NOT
Two Natures, but One.
Not just One Person, but Two
.
Equal by Nature,
Different through the personal relationships of [Their]
begetting.
One single
Being, while being two distinct Persons.
Therefore
: the Father [is] God,
as the Son [is] God, and forming only One God. The Father is eternal as
the Son is eternal.
Almighty, infinite, most perfect the
Begotten, as is the Begetter.
One single will, knowledge, power of the Two, though being reciprocally
independent in action
: the Word—willing,
knowing, able to do as He wills
—knows
and can know
the Thought [the Father] Who has begotten Him [the Word],
contemplating Himself in His most perfect Perfections, and
understanding
Himself
: since only God can
understand God, and exult in seeing Himself.
And in this exultation, He begets the Light, the Life, so these might
exist and create
:
multiplying the loving joy of God Who is radiant at being able to pour
out His love on endless creatures, giving to all [His] Providence. And
to the creature made in His image and likeness, giving Himself and His
Kingdom
in order to surround
Himself with a people who are His sons, illumined by the Light
during their [earthly] time, so that they may
be
able to know, serve, and love the Lord
;
and that they may be
gladdened by the eternal enjoyment of the beatific vision of
God beyond time.
Nor is it by an inferior relationship that the Begotten Word is
subject to the Begetting Thought. Rather He is spontaneously obedient
solely out of the most holy love of this Divine Son for His Father Who
has divinely Begotten Him.
Because it is Love which makes of the distinct Persons "One single
Thing."
The Unity of the Trinity is effected by the Spirit of God, that is, by
the Charity which is the Spirit of the Lord
: the Most Holy Spirit of the
Most Holy God.
The Son, exults in the bosom of the Father—Who exults in
contemplating His Word and in seeing every creature in the Light He has
begotten, and to Whom He has communicated His Own Life and all His
other properties, save that proper to Himself as Father
. In the same way, every creature
endowed with spirit and with reason can know God his Creator
sufficiently through the eternal begetting of the Word and through His
Incarnation in Time
: because in
the Uncreated Word and in the Word
Incarnate, all the wondrous perfections of God the Father are
visible.
Present in the Most Holy Word are all the unknowable truths of Heaven
and the marvelous history of the destinies of man. And through the
Word,
man can know, can be made fit to love, and be predestined to possess,
God—Who is the Incomprehensible One, but Whom the Light reveals in a
suitable way, so that man may know God and be saved by loving Him,
and through this love, have Life.
The Father is pleased with the willing exultation of His Son, image of
His substance and splendor of His glory
:
Maker of all that is
made, Author of man's regeneration for supernatural
life.
And from this mutual exultation and pleasure of the One with the
Other, of the One in the Other, and—from the beginning without
beginning—God being with God, God in God
:
from this mutual exultation
and pleasure, proceeds Love
:
He Who, at the right time, will give Flesh to the Eternal Word, and
make of the Son of God
:
the Christ [Messiah]—Who is always One with the Father,
but no
longer one Nature in Two Persons, as it was at the beginning.
But there will be two Natures in the one Person of the Man-God
: true God in the substance of
the Father from which He is never separated, and true Man through the
substance taken from His Mother.
All things were made by means of the Word. For the Father willed that
all things having life through the Word should all be put under Him,
and that the heavens should sing His praises, the firmament crown Him
with stars, the earth be a footstool and censer placed at His feet
; that the waters be like a work of
sapphire,
as Moses and Ezechiel had seen under the throne of God [
Ex 24:9, Ezech 1:26]
; and that creatures
endowed with a spiritual and rational soul should bless Him with
grateful recognition for the double life they have had through Him.
In truth, the Word gave them not only temporal existence, but also
eternal Life
: since He is
the Living One and the Redeemer Who gave His life during His [earthly]
time, so that all men would have the right to life in Eternity. It
pleases Him
to communicate this life. And by the almighty Will of the Father, He
communicates it according to the nature and the purpose of the thing
created.
