## Reflections on the Agony of Gethsemane and Premise Regarding the Other Pains of the Passion
Jesus says:
"On Thursday night, you contemplated the suffering of My spiritual agony. You saw your Jesus collapse like a man mortally wounded who feels life escaping through the wounds that bleed him dry, or like one who feels overwhelmed by a psychic trauma beyond his strength. You saw the increasing phases of this trauma, culminating in the effusion of blood caused by the circulatory imbalance—brought on by the effort to overcome Myself and to resist the weight that had fallen upon Me.
I was, and am, the Son of the Most High God. But I was also the Son of Man. Through these pages, I want this dual nature of Mine to emerge clearly, equally total and perfect. My words are testimony to My Divinity, possessing tones that only a God can have; of My Humanity, the testimonies are the needs, the passions, and the sufferings that I present to you and which I endured in My flesh as a true Man—offered as a model for your humanity, just as I instruct your spirit with My doctrine as true God.
Both My most holy Divinity and My most perfect Humanity, throughout the centuries and through the disintegrating action of 'your' imperfect humanity, have been diminished and distorted when illustrated. You have made My Humanity unreal, you have made it inhuman; in the same way, you have belittled My divine figure, rejecting it in many aspects that you found unpleasant to recognize or that you could no longer recognize with your spirits—diminished as they are by the wasting away of vice, atheism, worldliness, and rationalism.
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### The Dual Figure of God and Man
I come, in this tragic hour (World War II), a preface to universal misfortunes; I come to refresh in your mind My dual figure of God and Man so that you may know it as it is; so that you may recognize it after so much obscurantism with which you have covered it before your spirits; so that you may love it and return to it and be saved through it. It is the figure of your Savior. Whoever knows and loves it shall be saved.
In these days, I have made known to you My physical sufferings, which tortured My Humanity. I have made known to you My moral sufferings—related, interlaced, and fused with those of My Mother, like the tangled vines of equatorial forests that cannot be separated to cut only one, but must be broken with a single blow of the axe, killing them together; or like the veins of a body, from which one cannot be deprived of blood because a single humor fills them; or—even better—how death cannot be prevented from entering the creature forming in the maternal womb if the mother dies, since the life, heat, nutrition, and blood of the mother are what, with a rhythm beating to the tempo of the maternal heart, penetrate through the internal membranes to the creature yet to be born, completing it for the sake of life.
She—oh She, My pure Mother—carried Me not only during the nine months in which every human female carries the fruit of man, but throughout her entire life! Our hearts were united by spiritual fibers and always beat together; there was no maternal tear that fell without furrowing My heart with its saltiness, nor was there an internal lament of Mine that did not resonate in Her, awakening her pain. You feel pity for the mother of a son destined for death due to an incurable disease, or the mother of one condemned to execution by the rigor of human justice. Then think of My Mother, who from the moment she conceived Me trembled at the thought that I was the Condemned One; think of this Mother who, when she gave the first kiss to My soft and rosy newborn flesh, felt the future wounds of her Child; of this Mother who would have given her life ten, a hundred, a thousand times to prevent Me from becoming a Man and reaching the moment of Immolation; of this Mother who knew and who had to desire that terrible hour to accept the will of the Lord, for the glory of the Lord, and out of kindness toward Humanity. No, there has been no longer agony—nor one ending in greater pain—than that of My Mother.
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### The Abandonment and the Conflict with Satan
And there has been no greater, more complete pain than Mine. I was One with the Father. He had loved Me from eternity as only God can love. He had taken pleasure in Me and had found in Me His divine joy. And I had loved Him as only a God can love and found in union with Him My divine joy. The ineffable relationship that unites the Father with the Son *ab aeterno* cannot be explained to you even with My word, because, although My word is perfect, your intelligence is not, and you cannot understand and know what God is until you are with Him in Heaven. Well then, I felt—like water rising and pressing against a dam—the rigor of the Father toward Me growing hour by hour.
As a testimony against human-animals who did not want to understand who I was, He had opened Heaven three times during the time of My public life: at the Jordan, at Tabor, and in Jerusalem on the eve of the Passion. But He had done it for men, not to relieve Me; I was already the Expiator.
Many times, Maria, God makes a servant of His known to men so that they may receive an impact from this servant, and through him be drawn toward God. But this does not happen without the pain of that servant, who pays in person—eating the bitter bread of God’s rigor—for the consolation and salvation of his brothers. Is it not true? The victims of expiation know the rigor of God. Then comes the glory. But only after Justice has been appeased. It is not like the case of My Love, which gives its kisses to its victims. I am Jesus, I am the Redeemer, the One who has suffered and knows, through personal experience, what the pain of being looked upon by God with severity and being abandoned by God is, and I am never severe nor do I ever abandon. I consume likewise, but in a bonfire of love. The closer the hour of expiation came, the more I felt the Father drifting away.
