The story is told in Christian lore of how the brilliant theologian and Doctor of the Church, St. Augustine of Hippo, used to ponder long and hard on the greatest mystery of the Christian faith: the Holy Trinity, as he tried to understand it. Strolling along the seashore one day while pondering how there could be three Persons in one God, he noticed a small child seemingly at play on the beach. He watched how the child repeatedly scooped up water from the sea in a shell and carried it to a hole in the sand into which he emptied the water. Then returning to the water's edge, the child refilled the shell and repeated the process over and over. Curious, Augustine walked over and asked the child what he was doing. Smiling up at him the child said, "I am emptying the sea into this hole." Amused at the child's naivete, Augustine replied, "Why, even if you spent your whole life at this task, child, you could never complete it. The sea is far too vast and deep to be contained in so small a hole!" The child looked up solemnly at Augustine and said: "Yet I will complete this task before you can ever understand the Mystery on which you ponder" –-and with that, the child vanished. Augustine then realized that he was a messenger sent to him by God to point out the futility of his efforts to understand this Mystery.¹

The Dictations and Visions of the Mystery of the Holy Trinity that follow were granted by Christ on the dates indicated to the great mystic of our day, Maria Valtorta [1961†]. Best known for her masterwork, The Poem of the Man-God,² Valtorta also recorded many other Visions and Dictations in three separate volumes called respectively: I Quaderni del 1943, ...1944, ...1945-50 ["Notebooks for 1943, ...1944, ...1945-50"]. The four revelations presented here — as Parts I, II, III and IV — are a compilation taken from her first two collections: I Quaderni del 1943, and I Quaderni 1944, and were translated especially for this Website. They consist of Valtorta's own descriptions of her Visions, as well as some commentaries on the Visions given her by Christ in the form of Dictations.

May these celestial glimpses granted by Divine Mercy to modern man and the Church of today, help the Christian reader enter more deeply into this greatest of the Christian mysteries awaiting Christ's faithful disciples in their heavenly Homeland.

"To your very limited intellectual capacity, to your embryonic spirituality, it is not granted to know the mystery of the nature of God. But to the spiritual ones among the mass of the so-called spiritual, the mystery is made more knowable. To the lovers of the Son, to those who are truly marked with My Blood, the mystery is unveiled with a greater clarity, because My Blood is Knowledge, and My predilection, a school.

Today is a great feast in Heaven, because all Heaven sings today the 'Sanctus' to the Lamb whose Blood was poured out for human Redemption. You [Maria] are one of the few – too few – creatures who venerate My Blood as It should be venerated. But to those who do venerate It, that Blood, from the time when It was shed, speaks with words of eternal Life and suprasensible knowledge. If My Blood were more loved and venerated, more invoked and believed in, many of the evils which bring you all to the abyss would be exorcised.

It spoke, this Blood, when It was still beneath the figure of the mosaic lamb, under the figure of the prophetic words in the sign of the preserving Tau. It spoke, after It was shed, in the mouth of the apostles; It shouts Its power in the Apocalypse; It invites with Its call by the mouths of the mystics. But It is not loved. It is not remembered. It is not invoked. My Church has so many feasts. But a most solemn feast for My Blood is lacking. And in My Blood is salvation!

Today, the feast of My Blood, I illumine a mystery for you. Say: 'Glory to the Father, to the Son, to the Holy Spirit,' because it is of Us that I want to speak to you. Because of your human heaviness, figures are needed in order to think of the Father and the Holy Spirit, incorporeal Beings of infinite beauty, but Whom none of you can conceive with your human senses. So much so, that only with difficulty do you turn with all your thought to Them to invoke Them, as you invoke Me Whom you think of as a Man-God. You do not understand even remotely, therefore, the mystery of Our Trinity.

In order to think of God there is no need to bring up comparisons with other beings. He is. In being, there is all. But being has no body, and the eternal Being has no body."

"Look: God is Light. Here is the only thing that can still represent God without being an antithesis of His spiritual Essence.