He is infinitely pleased to be able to communicate this supernatural
Life to
men—and to communicate it in the right measure, so that this Gem be
neither despised and lost, nor be scarce where man's good will brings
him
onto
the way of perfection. And this supernatural Life is given with
infinite and perfect
Wisdom, so that every creature who tends instinctively toward his
Creator may have, during his [earthly] time, an intuitive knowledge of
the Word and the Law
which leads to Him
; and in
Eternity, may
have the reward assigned to those who lived in love and in
justice.
The Word
, Son
of the Father of Lights and Himself the Most Divine Light, has
received from
the beginning of His generation without beginning, the
property of being the Light for every man who comes into this world.
He enlightens every man so
that he may see the Lord present in the multiple marvels of Creation,
and recognize Him in the Voice resounding in man's interio
r
:
in the
mysterious law engraved by the Finger of God on the spiritual pages of
the sou
l, in his
conscience—the
teacher that
instructs, prods, restrains or rebukes
:
a merciful vestige left by God of the gift of perfect knowledge given
to Adam, so that man might know how to distinguish
Good from Evil
; a bridle
put on the
I [ego], no longer fortified
by the gift of integrity which, like knowledge, was lost at the foot of
the fatal Tree. Thus, seeing [by his conscience] the
Supreme
Good in the ray of the loving Divine Light, man might know
That Will and
no other, and so have the glory of the sons of God.
The Word is Life, the Word is Light, being the Word of Grace.
And Grace is divine life which is grafted into human life
: a supernatural life infused into
that natural life in order to make men capable of living as sons of
God, and
therefore sharers of the divine life.
Grace is a transient ray of the divine Light, coming directly
from
God, which penetrates and floods [man]. It enlightens him so he may
know God intuitively, and inflames him so that he may love. Without the
deification obtained through Grace, man could not comprehend that
which so far exceeds natural things and the natural creature's capacity
to comprehend the existence of the Incomprehensible. But in raising man
to the
supernatural order, Grace makes him capable of comprehending the
Incomprehensible
: of
knowing God intuitively, of loving Him Who wants to be called "Father",
and Who wants to call "sons" those to whom He has given, as their
last end, the enjoyment of the beatific Vision of Himself, and the
inheritance of the peaceful Kingdom of Heaven.
Without the merciful and inexhaustible outpouring of the Light of Life,
men who have lived in the thousands of years going from [Original]
Sin to the Redemption,
would have gotten lost, unaware of the certain
existence of
God
; and they would have
perished, being no longer moved
by love.
But the
vital, merciful Light, while keeping the memory of God awake and
enlightened in souls, aroused in them the anxious yearning for the Good
that had been lost. It helped [that memory] to grow, helped it to grow
all the more as the soul thirsted instinctively to be joined again to
the divine Source from whence it had come. And thus It [the Light] led
and now leads the upright along the paths of Life
: that is, the lovers of God—whether
He
is the God known to the Jewish People, or the unknown God of the
Gentiles, or the divinity intuited by idolaters to exist and whom they
worshiped then, and now worship, as best they can. But because of their
adoring worship—
which is faith
in an
existing God and love for Him, as also
repentance for violations of the natural moral law
—therefore they were not then, and
are not now, denied that mysterious help from
God.
The mysterious operations of God in the intimate depths of souls are
known only to God and to those who receive them. Inspirations, impulses
toward the good, ardent adoration, perfect contrition
: through the mercy of God and man's
good will, these mysterious operations of God create during earthly
life and on the threshold of the
Other Life, prodigies of divine sonship through which those who were
just and loving—even though they had not belonged to the first chosen
People, nor to the holy People (faithful Catholics) who came
afterwards—can make
up part of the multitude of the People of God, since they lived
"as
Christians" before
and after the coming of Christ on Earth
. They therefore make up part
of the soul of Christ's
Church, and hence of those
"saved"
by His merits.
