling, and speaking are translated into love. And in the bosom of unity, in the immense abyss of the Divinity, all my desires, longings, and wants as a man have an echo, unified in a single "want" of God.
All this that I have translated into words are certain facts, but unified in **UNITY**, with multiple vibrations, with an infinite echo, resounding in the bosom of the Trinity itself.
Who are my priests for me to be so interested in them? They are **other "Me's"**, and most perfectly so are the priests transformed into Me. They are my own Body, my own Blood, my own Heart; they are my hopes in the Church, and its activity and its decorum.
They are the conduits through which the Trinity itself is poured out into souls; they are the image of God on earth; they are the fecundation of the Father in souls. They belong more to Mary than other men; they are my representatives on earth toward souls—those who forgive, and those who save; those who evangelize and those who form Jesus in hearts.
They are my chosen vessels, my elect, my apostles, my martyrs in many forms. They are the lilies that must perfume the altars; they are the living crosses where my Heart rests; they are the consolation of my Father on earth, because in them He contemplates Me, His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased.
They are the true nests of the Holy Spirit, as am I, and those who possess Him in a special way.
All that and more they are for Me and for the Trinity: for the Father, for the Word made flesh—which is I—and for the Holy Spirit, the soul of the Church, who longs to possess His priests more and more fully, because they belong to Him in a very special way.
So now you see the deep intimacy of this confidence. Now, help me to achieve with your pains, sacrifices, and prayers what I so long for and have asked for in a thousand ways: the **full and consummate transformation of priests into Me.**
Bear in mind that this is the Promise of the Son to the Father; let it not go unfulfilled; let everyone correspond to my ardent desires, for the glorification of my Father, of my Church, of themselves, and of souls, finally consummated in the unity of the Trinity."
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