Gem of Our eternal Beauty. Fixed in the abyss of Heaven, He draws to Himself All the spirits of My Church triumphant, and absorbs into Himself those in My Church Militant who know how to live out of their spirit.

Our Trinity, Our Triple and One Nature, is fixed in a single Splendor in that Point from which is generated all that is, in an eternal being.

Say: 'Glory to the Father, to the Son, to the Holy Spirit'."

[Following is a commentary by Maria Valtorta on the above Vision and Dictation, written to her spiritual director⁴ probably in response to his request for more details of her Vision. ––Trans.]

"To describe what I have seen cannot be done. Words fail. While Jesus spoke, I was seeing, but I cannot retell all my mind saw in a way that another might see it. I could make an image of it, even though I am an ass as regards drawing.

It would suffice to make three concentric circles with a point in the middle. But that would say nothing. There would be lacking the Light, and the intuition of the relations between the three circles and the point that centers them. Hence it would be a dead sign, while this is so Living, working, blissful.

Certainly I will not forget anymore the beauty of this intellectual vision, should I live even a thousand years. It will be my help, my comfort, strength, defense — all — in all circumstances. And it is an ultra-powerful Magnet which draws me to Itself and gives me an indescribable anxiety to reach It. I seem to live under the sun. But what should I say of the sun? The sun is a spent and cold star with respect to the Divine Fire fixed in the depth of the Empyreal Heavens, so distant and so near....

Yes, I have an impression of Its immeasurable distance, across which It flows through the whole Universe which is bathed in and lives by Its Light. And at the same time I feel that each being, my own especially through the goodness of God who has permitted me to have this incomparable joy — each is near this Point of Life which is God, and is under Its beam which holds each gathered in, sheltered, living, like a bell-jar over a very delicate plant. (And with this banal comparison I spoil it all, but I find nothing better.)

In brief, I feel myself under the Eye of God. And it is a sensation of joy, of warmth, of strength, of an infinite, indescribable, gladdening peace. To live thus, under the incomprehensible Gem (as my Master has justly named It!) of the Divine Beauty, a Gem which unites again in a single, intolerable Splendor the Three Divine Persons and makes of Them a Unity of Divine Light — to live thus is such a bliss that it annuls all that I have suffered and will have to suffer....

Now I truly understand what it means to say: 'Paradise.' It means to live seeing always that Sun, One and Threefold."

1. This story is related here solely from memory. Attempts to document it from available sources have proved unsuccessful. If any reader knows of any source or publication where this story can be found, kindly inform the Webmaster of this Site. A less dramatic but undocumented version of this story can be found also at: http://webhome.net/calvary/bios/augustn.txt .

2. Maria Valtorta, The Poem of the Man-God, trans., Nicandro Picozzi and Patrick McLaughlin (Centro Editoriale Valtortiano srl, 1986-1990), 5 Volumes, hardbound, $35.00 U.S. Distributed (among others) by Saint Raphael's Publications Inc., 31 King St. W., Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, J1H 1N5, and in select bookstores in the U.S. See also links to other Valtorta Sites given on this Web Site.

3. From Maria Valtorta's, I Quaderni del 1943 (Edizioni Pisani / Centro Editoriale Valtortiano srl, Via Po 95, 03036 Isola del Liri [FR], Italia, 1985): 112-115, 116-117. The Vision occurred on the feast of the Most Precious Blood, 1943.

4. Fr. Romuald Migliorini, O.S.V.

"How beautiful!  How beautiful!  How beautiful what I see!

I seek to be very exact and clear in describing to you² what Communion brought me.

You know how happy I was. But not what bliss and what a joyous Vision was granted to me from the moment of my Eucharistic union on. It was like a picture which revealed itself to me by degrees. But a picture it was not; it was a contemplation. I was recollected from it for a good hour without any other prayer than this contemplation which rapt me beyond the earth.

It started right after receiving the sacred Particle, and I don't think it escaped you how slow I was with the responses and the greeting³; I was already wrapped up in it. Despite that, I said all my thanksgiving in a loud voice while the Vision came to me always more vividly. And then I quieted myself, with my eyes closed as if I were sleeping. But I had never been so awake with my whole self as in this hour.