4
Let this not seem heresy. The Baptist was "pre-sanctified" before he
was
born, and had glory before Christ poured out His Blood. But this
"pre-sanctification" was always in view of that outpouring of the
divine Blood, of that perfect
Sacrifice, of the holiness of the God-Man. The same could be
said then of those souls moved by good will, and who followed the law
of
moral duty—not from fear of human chastisements, but from an impulse of
spiritual love toward the Immense Spirit, which the ray of God recalled
to the rational soul. These souls, on going forth from the darkness
of earthly existence, from the bosom of the earth to be born to Life
beyond
earth, and passing from the darkness of this material world to the
light of
the spiritual world—have a right to eternal Life, and
may enter into possession of It. Indeed, they cannot think that God
—the Just, the Merciful, Infinite
Charity, the Father of all men—could leave unrewarded those who have
merited It.
4
But the Light, shining with mercy during those thousands of years of
waiting,
was welcomed by only a few just
;
while it was misunderstood by too many who were "formless abysses, and
empty voids wrapped in darkness" [
cf.
Gen 1:1]
:
that is, tombs of spirits killed by the wantonness of carnal man in
whom the triple lusts
5
had extinguished not only every divine light
, but every rational light as well
.
At the beginning of Creation, the darkness which covered the formless
abyss and empty void of the Earth, did not comprehend the beauty,
power
and grandeur of the element of light, indispensable principle in the
forming of Creation
; and so was
it also at the beginning of the Redemption
—which
began at the start of
fallen
man's human existence, even though it was truly and really begun with
the coming of Christ on Earth
; a
nd
it was more completely begun in the time of His preaching
, but perfectly begun the day of the
Parasceve.
6
As at the beginning of the Creation, so also at the beginning of the
Redemption
, there was also the darkness
:
men, darkened by lusts, had not comprehended the Light.
Those lusting for wealth and power
did not want to
comprehend the Light. And those overwhelmed by the
senses
could not
comprehend It.
But, more for the latter than for the former, God sent a man without
sin
: the one prophesied by the
Prophets as an "angel heralding the
Angel of the Covenant." Like a "voice
shouting in the desert" of arid hearts where Grace had withered, he
was
sent as a Forerunner "to prepare the ways of the Lord" [
cf. Mark 1:2-3]
and to invite men to
repentance, so that they might open the ears of their spirit to
understand the Word, and the eyes of their spirit to see the true
Nature of Jesus of Nazareth
: the Christ [Messiah].
John the Baptist was not the Light. But through the Grace that he
received
while
still in his mother's womb, and which he preserved with his innocence
and
the perfect penitence of his life, he was able to see the Light
enclosed in
the Flesh of the Man, and therefore to bear witness that
that Man was
the True Light descended from Heaven, sent by the Father to enlighten
every man. And He was to be followed
,
believing in His Truth in
order to have salvation
;
welcoming His Word, in order to be welcomed by
Him as His disciples, and thus be reborn as sons of God.
But despite the testimony given by John to the world of Israel,
and to the rest of the world represented by the [pagan] Gentiles,
fortuitously present in Palestine in the fifteenth year of the empire
of Tiberius Caesar
, the
peoples who had been formed by means of the Word
did not know Him for Who He was.
Only a few among so many accepted John's testimony, or the
testimony of the events connected to the life of the Christ
or the testimony of
His Own life and His miracles, or the testimony of the Father and of
the
Holy Spirit. Most did not want to know Him. And when He addressed
Himself to those of His own House—
His according to the
Priesthood, because He had been constituted by the
Father as High Priest after the order of Melchisedek
; and
His according
to the Birth in Bethlehem Ephratha—He was not received. Rather, He was
treated as
a stranger, hated as an enemy, accused as one guilty, outlawed as a
rebel, cursed like one possessed, and finally, imprisoned and sent to
the
[Roman] Proconsul so He might be judged guilty of death as a corrupter
of the people and sacrilegious blasphemer. Then, like a murderous
thief, He was handed over
to die by the disgraceful torture of the Cross,
outside the walls of the City which was no longer holy.