Increasingly separated from the Father, My Humanity felt less and less supported by the Divinity of God. And for that reason, I suffered in every way. Separation from God brings fear, a clinging to life, dejection, exhaustion, and weariness. The deeper this separation, the stronger these consequences; when it is total, it brings despair. And the more one—by a decree of God—experiences it without having deserved it, the more one suffers from it, because the living spirit feels the separation from God as living flesh feels the separation of a limb. It is a painful, discouraging stupor that those who have not experienced it cannot understand.
I experienced it. I had to know everything, even your despairs, so that I could intercede for you before the Father regarding everything. Oh, I experienced what it means to say: 'I am alone. Everyone has betrayed me, abandoned me. Not even the Father, not even God helps me anymore.' And for this reason, I work mysterious wonders of grace in poor hearts overcome by despair; and for this reason, I ask My favorites to drink from this cup of Mine of such bitter experience, so that those who are shipwrecked in the sea of despair do not refuse the cross I offer as an anchor and salvation, but rather cling to it so that I may lead them to the blessed shore where only peace dwells.
Only I know how much I would have needed the Father on Thursday night! I was a spirit already agonizing from the effort of having to overcome the two greatest pains of a man: the goodbye to a most beloved mother, and the proximity of the unfaithful friend. They were two wounds burning My heart: one with her weeping, the other with his hatred.
I had to share My bread with My Cain. I had to speak to him as a friend so as not to accuse him before the others—whose violence offered no guarantees—and to prevent a crime that was, moreover, useless, since everything was already written in the great book of life: both My holy Death and the suicide of Judas. Other deaths reproved by God were useless. Aside from Mine, no other blood was to be shed, and it was not. The noose strangled that life, closing in the repellent sack of the traitor’s body his impure blood sold to Satan—blood that was not to mix, by falling on the Earth, with the most pure Blood of the Innocent.
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### The Temptations of the Enemy
Those two wounds would have been enough to make Me an agonizing being in My self. But I was the Expiator, the Victim, the Lamb. The lamb, before being immolated, knows the glowing iron, knows the blows, knows the stripping, knows being sold to the slaughterer. The last thing it knows is the chill of the knife penetrating the neck, opening the veins, and killing. Beforehand, it must leave everything: the pastures where it grew, the mother at whose breast it found nutrition and warmth, the companions with whom it lived. Everything. I have known everything: I, the Lamb of God.
That is why Satan came while the Father withdrew to the Heavens. He had already come at the beginning of My mission to tempt Me to turn away from it. Now he returned. It was his hour, the hour of the satanic coven.
Hordes of demons were on Earth that night to carry out the seduction of hearts and prepare them to want the killing of Christ the next day. Each of the members of the Sanhedrin had his own, as did Herod, and Pilate, and each of the Jews who would invoke My Blood to fall upon them. The apostles also had their tempter at their side, putting them to sleep while I languished, preparing them for cowardice. Observe the power of purity: John, the pure one, was the first to free himself from the demonic grip, and he returned immediately to his Jesus and understood His hidden desire, and brought Mary to Me.
But Judas had Lucifer, and I had Lucifer: Judas in his heart; I, at My side. We were the two main characters of the tragedy, and Satan dealt with us personally. After leading Judas to a point from which he could no longer turn back, he turned toward Me.
With his perfect cunning, he presented to Me the tortures of the flesh with unsurpassed realism. In the desert, he also began with the flesh. I conquered him by praying. The spirit subdued the fears of the flesh.
He then presented to Me the futility of My death, the usefulness of living for Myself without caring for ungrateful men. To live rich, happy, loved. To live for the sake of My Mother, not to make her suffer. To live to bring many men to God through a long apostolate—men who, on the contrary, if I died, would forget Me; whereas, if I were a Teacher not for three years but for many decades, they would end up identifying with My doctrine. His angels would help Me seduce men. Did I not see that God's angels were not intervening to help Me? Later, God would forgive Me upon seeing the harvest of believers I would have brought Him. In the desert, he had also induced Me to tempt God with imprudence. I conquered him with prayer. The spirit subdued the moral temptation.
He presented to Me the abandonment of God. He, the Father, no longer loved Me. I was burdened with the sins of the world. I caused Him revulsion. He was absent; He left Me alone. He abandoned Me to the mockery of a pitiless crowd. And He did not grant Me even His divine consolation. Alone, alone, alone. In that hour, only Satan was beside the Christ. God and men were absent because they did not love Me. They hated Me or showed indifference. I prayed to cover the satanic words with My prayer. But the prayer no longer rose to God. It fell back upon Me like stones from a stoning and crushed Me under its weight. Prayer, which for Me was always a caress given to the Father, a voice that rose and to which the paternal caress and word responded, was now dead, costly, thrown in vain against the closed Heaven.
Then I felt the bitterness of the bottom of the chalice. The taste of despair. This is what Satan wanted: to lead Me to despair to make Me his slave. I conquered despair, and I conquered it only with My own strength, because I willed to conquer it. Only with My strength as a Man. I was now nothing but the Man. And I was nothing but a man without the help of God. When God helps, it is easy to keep even the world elevated and hold it like a child's toy. But when God no longer helps, even the weight of a flower is exhausting to us.