The Vision lasts, in its final phase, even while I write. I write under the gaze of so many Heavenly beings who see how I say only what I see, without adding details or making modifications. And here is the Vision:

Having just received Jesus, I felt my Mama near me, Mary, at the left side of the bed. She embraced me with Her right arm, drawing me to Herself. She was [clothed] with Her white garment and veil, as in the Visions of the Grotto in December [1943]. At the same time I felt myself enfolded by a golden light of a sweet, an indescribably soft color, and the eyes of my spirit sought for the source of that golden light, which I felt raining down on me from above. It seemed to me that my room, even while remaining a room as it is with its floor and four walls and furniture, had no more roof, and I saw the boundless azure [heavens] of God.

Suspended in these azure [heavens], the Divine Dove of fire was hovering perpendicularly above Mary's head and, naturally, above my head, because I had leaned my cheek on Mary's cheek. The Holy Spirit had His wings open and in an upright, vertical position. He did not move, and yet He vibrated, and at every vibration there were waves, flashes, sparks of brilliance which were burst forth. From Him gushed a cone of golden light. Its peak started from the breast of the Dove and its base enfolded Mary and me. We were gathered together in this cone, in this mantel, in this embrace of joyous light. A light very vivid, and yet not dazzling, because it communicated to the eyes a new strength which grew with every beam burst forth from the Dove, increasing always more the already existing beam of light with every vibration of the Dove. I felt as if my eye were dilated with a superhuman power, as if it were no longer the eye of a creature but of a spirit already glorified.

When I attained the capacity of seeing further, thanks to the Love enkindled and suspended above me, my spirit was called to look still higher. And against the clearer azure of Paradise, I saw the Father — distinctly, in as much as His figure was in lines of immaterial light. [He had] a beauty which I do not try to describe because it is beyond human capacity. He appeared to me as on a throne. I say this because He seemed to me to be seated with infinite majesty. But I did not see a throne, or armchair or canopy. Nothing of any earthly form of seat. He seemed to be at my left side (toward the direction of my crucified Jesus — just to give you an indication — and therefore to the right of His Son), but at an incalculable height. And yet I saw Him in the tiniest of His most luminous features. He was looking toward the window (still to give you an indication of the various positions). He was looking with a look of infinite love.

I followed His gaze and saw Jesus. Not the Jesus-Master Whom I usually see. But the Jesus-King: clothed in white but with a luminous and extremely white garment, as is that of Mary. A garment which seems to be made of light. [He was] very beautiful. Robust. Imposing. Perfect. Dazzling. With His right hand (He was standing) He held His scepter which is also His banner. A long staff, like a shepherd's, but still taller than my very tall Jesus, and which did not end with the shepherd's crook but in a transverse rod, which forms therefore a cross⁴..., from which hung, supported from the shorter rod, a small banner of very luminous, white silk ⁵..., and marked on both sides with a purple cross. Upon the small banner is written — in words of light as if written with liquid diamonds — the title: 'Jesus Christ.'

I see very well the wounds of His hands since His right hand holds the staff up high, toward the banner, and His left points to the wound of His side which, however, I do not see other than as a very luminous point from which beams of light radiate that descend toward earth. The wound on the right [hand] is just toward the wrist and seems like a very bright ruby, as large as a piece of our money ⁶.... The wound of the left hand is more in the center and wider, but then elongated toward the thumb.⁷ They shine like living coals. I see no other wounds. Rather the Body of my Lord is very beautiful and whole in all Its parts.

The Father looks at the Son on His left. The Son looks at His Mother and me. But I assure you if He did not look with love I could not bear the brilliance of His Look and of His Countenance. He is truly the King of dreadful majesty, as it is said⁸.

The longer the Vision lasts, the more my faculty of perceiving the tiniest details increases, and of seeing always more in that vast ray [of light].