But to those who welcomed Him then, and over the centuries
: the poor in spirit, the
meek, those who weep, those who desire justice
, the merciful, the pure of
heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted, the little ones, the repentant
; to those who love Him, believing
in His
true Name, and who welcomed
His Word and His Law in their heart
s:
to these He revealed the Father and the Kingdom, and what must be done
in order to possess them. To these He taught the Truth, He communicated
Life, He
infused Grace and the Virtues
;
He restored in them the luminous Kingdom of
God whereby they might again be sons of God, and with full right be
called such.
And for these, the Word, after making Himself their Brother in
Humanity,
made Himself a fertile womb
:
welcoming them into His loving and fertile immensity, incorporating
them into Himself, so that being in Him, they would be in the Father.
And after having thus
recreated these new sons of
God, He gives birth to them with a loud cry, with the tears and pain of
His Humanity
, with the
exultation of His
Divinity, and to the Father He addresses the perfect words of His
prayerful and
perpetual offering
: "Here, O My
Father, this is Your new family, Your holy people. They are Mine,
because You entrusted them to Me, but I give them to You, because all
that is Mine is Yours and all that is Yours is Mine. I give them to
You so that they may glorify You, just as they have glorified Me
by recognizing Me for what I
am, by welcoming Your Word, believing that I come from You and that You
have sent Me. But I still keep them in Myself so that You may see them
in M
e: Jesus Christ, just as
You already saw them from the beginning in Me, the Uncreated Word. And
being in Me, let them again be one with You, just as I am in You, and
as We Two are one" [
cf. John 17].
This, then, is the generation of the sons of God.
They are not sons by being conceived, formed and being born
through
the will of the flesh and blood of man. But they have been begotten by
the Spirit, and spiritually
,
through faith, charity, through life in
the Christ-Life.
The Word Incarnate, Jesus, Light of the world, gave birth to them.
Therefore they are born of God, since the Word is
One Thing with the Father Who begets through the power of infinite love.
So, then, just as in the eternal begetting of the Word and in His
Incarnation in Time, the generating Factor was Love
: the first of all His
Perfections—His Perfection of Nature after which all the others then
come—s
o also in man's
regeneration, Love is again the power which
effects man's re-creation as a son of God
, which creates that life of man in
God, and the
Kingdom of God in man. Because without divine love, there would have
been no redemption
; and without
the love of man for God and for His Law of charity, there cannot be
union with God
—God in man and
man in God.
Before the coming of the Word, the mystery of God was so hidden as to
obstruct man's ability to love. But when the
eternal Word of the Father left Heaven to dwell with His brothers as
Man among men, the obstacle was removed, because the splendor of
God, the truth of His Being, His power, His infinite perfections, His
mercy and His love, shown radiantly for the eyes of men to se
e. These attributes were
gloriously manifested in the Only-begotten Son of the Father Who had
received all from the Father, and Who manifested them all with the
fullness of
Grace and of Truth.
But because the example of the Most Holy Word, together with His
works—those works
which He accomplished because the Father had commissioned Him to
accomplish them—because these still did not suffice to totally demolish
the obstacle
of uncertainty about the truth of God
;
and because the testimony of the Father given with His Voice and with
the
blessing of His consent to every action or request of the Son, was also
insufficient
: thus there
was
given the word of the man so venerated by Israel as a great Prophet,
that he was thought to be the Christ [Messiah]
: "This is He
Who, though coming after me, has preceded me, because He
is
before I was." [
John 1:15].
And truly
"before" every creature the Word
is, being begotten before
any of the creation, and having supremacy—even as Son of Man—in every
natural and supernatural perfection
:
He is perfect as God and perfect as Man, superior to the Angels, equal
only to His Father.
Through this double perfection of His as God and as Man, all men have
received and will receive till the end of the ages, graces of every
kind, besides that Grace necessary to attain the glory to which the
loving desire of God has predestined man.