I conquered despair and Satan, its creator, to serve God and you by giving you Life. But I knew Death. Not the physical death of the crucified—that was less atrocious—but the total, conscious Death of the fighter who falls, after having triumphed, with a broken heart, his blood oozing from the trauma of an effort beyond what is possible. And I sweated blood. I sweated blood to be faithful to the will of God.
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### The Consolation of the Saved
That is why the angel of My pain presented to Me, as medicine for My agony, the hope of all those saved by My sacrifice. Your names! Each one of them was for Me a medicinal drop infused into My veins to restore their tone and function; each of them meant for Me life returning, light returning, strength returning. In the midst of inhuman tortures, so as not to cry out My pain as a Man and not to despair of God and say He was too severe and unjust toward His Victim, I repeated your names to Myself. I saw you. I blessed you since then. Since then, I carried you in My heart. And when the hour came for you to be on Earth, I looked out from Heaven and leaned down to accompany your coming, exulting at the thought that a new flower of love had been born in the world and would live for Me.
Oh, My blessed ones, consolation of the agonizing Christ! The Mother, the Disciple, and the pious Women accompanied My dying. But you were there too. My agonizing eyes saw, along with the anguished face of My Mother, your loving faces, and they closed that way—happy to close because they had saved you, oh, you who compensate for the Sacrifice of a God!
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### The Premise of the Passion
You have now known all the pains that preceded the Passion proper. Now I will make known to you the concrete pains of the Passion. The pains that most impress your minds when you meditate upon them.
But you meditate on them very little, too little. You do not reflect on how much you cost Me nor on the torture of which your salvation is made. You, who complain of a graze, of a bump against a ledge, of a headache, do not think that I was entirely a wound; that those wounds were aggravated by many things; that the things themselves served as torment for their Creator because they tortured the already tortured God-Son without respect for Him who, being the Father of Creation, had formed them.
But the things were not to blame. The guilty one was the usual one: man; guilty since the day he lent his ear to Satan in the earthly Paradise. Until that moment, the things of Creation held neither thorns nor poisons nor malice for man, the chosen creature. God had appointed this man, made in His image and likeness, as king, and in His paternal love, He had not wanted things to be able to cause snares for man. Satan introduced the snare. First, in the heart of man; then it gave birth for man, with the punishment of sin, to thistles and thorns.
And behold, I, the Man, had to suffer not only at the hands of people but also through things—to receive suffering from things. People gave Me insults and vexations; these were the weapons used.
The hand that God had given to man to distinguish him from animals; that hand that God taught man to use; that hand that God had put in relation with the mind; that hand which God had made the executor of the mind’s orders—this part of yours which is so perfect and which should have offered only caresses to the Son of God (from whom it had received only caresses and health if it was sick) turned against Him and gave Him slaps and punches, and armed itself with a whip, and transformed into pincers to tear out hair and beard, or armed itself with a mallet to drive the nails.
The feet of man, which should have only run diligently to go and adore the Son of God, moved swiftly to come and capture Me and take Me through the streets to My executioners, with shoves and tugs; they were swift to kick Me in a way that is not permissible to use even with a stubborn mule.
The mouth of man, which should have used the word—that quality granted only to man and to no other created animal—to praise and bless the Son of God, was filled with blasphemies and lies and spat them out, along with its saliva, against My person.
The mind of man, which is the proof of his celestial origin, labored to invent torments of a refined rigor.
Man, the whole man, made use of each and every one of his elements to torture the Son of God. And he called upon the earth, with its forms, as an aid in the torture. He made projectiles of the stones from the torrents to wound Me; from the branches of trees, sticks to beat Me; from braided hemp, a rope to drag Me, sawing into My flesh; from thorns, a crown of stinging fire for My weary head; from minerals, an exasperating scourge; from the reed, an instrument of torture; from the stones of the streets, an obstacle for the faltering foot of Him who ascended, dying, to die crucified.
And to the things of the earth were joined those of the sky. The cold of dawn for My body already exhausted by the agony of the garden; the wind that embittered the wounds; the sun that increased the burning and the fever and brought flies and dust, and blinded the weary eyes that could not be protected by My bound hands.
And to the things of the sky were joined the fibers granted to man to clothe his nakedness: the leather that was transformed into a scourge; the wool of the tunic, which stuck to the open wounds of the scourging and produced the torture of chafing and laceration with every movement.
Everything, everything, everything served to torment the Son of God. He, through whom all things were created, in the hour when He was the Host offered to God, had all things as enemies. Maria, your Jesus found relief in nothing. Like enraged vipers, everything that existed turned to bite My flesh and increase the suffering.
This is what you should think about when you suffer; and, comparing your imperfections with My perfection and My pain with yours, recognize that the Father loves you as He did not love Me in that hour; and love Him, therefore, with all your being, as I loved Him despite His rigor."