In fact, after some time I see St. Joseph (near the corner where the Manger is). He is not so tall, more or less like Mary. Robust. With gray hair which is curly and short, and with a square-cut beard. A long, thin, aquiline nose. Two wrinkles incise his cheeks starting from the corners of his nose and descending to lose themselves at the sides of his mouth, in his beard. Dark and very good eyes. I find in them the loving good gaze of my own father. All his face is good, pensive without being sad, dignified, but so, so good. He is clothed in a tunic of violet-blue like the petals of certain periwinkles, and he has a mantle the color of camel's hair. Jesus points him out to me, saying to me: 'Behold the patron of all the just.'

Then the Light summons my spirit to the other side of the room, that is toward Martha's⁹ bed, and I see my angel. He is kneeling, turned toward Mary whom he appears to venerate. Clothed in white, his arms placed in a cross on his breast with his hands touching his shoulders. His head is bowed very low, therefore I see little of his face. He is in an attitude of profound homage. I see his beautiful long wings, very white, pointed, true wings made to fly swiftly and surely from earth to Heaven, now gathered behind his shoulders. He teaches me with his attitude, as if he says: 'Hail, Mary.'

While I am still looking at him, I feel that someone is near me at my right side who places a hand on my right shoulder. It is my St. John¹⁰ with his shining countenance of cheerful love.

I feel blissful. I recollect myself in the midst of such bliss believing I have touched the summit. But a still livelier sparkling of the Spirit of God and of the wounds of Jesus, my Lord, increases my capacity for seeing. And I see the Heavenly Church, the Church Triumphant! I [will] try to describe it for you.

On high, always, the Father, the Son, and now also the Spirit high above the Two, between the Two, Whom He unites with His brilliance.

Lower down, as between two azure slopes of an unearthly azure, gathered in a blessed Valley, the multitude of the Blessed in Christ, the Army of those marked with the Name of the Lamb,¹¹ a multitude which is light, a light that is song, a song that is adoration, adoration that is bliss.

On the left, the ranks of Confessors. On the right, those of the Virgins. I do not see the ranks of Martyrs, and the Spirit makes me understand that the Martyrs are joined to the Virgins, since martyrdom 're-virginizes' the soul as if it were just created. Whether Confessors or Virgins, they all seem clothed in white: that luminous white of the garments of Jesus and Mary.

Light radiates from the azure ground and from the azure walls of the Holy Valley as if they were kindled sapphire. Lights radiate from their garments of woven diamonds. Above all, the spiritualized bodies and faces are light. And here I endeavor to describe to you what I have noticed in the different bodies.

A Body of flesh and a Spirit that is alive, throbbing, perfect, sensitive to touch and contact — only the Body of Jesus and of Mary are that: two glorious Bodies, but truly 'bodies.' Then, Light with the form of a body (just so that it can be perceptible to this poor handmaid of God): the Eternal Father, the Holy Spirit and my angel. Next, Light already more solid: St. Joseph and St. John, certainly because I must hear their presence and word. Finally, White Flames, which are spiritualized bodies: all the Blessed who form the multitude of Heaven.

Among the Confessors no one turns. They all look at the Most Holy Trinity. Among the Virgins someone does turn. I distinguish the Apostles Peter and Paul because, although luminous and white-garbed as all [the rest], they have a face already more distinctive than the others: a typically Hebrew face. They look at me with kindness (thank Heavens!).

Then three blessed spirits (whom I understand to be the spirits of women) who look at me, nod and smile. You could say they invite me. They are young. But previously it appeared to me that all the Blessed have the same age: youthful, perfect, and of a similar beauty. They are lesser copies of Jesus and Mary. Who these three celestial creatures are I cannot say, but since two carry palms and only one some flowers — the palms are the only sign which distinguishes the Martyrs from the Virgins — I believe I do not err in saying that they are Agnes, Cecilia and Therese of Lisieux.

What that 'Alleluia' of this multitude is I cannot say, despite my good will. An 'Alleluia' which is powerful, but also soft as a caress. And all laugh and shine more vividly at every 'Hosanna' of the multitude to its God.