How infinitely surpassing what
Moses obtained for men, is that which the Most Holy Light, the Word,
gave to men. Because through Moses, man obtained the Law
, but from Christ, men obtained the
power to practice the Law
: not
through fear, but through love
;
thus adoring God in spirit and in truth [
John 4:24].
It is the Grace and Truth spread by Jesus Christ which made men wise
about God, and therefore able to love Him as sons. Because one loves
more as one's knowledge is more certain. One cannot love
someone of whom it is uncertain that he exists and receives
the love that is offered to him. One loves all the more when one is
certain that he who is loved, loves us
:
not twofold, not a hundred fold
,
but without measure.
By tradition, the man of Israel, and the
just man in every people, felt by supernatural illumination that there
existed a Divinity
: provident,
all-powerful, eternal,
creator of all natural things, as well as of the immortal soul. And the
man
of Israel was futhermore also awaiting in faith the Messiah
promised
from
the beginning of Time.
But the carnality of man fallen from grace had changed the messianic
idea, and instead of the spiritual idea which it was, had made of it a
purely human idea. For this reason, even the best in Israel had a very
partial knowledge of God. Knowing little, they loved little. The best
excessively feared the terrible God of Sinai. The worst mocked Him and
His Law, despite the pompous exhibitions of a wholly external cult.
And since they loved little, they little felt the presence of God in
their
hearts, and therefore believed that they were little loved. In so
believing they were little loved, they little dared to go toward that
Love,
which they believed was only the Severity of infinite Majesty.
Their mind could not conceive of a divine love so great as to immolate
itself out of love for man and for his supernatural good.
But Jesus Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God had, with His Word and
His actions, with all of Himself, revealed the Lord in His Truth.
He, Who knows God perfectly because He is in the Bosom of the Father,
unveiled the infinite love of God that had reached the point of giving
His Only-Begotten so that He might be immolated in order to restore
Grace
: that is, to give Himself
to men in order to re-integrate men—fallen from the natural order—into
the supernatural order.
Through Grace and through His Word, they had all been taught.
Taught by
the
Lord, as is said by the prophets [
Is 54:13], so that all might know
the
ALL.
And He taught with all His life as Son of Man, Master, and
Redeemer, so that all might know the Father, Who is God and the
universal Father.
To all those of good will Jesus revealed the incomprehensible mystery
of
God. All that is hidden of the incomprehensible Nature, and the
super-omnipotent divine perfections, Jesus made visible and known in
Himself and through Himself.
After the final manifestation of the Man-God, only those obstinate in
their impenitence and rebellious pride were, and are, still able to
deny having known God. To their sarcastic question He always answers
: "I am the Beginning Who speak to
you," assuring them
: "By
lifting up the Son of Man you know Who I am." And this assurance
has its confirmation in the terrifying signs which accompanied His
Death,
and His Resurrection.
Humanity has no more excuse for persevering in its incredulity and
ignorance, born of hate.
For the Light has now flashed with all Its power of God, revealing the
One and Triune God in all His most perfect omnipotence, wisdom and
most perfect goodness
; nor will
that Light
ever be dimmed for eternity.
7
_____________________________
[After
the Dictation above on
Chapter 1 of John] :
Valtorta :
The Holy Spirit is the Most Holy Spirit of the Most Holy,
Uncreated,
Most Pure Spirit Who is
the Lord. The essence of God, His principal
attribute, is Charity. Thus:
the Fire of Divine Charity, the immense, most
perfect Fire of Divine Charity which begets the Son, and through the
Son, all created things—be they mortal or perishable, or immortal (our
spirit and the angels)—the Fire of Divine Charity which sees all in
Charity and provides for all,
is the Holy Spirit of God.
As in us, the soul is our spirit; so
the soul of God (if I may be allowed this comparison) is love. It is
love
which animates ["ensouls"] God in all His actions, just as in us it is
our spirit which animates ["ensouls"] our flesh and gives us our
likeness to God.
Without His
Holy Spirit, God would no longer be God, because He would
no longer be Love.
(This is what the Light has made me understand.)
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