*Jesus is standing on a pile of boards, built up like a speaker's platform in one of the rooms—the last one—and there He speaks with a powerful voice, so that both those inside the room and those under the shed, and even those in the threshing floor muddy from the rain, can hear Him. Covered with their cloaks of dark, raw wool off which the water slides, they all look like friars. The weakest are in the room; the women under the shed; and in the yard, out in the rain, the strong—mostly men.*
*Peter comes and goes, barefoot and wearing only his short garment, covered with a cloth he has placed over his head; yet he does not lose his good humor, even though he has to trudge through the water and is taking an unintended shower. John, Andrew, and James are with him. Carefully, they are bringing some of the sick from the other room, guiding some blind men, and supporting some who are lame.*
*Jesus waits patiently until everyone has finished settling in, pained only by the fact that the four disciples are soaked like sponges in a bucket.*
*“Not at all! We are stubborn wood. Don’t worry. We’re being baptized again, and the baptizer is God Himself,” Peter responds to Jesus’s signs of concern.*
*Finally, everyone is in their respective places, and Peter figures he can go put on dry clothes. He does so, as do the other three. But when he returns to where the Master is, he sees the gray cloak of the veiled woman sticking out from the corner of the shed, and he heads toward her without thinking that doing so means crossing the yard diagonally once more under the downpour—which is growing heavier—and without minding the puddles that splash up to his knees as the large raindrops hit them so hard. He takes her by one elbow, without pulling back her cloak, and leads her well up to the wall of the room, sheltered from the rain, and then stands beside her, firm and motionless as a sentinel.*
*Jesus has seen the scene and smiled, tilting His head to veil the brightness of His smile. Now He speaks.*
*“Do not say, you who have come regularly, that I do not speak in order or that I skip any of the ten commandments. You hear, I see; you listen, I apply My word to the pains and sores I see in you. I am the Physician. A physician goes first to the sickest, to those closest to death. Then he turns to those less grave. So do I.”*
*“Today I say: 'Do not commit fornication.'”*
*“Do not look around trying to read the word 'lustful' on anyone’s face. Have mutual charity. Would you like someone to read it on yours? No. Then do not seek to read it in the troubled eye of the person beside you, on their brow that feels shame and bows toward the ground. Besides... Oh, tell Me, especially you men. Who among you has never sunk his teeth into the bread of ash and dung of sexual satisfaction? Is lust only that which leads you to spend an hour in harlot arms? Is it not also lust, then, to profane the marriage union with one’s wife by avoiding its consequences, leaving it reduced merely to a mutual gratification of the senses—to a legalized vice?”*
*“Marriage means procreation, and the act means and must be fertilization. Without this, it is immorality. One must not turn the nuptial bed into a brothel; and into a brothel it is transformed if it is soiled with lust and not consecrated with motherhood. The soil does not reject the seed; it welcomes it and forms a plant from it. The seed does not flee the soil once deposited; on the contrary, it immediately takes root and grips to grow and yield an ear of grain: the plant creature born from the union between soil and seed. Man is the seed, woman is the soil, the ear of grain is the child. Refusing to produce the ear and squandering strength for vice is a fault. It is prostitution committed in the nuptial bed, in no way different from the other—in fact, aggravated by disobedience to the commandment that says: 'Be one flesh and multiply in children.'”*
*“Therefore, see, women who are voluntarily sterile—legal and honest wives (not in the eyes of God, but of the world)—how, despite this, you can be prostitutes and commit fornication just the same, even if you belong only to your husband, because you do not head toward motherhood, but toward pleasure, too much and too frequently. And do you not stop to think that pleasure is a toxin that, inhaled by any mouth whatsoever, infects and burns like a fire that, thinking to consume itself, crosses the boundaries of the home like a devourer, ever more insatiable, leaving a bitter taste of ash under the tongue, along with distaste, nausea, and contempt for oneself and for the partner in pleasure? For when conscience awakens—and it does so between two feverish moments—this contempt for oneself cannot help but be born, as both are lowered to a level even inferior to that of animals.”*
*(Note from the undersigned regarding this topic: The Church allows responsible parenthood—that is, when one has already been generous in having children, certain measures may be taken to avoid conceiving, but not artificial means such as contraceptives, condoms, etc., but natural means, such as natural regulation based on a woman's infertile days, etc.; likewise, sexual pleasure purely as a simple demonstration of love and passional relief within marriage is licit as long as these two aforementioned measures are kept in mind: being generous in having children and not using artificial contraceptive means.)*
*“'Do not commit fornication,' it is written.”*
*“A great part of man's carnal actions is fornication—I am not even touching upon the matter of those unimaginable unions that are like a nightmare and which Leviticus condemns with these words:”*