The Vision ceases and, in its intensity, is crystalized in this form. Mary leaves me and, with Her, John and Joseph: the first taking his place before the Son and the others their place in the rank of the virgins.

Praise be to Jesus Christ!"

1. From Maria Valtorta's, I Quaderni del 1944 (Edizioni Pisani / Centro Editoriale Valtortiano srl, Via Po 95, 03036 Isola del Liri [FR], Italia, 1985): 41-46.

2. Valtorta is addressing her spiritual director, Fr. Romuald Migliorini, O.S.V.

3. Fr. Migliorini used to say Mass for Valtorta in her sick room, so she refers here probably to her slow responses to the prayers, etc. at the end of Mass.

4. Here Valtorta has drawn a very long Latin cross.

5. Here Valtorta has roughly drawn a kind of crusader's shield.

6. Here Valtorta has designated a piece of Italian money ['10 centesimi'].

7. Here Valtorta has drawn a little elliptical elongated circle with its point toward the right.

8. "...as it is said": In the Roman liturgy's "Dies irae, dies illa" ["A day of wrath, is that day"].

9. That is, Martha Diciotti, the close friend who took care of Valtorta for many years till the latter's death in 1961.

10. That is, St. John the Evangelist, for whom Valtorta had a special love. Christ, in fact, gave her the nickname or "pet name" of "little John," both because of her special affection for St. John, and because, like him, she mystically "laid on the breast of Jesus" in receiving the many revelations He gave her for the Church of today.

11. Revelation 7.

"I will try to describe² the inexpressible, unutterable, beatific vision of late yesterday evening which, from a dream of my soul, led me into a dream of my body in order to appear still more clear and beautiful to me when I returned to my senses. And before setting about this description, which will always be farther from the truth than we are from the sun, I asked myself: 'Should I write first, or first do my penances?'. I was burning to describe what caused my joy, and I know that after my penance I am slower from material fatigue with my writing.

But the voice of the Holy Spirit's light — I call it thus because it is immaterial like light and yet it is bright as the most brilliant light, and writes for my spirit His words which are sound and sparkle and joy, joy, joy — the Spirit, enfolding my soul in His lightning-flash of love, says to me:

First your penance and then the writing of that which is your joy. Penance should always precede all, in you, since that is what merits for you your joy. Every vision is born from a preceding penance, and each penance opens to you the way to each higher contemplation. You live for this. You are loved for this. You will be blessed for this. Sacrifice, sacrifice. Your life, your mission, your strength, your glory. Only when you will have slept in Us will you cease to be a host-victim, to become glory.

So I first did all my daily penances. But I didn't even feel them. The eyes of my spirit 'saw' the sublime Vision, and that annulled my bodily sensibilities. I understand therefore the reason why the martyrs were able to endure those horrible tortures smiling. If for me, so inferior to the martyrs in virtue, a contemplation can, by pouring itself from my spirit into my bodily senses, annul in them their sensitivity to pain: for the martyrs – as perfect in love as a human creature can be, and through their perfection seeing the Perfection of God without veils – there must take place in them a true annulling of their material weakness. The joy of the vision annuls the misery of the flesh's sensibility to every suffering.

And now I seek to describe it:

I saw Paradise again.³And I understood what makes up Its Beauty, Its Nature, Its Light, Its Song — all, in short. Even Its Works, which are those that, from such a height, inform, regulate, provide for the whole created universe. As already [I understood] the other time, in the first part of the current year, I believe, [when] I saw the Most Holy Trinity. But let's take it in order.

Even the eyes of the spirit, however much more fit to endure that Light than the poor eyes of the body which cannot stare at the sun — a star which is like the little flame of a smoking wick compared to the Light that is God — even the eyes of the spirit need to habituate themselves by degrees to the contemplation of this lofty Beauty. God is so good that , even while wanting to unveil Himself in all His brilliance, He does not forget that we are poor spirits still prisoners in the flesh, and therefore weakened by this imprisonment.

Oh! How beautiful, shining, dancing, the spirits which God creates at every moment to be souls for his new creatures! I have seen them, and I know. But we...until we return to Him, we cannot endure that Splendor all at once. And He in His goodness brings it near to us only by degrees.

