(...) One day, her brother appeared to her immersed in suffering, telling her that he had been condemned to serve eight years in Purgatory and asking her for prayers to shorten the time of his liberation. As he opened up to her, he squeezed her hand, shaking it. The mark of the burn remained with her for life. An immense love for the souls of the deceased—not only those of her relatives but of the entire penitent Church—is a distinctive feature of her holiness. “Love the souls in Purgatory, pray for them,” Jesus had asked her.
On behalf of these souls, whom she was able to see through divine goodness, Eduviges offered prayers, Masses, sacrifices, humiliations, and pains that she accepted with patience. Her sister Paolina, the sixth and youngest, whom their mother had entrusted particularly to the eldest daughter, also participated in this good work. For this reason, in 1929, when she was already 49 years old, Eduviges left Sardinia to move to Lazio with her sister, who was a primary school teacher and frequently changed locations. One morning in July 1941, after Communion, she felt a touch on her back and noticed a sad voice saying: “I am a soul who died a few hours ago under the rubble. I have been suffering in Purgatory for only a few hours, yet it feels like a century! God is severe, God is just, God punishes. Pray for me and have Monsignor Massimi pray for me, also Paola and Vitalia (a good friend of Eduviges, Editor's note).”
On another occasion, a person presented himself and “touched my wrist, which remained burnt. I did not recognize him. He was dressed as an officer. ‘I died in the war,’ he told me. ‘I desire Masses: have Monsignor Vitali celebrate them for me. You and Paola shall offer Holy Communion for me.’” Once that plea was finished, she saw the officer reappear “radiant” and full of gratitude: “I am going to Paradise where I will pray for you, especially for Monsignor Vitali. I am Russian and my name is Paolo Vischin. My mother had educated me in the holy religion; later, as I grew up, I let myself be carried away by the bad Russian life. At the moment of my death, I repented and remembered the beautiful words my mother told me since I was a child. Good Jesus has forgiven me.” Here one sees the importance of Christian education as a means of salvation—a fact verifiable more than once in Eduviges' diary, much of which was written during the Second World War and in a century in which Nazism and, more enduringly, Communism, radically rejected God.
Immodesty and Sunday Labor
In May 1943, seeing Jesus suffering, she heard Him say: “My daughter… I am sad because I see that the majority of men, in their families, have granted power to the devil and have expelled Me, their Creator and God.” One also frequently reads of God’s disdain for the loss of modesty, “immodest” and “scandalous fashions,” and participation—even on Sundays—in impure shows in the theater and cinema, where not only adults go, but where they also “bring their innocent little ones to destroy them prematurely by watching immodest scenes,” as Jesus revealed to her in December 1944, also lamenting that “very few are those who respect the feast day consecrated to Me.”
On Easter Day in 1943, she had seen an angel with a sword in his hand, who explained a vision related to sins of the flesh: “The world seeks impure and ugly pleasures; these, if not cleansed through the sacrament of Confession, will be punished by God for eternity, because before the divine tribunal no one can be saved if they have not first been cleansed of filth through confession, repentance, and the promise never to plunge into those dirty mires again.”
Eduviges’ visions also concerned Hell, where she saw many souls falling for having rejected divine Mercy until the end, and Paradise, where an angel showed her two thrones prepared for her and her sister, asking her to persevere “in holy purity, in the love of God and of neighbor.” He also taught her that eternal glory is proportional to the sufferings endured on earth and offered to heaven, in union with the sacrifice of Christ, for the salvation of souls: for this reason, the more these souls shine, the more they resemble Jesus crucified, humbly embracing their own cross. Especially “on All Souls' Day,” as her friend Flora Argenti would testify during the canonization process, Eduviges “saw multitudes upon multitudes of souls expressing their gratitude to her, asking her to also express it to the people who had prayed for them to fly to Paradise.” Eduviges, who was also very humble, showed the same charity toward the material needs of the poor, the unemployed, and prisoners of war.
The Power of the Rosary
Satan hated her particularly and harassed her physically, unable to endure her entrusting herself to the protection of the Virgin Mary. “You pray to my enemy—and he pointed to the Virgin. Until you stop praying to my eternal enemy, I will never leave you in peace,” the devil told her in January 1942. But the Virgin sustained her in her spiritual struggle, pouring abundant graces upon her and consoling her with visions, such as when Eduviges saw her distributing rosaries to many souls: “My little sons, my little daughters, with this crown you will extinguish the fire that has spread throughout almost the entire universe. If you recite this crown with faith, this fire will soon be extinguished. This is the most powerful weapon; and a more powerful weapon than this, man shall not find. Having said these words, she disappeared, radiant.”
Participating as she did in divine mercies, she wanted others to discover them as well; therefore, she wrote: “If I were an angel, I would take a trumpet, I would traverse the ocean and cry out to all human beings: love Jesus, love Him, love Him, men, love the good Jesus, remember that He died on the cross to save us, wretched sinners.”
Religión en Libertad