*“'Man shall not approach man as if he were a woman'; and also: 'You shall not join with any beast, so as not to defile yourself with it. And so shall the woman do, and she shall not join with any beast, for it is an infamy.' Well... I have alluded to the duty of spouses regarding marriage—which ceases to be holy when, through malice, it becomes unfruitful—and now I am going to speak of fornication in its proper sense between man and woman, through mutual vice or to obtain money or gifts.”*
*“The human body is a magnificent temple that encloses within itself an altar. On that altar God ought to be. But God is not where there is corruption. Therefore, the body of the impure person has its altar deconsecrated and without God. Like one who wallows, drunk, in the mud and vomit of his own drunkenness, man, in the bestiality of fornication, lowers himself, becoming less than a worm or the most unclean animal.”*
*“Tell Me—if among you there is anyone who has depraved himself to the point of trading with his body as one does with grain or animals—what benefit has it brought you? Take your heart in your hand, look at it, ask it, listen to it, see its wounds, its shudders of pain, and then tell Me, answer Me: was that fruit so sweet that it compensated for this pain of a heart born pure, forced by you to live in an impure body, to beat to give life and heat to lust, to be consumed in vice?”*
*“Tell Me: are you so depraved that you do not weep secretly when hearing a child's voice calling, 'Mommy,' and thinking of your mother—oh women of pleasure who have fled from home, or have been thrown out of it so that the rotted fruit would not destroy the other siblings with the discharge of its rottenness!—thinking of your mother, perhaps dead from the pain of having to say to herself: 'I have given birth to a person who has been a cause of disgrace'?”*
*“Do you not feel your heart break when you see an old man whose gray hair gives him a solemn bearing, thinking that upon your father's hair you have poured dishonor, like mud taken by the handful, and along with dishonor, the contempt of his native land?”*
*“Do you not feel your insides twist with painful longing upon seeing the happiness of a wife or the innocence of a virgin, having to say: 'I have renounced all this, and I will never possess it again'?”*
*“Do you not feel as though shame were tearing the skin from your face when you see the gaze of men, greedy or full of contempt?”*
*“Do you not feel your misery when you thirst for a child's kiss and no longer dare to say, 'Give it to me,' because you have killed lives at their beginning—lives you rejected as a troublesome burden and useless weight, lives torn from the very tree that had conceived them, thrown out for manure, lives that now cry out to you: 'Murderesses!'?”*
*“Do you not fear, above all, the Judge who created you and who waits to ask you and say to you: 'What have you done with yourself? Was it for this that I gave you life? Swarming nest of worms, how dare you stand in my presence? You had everything that was god to you: pleasure. Go to the place of endless curse'?”*
*“Who is weeping? No one? You say, 'No one'? Well, My soul goes toward another soul that is weeping. Why does it go toward her? To cast an anathema upon her for being a harlot? No. Because I feel pity for her soul. Everything in Me feels repulsive toward her dirty body, sweaty from lascivious effort. But her soul...!”*
*“Oh! Father! Father! For this soul too I have become incarnate and left Heaven to be her Redeemer and that of many sister souls of hers! Why should I not pick up this sheep that is going astray, and bring her to the fold, clean her, join her to the flock, lead her out to pasture, and give her a love that is perfect as only Mine can be—so different from those that until now had the name of love for her and were nothing but hatred; so merciful, complete, delicate, that she no longer weeps for time past, or does so only to say: 'Too many days have I lost far from You, Eternal Beauty. Who will restore my lost time? How can I taste in the little I have left what I would have tasted had I always been pure?'?”*
*“Despite that, do not weep, soul trampled by all the lust of the world. Listen: you are a disgustingly dirty rag, but you can become a flower again; you are a dunghill, but you can be a garden; you are an unclean animal, but you can become an angel again. One day you were one; you danced in flowery meadows, a rose among roses, fresh like them, and you gave off the fragrance of virginity; serene, you sang your childhood songs, and then you ran to your mother, to your father, and said to them: 'You are my loves.' And the invisible guardian that all creatures have at their side smiled at your white-and-blue soul... And then? Why? Why did you tear off those wings of a little innocent? Why did you trample a father's and mother's heart to run toward other uncertain hearts? Why did you commit your pure voice to deceitful phrases of passion? Why did you break the stem of the rose and profane yourself?”*
*“Repent, daughter of God. Repentance renews. Repentance purifies. Repentance sublimates. Can man not forgive you? Could not even your father do so anymore? Well, God can, because the goodness of God is not comparable to human goodness, and His mercy is infinitely greater than human misery. Honor yourself by making your soul worthy of honor through an honest life. Justify yourself before God by sinning no more against your soul. Make yourself a new name before God. That is what has value. Are you vice? Be honesty, be sacrifice, be the martyr of your repentance. You well knew how to martyrize your heart to make the flesh rejoice; know now how to martyrize the flesh to give your heart eternal peace.”*
*“Go. Depart, all of you, each with his burden and his thoughts, and meditate. God waits for everyone and rejects no one who repents. May the Lord give you His light to know your soul! Farewell!”*
*Many leave in the direction of the town. Others enter the room. Jesus goes toward the sick and restores their health.*