First of all, then, yesterday evening I saw [something] like an immense rose. I say 'rose' to give some concept of these circles of joyous light which centered themselves always more around a point of intolerable brilliance.

A rose without boundaries! Its light was that which it received from the Holy Spirit: the most resplendent light of Eternal Love. Topaz and liquid gold turned into flame...Oh! I don't know how to explain it! That Eternal Love radiated, high, high and alone, fixed in the immaculate and most resplendent sapphire of the Empyrean⁴, and from that Love descended inexhaustible waves of Light. The Light which penetrated the rose of the Blessed and of the Angelic choirs and made it luminous with that Light — which is nothing but the result of the Light of Love that penetrates it. But I did not distinguish Saints from Angels. I saw only the immeasurable garlands of those circles of Paradisal Flowers.

I was already completely blissful from this [Vision] and had blessed God for His goodness, when, instead of crystallizing thus, the Vision opened itself into a more ample brilliance, as if it had brought itself ever nearer to me, permitting me to observe it with my spiritual eye now accustomed to the previous brilliance and capable of tolerating a stronger one.

And I saw God the Father: Splendor in the splendor of Paradise. Lines of light: of the most resplendent, whitest, incandescent light. Think, Father²: if I was able to distinguish Him in that flow of light, what must be His Light which, even when surrounded by so much other [light], annulled it all, making it like a reflected shadow compared to His splendor. Spirit... Oh! how one sees what spirit is! It is All. All: so perfect is it. [Yet] it is nothing, because even the touch of any other spirit of Paradise cannot touch God, the most perfect Spirit, even with His immateriality: Light, Light, nothing else than Light.

Facing God the Father was God the Son. In the garment of His glorified Body upon which shone His royal raiment that covered His most holy Members, without hiding their utterly indescribable beauty. Majesty and Goodness were merged in this His Beauty. The burning coals of His five Wounds shoot out five swords of light over all of Paradise and increase Its splendor and that of His glorified Person.

He had no halo or crown of any kind. But His whole Body emitted light, that special light of spiritualized bodies which in Him and in His Mother is most intense and bursts forth from that Flesh — which is indeed flesh, but not opaque like ours. Flesh which is light. This light is condensed still more around His Head. [Coming] not from a halo, I repeat, but from all His Head. His smile was light, and light [was] His gaze; light pierced out of His most beautiful Brow, minus Its wounds. But it seemed that just where the thorns at one time had drawn blood and given Him pain, there now exuded a more vivid luminosity.

Jesus was standing up with His royal Standard⁵ in hand, as in the Vision I had in January, I believe.

A little lower than Him, but very little, as much as the usual step of a stairs, was the most holy Virgin. Beautiful as Jesus is in Heaven, that is, with Her perfect human beauty glorified with a Heavenly beauty.

She was standing between the Father and the Son Who had some meters⁶ between Them. (So much for applying sensible comparisons.) She was in the middle and, with Her hands crossed on Her breast — Her soft, very white, small, and very beautiful hands — and with Her face slightly raised — Her smooth, perfect, loving, and very lovely face — She was looking at, adoring, the Father and the Son.

Full of veneration, She was looking at the Father. She did not say a word. But all Her gaze was a voice of adoration, prayer and song. She was not kneeling. But Her look made Her [seem] more prostrate than in the deepest genuflection, so adoring was She. She said: 'Holy!'. She said: 'I adore You!' just by Her gaze.

Full of love, She looked at Her Jesus. She did not say a word. But all Her look was a caress. And every caress of that lovely eye of Hers said: 'I love You!' She was not seated. She did not touch Her Son. But Her gaze received Him as if He were in Her lap surrounded by those maternal arms of Hers as, and more than, in His Infancy and Death. She said: 'My Son!', 'My Joy!', 'My Love!', just by Her look.

