MESSAGES FROM OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST TO HIS BELOVED SONS**
*(From Concepción Cabrera de Armida)*
**XLI**
**THE SHADOW OF THE FATHER**
“The fruitfulness of the Father is of such divine power and nature that His Shadow alone was sufficient to beget within Himself the Word, equal to Him in all things, with all His infinite perfections; which He also communicated to the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Word. For this very reason, the fruitful Shadow of the Holy Spirit—a fruitfulness proceeding from the Virgin Father—was sufficient in Mary to beget in her the Word made man, likewise Virgin in His two natures, divine and human. That creative Shadow of the Father, reflecting upon Himself, eternally begot the Church and her priests, and communicated to them what He is: divinity, fruitfulness, and boundless charity.
That same fruitful Shadow of the Father extends to the altars to multiply (without departing from His fruitful unity) the incarnate Word, in every host and consecrated particle. He multiplies Him, I say, in His unity—not the divine substance, which is one, nor the divine and human natures enclosed in unity—but the species which, fertilized at their origin by the Father and transformed in their substance by the power conferred upon the priest through the words of transubstantiation, enclose living and latent in the Eucharist my Body, my Blood, my Soul, and my Divinity, one with that of the Father and that of the Holy Spirit.
Yet everything that exists and will exist comes and proceeds from the infinite fruitfulness of the Virgin Father, from His unity in the Virgin Trinity, eternal and without beginning.
God is God by Himself, and feels within Himself, as it were, the need within His divine nature to give and communicate Himself; first, of course, to the divine Persons in a single essence, and then to diffuse Himself throughout creation in the natural and supernatural orders. His first thought, so to speak, His first Shadow, He projected within Himself, begetting the Word, and in His Word all things created or yet to be created. In the Word He has His delights, His recreation, His contentment, His all; and if the Father loves men, it is because of His Word; and if He loves the Church, priests, and all souls, it is because of His Word, because of the fruitful Shadow of Himself; for in the Word and the Holy Spirit He sees Himself.
Who thinks of the fruitful Shadow of the Father eternally and constantly begetting His Word, and in Him and through Him, souls and lives, in the divine and human order, within the fruitful unity of the Trinity? Who gives thanks for that fruitful Shadow that produces grace and communicates the merits of His Christ for the salvation of souls and for greater glory in heaven?
The divine and fruitful Shadow of the Father is enough to bring forth heaven; a single act of the Father's will is enough to strike souls and hearts with the fruitful grace of His infinite power—not only through the fruitful potency with which His gaze is filled, but because in God His Shadow is divine, His gaze is divine, His Being is divine, one with the Trinity.
The Father, with His infinite Power, cannot, so to speak, remain idle or uncommunicated; whether within Himself, in His unity within the Trinity; or within souls through His Church by the Holy Spirit within her.
I desire my priests to keep in mind this fruitful Shadow of the Father that has enveloped them from eternity, to communicate to them the holy seed of the holy and virginal fruitfulness of the Trinity. In God everything is God, and His Shadow does not merely reflect God, but is Himself, by reason of His unity; for a shadow is part of oneself, and in God, everything that proceeds from Him does not merely carry something of Him, but is Him.
And if He has enveloped priests in His Shadow from all eternity, they must reproduce Him within themselves, receiving what is divine, becoming divinized. Let them consider that this Shadow of light is purity, is innocence, is divine fruitfulness; that this Shadow is God, who loves them with all the tenderness of the Holy Spirit and who is always looking upon them. Let them not stain this blessed Shadow of light; let them not grieve that divine gaze which should always take delight in them, seeking lovingly in all His Bishops and priests total transformation into Me, so as to pour out upon them the Holy Spirit, and with Him the gifts and graces for their sanctification and that of many souls.
Let priests reflect on that fruitful gaze of the Father that sets them apart; let them give thanks for that Shadow of the Father that envelops them, not only in His most holy image, but in God Himself. Let them not tear that veil of divine love that enfolds them; let them live in the shadow of that Shadow of the Holy Spirit which drives Satan away and elevates them from the earthly to the divine.
Upon every priest, the creative and sanctifying Shadow of the Father is projected through the Holy Spirit. Upon every priest, the Father’s gaze rests, desiring to absorb into Himself all the priest’s gazes in their purity, his entire being sanctified and transformed into Me.
That same Shadow that enabled Mary to conceive the Word made flesh in her most pure womb envelops the priest at every Mass, in which he renews the Incarnation of the Word, His passion, and His death. Yet many priests fail to realize that this divine Shadow of the Father descends upon them at every Mass—that Shadow of light from Him who is Light, with which, fertilizing the species, He causes the divine Incarnate Word to sprout in every host.
Let them reflect on that fruitful Shadow of purity, of light, of divinity, of whiteness, of heaven, in which priests live when consecrating, enveloped in heavenly splendors. With these thoughts, which are a joyful reality, priests will grow fervent, seeing how the whole Trinity in its unity sets them apart and communicates itself to them. And they have the sacred duty to receive, humbled and grateful, these graces of infinite predilection and holy fruitfulness that ought to flow through them to souls, not leaving sterile these reflections of the Father in which God Himself abides.
Mystical incarnations also spring from this divine Shadow, so little meditated upon and so little appreciated; from the fruitful gaze of the Father which, resting in that priestly manner upon a soul, communicates His Word—the only thing He can communicate—since, like Him, it is one single Divinity.
As in Mary, He makes use, so to speak, of the Holy Spirit; but the Shadow projected by the Holy Spirit into the soul is the Shadow of the Father—a Shadow of Light, of Wisdom, of Purity; a fruitful Shadow that begets the Word, in a certain manner, within souls; reflecting, for the Father’s pleasure, the Incarnation in Mary; reproducing, in a way, the Mystery so delightful to the Father of the actual Incarnation in Mary. The Father loves this Mystery of love so deeply that He delights in reflecting it, bringing it about mystically in certain souls—few though they be—to take pleasure in it, and for the good of many! By doing this, He creates a channel of grace for the world, communicating a most pure fruitfulness that begets souls for heaven.
Priests receive at Mass, as I have said, this grace of the Father’s fruitfulness; that is why Masses have infinite value—because the Word descends to the altar and transforms the priest into Myself. That is why the Father looks upon him, smiles upon him, and envelops him with His luminous, fruitful Shadow that brings forth the Word; that is why He grants graces, and also why the Father is most vilely—and through Myself, in as much as the priest is transformed into Me—almost infinitely offended when an unworthy priest consecrates, being unfit to be enveloped in that Shadow or looked upon with divine favor, thereby forcing Me, who am ONE with the Father, to offend the Father!...
This is a crime that only the great mercy of God forgives; an offense so grave that only I, the immaculate Lamb, can redeem and erase!
Let my priests think upon this; let them deeply and seriously absorb these thoughts of the Shadow of the Father, the gaze of the Father, the Shadow of the Holy Spirit through the Father, and the incomparable tenderness of the Trinity. Let those who are guilty repent, and let those who are good grow fervent for their own good, for the good of my Church, and for the glory of my Father—who can give them no more, because He has given them Myself, His Word, through the Holy Spirit.
No more sins or ingratitude among my own; let them respond, if they love me, and let them finally be one with Me in the unity of the Trinity.”