She was delighted to look at the Father and the Son. And every so often She raised Her face and Her gaze still more to seek the Love⁷ which shone down, perpendicularly upon Her. And then Her own dazzling light, of a pearl become light, was kindled as if a flame had clothed it to make it burn and make it more beautiful. She received Love's kiss and strained with all Her humility and purity, with Her charity, to return a caress to [that] Caress and to say: 'Behold. I am Your Spouse and I love You and I am Yours. Yours for eternity.' And the Spirit blazed more strongly when Mary's gaze linked itself to His brilliance.

And Mary brought Her eye back upon the Father and upon the Son. It seemed that, Love having made [in Her] a deposit, She distributed it. My poor imagination! I will say it better. It seemed that the Spirit chose Her to be that One who, gathering in Herself all Love, might then bring It to the Father and to the Son so that the Three might be united and kiss each Other, becoming One. Oh! Joy to understand this poem of love! And to see the mission of Mary, Seat of Love!

But the Spirit did not concentrate His brilliance only upon Mary, our Great Mother, second only to God. For could a basin, even if very large, contain the ocean? No. It fills up with it and overflows with it. But the ocean has waters for all the earth. Thus the Light of Love. It descends in a perpetual caress upon the Father and the Son, It clasps them in a Ring of splendor. And then It enlarges Itself still more after becoming blissful from Its contact with the Father and the Son, Who respond with love to Love, and spread Themselves over all of Paradise.

Here is how this was revealed in its details...:

First, there are the Angels: higher than the Blessed [Saints], Circles around the Pivot of Heaven which is God, One and Triune, with the virginal Gem of Mary for the heart. They have a more vivid likeness to God the Father. Spirits, perfect and eternal, they are drawn from light, inferior only to that of God the Father, with a form of unspeakable beauty. They adore... They burst forth harmonies. With what? I don't know. Perhaps with the throbbing of their love. Since there are no words; and the lines of their mouths do not displace their luminosity. They shine like still water struck by living sun. But their love is a song. And it is harmony so sublime that only a grace, a special favor of God could allow one to hear it without dying of joy from it.

Lower down, [are] the Blessed [Saints]. These, in their spiritualized appearances, have a greater likeness to the Son and to Mary. They are more solid, I would say more accessible to the eye and (I have the impression) to the touch, than are the Angels. Hence in them their physical features are more marked and differ one from the other — thus I can understand whether one is an adult or a baby, a man or a woman. I did not see any aged, in the sense of feebleness. It seems that even when spiritualized bodies belong to those who died in old age, Up There the ruin of our flesh ceases. There is a greater nobility in an elderly person than in a youth. But not that squalor of wrinkles, baldness, toothless mouths and bent spines proper to humans. It seems that their maximum age is 40 or 45. That is, they have a flourishing virility even if their gaze and appearance are of patriarchal dignity.

Among the many... — Oh! how many throngs of the Saints!... and how many throngs of Angels! The Circles are lost, becoming trails of light through the deep-blue splendors of a vastness without bounds! And far, far off from this celestial horizon there still comes the sound of a sublime 'Alleluia,' and the light — which is the love of this army of Angels and Saints — trembles...

This time I see, among the many throngs, an imposing spirit. Tall, severe, and also good. With a long beard which descends to the middle of his breast, and with tablets of stone in hand. The tablets seem to be those wax ones that the ancients used to write on. He rests his left hand on them and holds them, in their turn, resting on his knee. Who he is I do not know. I think of Moses or of Isaiah. I do not know why. I just think so. He looks at me and smiles with great dignity. Nothing else. But what eyes! Just made to dominate the crowds and penetrate the secrets of God.

My spirit becomes always more adapted to seeing in the Light. And I see that at each fusion of the Three Persons — a fusion which is repeated with an urgent and ceaseless rhythm, as if spurred by an insatiable hunger of love — at each fusion are produced the unceasing Miracles which are the Works of God.

I see that the Father, out of love for the Son to Whom He wants to give an ever greater number of followers, creates souls. Oh! How beautiful! They come forth from the Father as sparks, as petals of light, as spherical gems — I am incapable of describing how. It is an endless stream of new souls...Beautiful [these souls], joyous to descend and merge with a body in obedience to their Author. How beautiful they are when they come out of God! I do not see, I cannot see while I am in Paradise, when the Original Spot soils them.⁸

The Son, out of zeal for His Father, receives and judges without stopping those who, their life now ended, return to their Origin to be judged. I do not see these spirits. I understand if they are judged with joy, with mercy, or with inexorability, from the changes in Jesus' expression. What brilliance in His smile when there is presented to Him a saint! What a light of sad mercy when He must separate Himself from one who must be cleansed before entering into the Kingdom! What a flash of offended and sorrowful anger when He must reject for eternity a rebel!

It is here that I understand what Paradise is, and of what Its Beauty, Nature, Light and Song are made. It is made of Love. Paradise is Love. It is Love which creates all in It. It is Love that is the foundation upon which all rests. It is Love that is the summit from which all comes.

The Father works through Love. The Son judges through Love. Mary lives through Love. The angels sing through Love. The blessed shout 'Hosanna!' through love. Souls are formed through Love. The Light exists because it is Love. The Song exists because It is Love. Life exists because It is Love. Oh! Love! Love! Love!... I annul myself in You. I rise again in You. I die, a human creature, because You consume me. I am born, a spiritual creature, because You create me.

Be blessed, blessed, blessed, O Love, Third Person! Be blessed, blessed, blessed, Love, Who are the love of the First Two! Be blessed, blessed, blessed, O Love, Who love the Two Who precede You! Be blessed, You who love me. Be blessed by me who love You because you permit me to love You and to know You, O my Light..."

["After having written all this, I have sought in the fascicles for my preceding contemplation of Paradise. Why? Because I always distrust myself and I wanted to see if one of the two [Visions] was in contradiction with the other. That would have persuaded me that I am the victim of a deception.

No. There is no contradiction. The present one is still more clear but has essentially the same lines. The preceding [Vision] is on the date of January 10, 1944. And after [writing it] I had not looked at it anymore. I affirm it as by an oath."]⁹

1. Maria Valtorta, I Quaderni del 1944 (Edizioni Pisani / Centro Editoriale Valtortiano srl, Via Po 95, 03036 Isola del Liri [FR], Italia, 1985): 368-374.

2. Valtorta is addressing her spiritual director, Fr. Romuald Migliorini, O.S.V.

3. Already seen by Valtorta in a vision of January 10, 1944. See Part II above.

4. Empyrean: the highest Heaven where God dwells.

5. Obviously His Cross.

6. A meter is a little more than one yard (39.37 inches).

7. The Holy Spirit.

8. "Original Spot" — that is, Original Sin.

9. Valtorta here addresses her spiritual director more specifically. Note her constant caution about possibly being deceived and, hence, of cross-checking her visions.

"In the Paradise which Love has made you contemplate, Maria, there are only the 'living' of whom Isaiah speaks in Chapter 4², one of the prophesies which will be read the day after tomorrow³. And how this 'living' existence is obtained is told in the following words. With the spirit of justice and with the spirit of charity those stains that already exist are annulled and one is preserved from new corruptions⁴.

This justice and this charity which God gives each of you and which you must give Him, will lead you and keep you in the shadow of the eternal Tabernacle. There the heat of the passions and the darkness of the Enemy will become something harmless, since they will be neutralized by your Most Holy Protector Who, more loving than a hen for her new-born [chicks], will draw you into the shelter of His wings and defend you against every supernatural assault. But do not ever leave Him Who loves you.

Think, My soul⁵, of the Jerusalem that was shown to you. Does it not merit every care in order to possess It? Conquer. I await you. We await you. Oh! this word that We want to say to all that are created, at least to all Christians, at least to all Catholics, which We can say to so few!

Enough, because you are weary, Maria.  Rest, thinking of Paradise."

Home

1. Maria Valtorta, Op. cit.: 374.

2. See especially Isaiah 4:3.

3. In the pre-Vatican II Missal then in use.

4. See Isaiah 4:4.

5. "My soul": Christ here addresses Valtorta