Jesus says: 1
“‘If I do not wash you, you will not take part in my Kingdom. (John 13:8)
“Soul that I love, and all of you that I love, listen. It is I who speak to you, for I want to spend this hour with you.
“I, Jesus, do not separate you from my altar even if you come to it with your souls damaged by wounds and diseases or wrapped in lianas of passions which humiliate you in your spiritual freedom, handing you over, bound, to the power of the flesh and its king: Lucifer.
“I remain Jesus, the Rabbi of Galilee, the one to whom lepers, paralytics, the blind, the obsessed, and epileptics loudly called, saying, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me.’ I remain Jesus, the Rabbi reaching out to someone drowning and asking, ‘Why do you doubt Me?’ I remain Jesus, the Rabbi who says to the dead, ‘Rise up and go. I want you to come out of your sleep of death and your tomb, and walk.’ And I restore you to those who love you.
“And who loves you, O my beloved? Who loves you with true love which is not selfish or mutable? Who loves you with a love which is not self‑interested or greedy, but whose only aim is to give you what it has amassed and say to you, ‘Take it. It’s all yours. I have done all of this for you, so that it will be yours and you may enjoy it’? Who? The eternal God. And I restore you to Him. To Him, who loves you.
“I do not separate you from my altar. For that altar is my teaching chair, my throne, and the dwelling of the Physician who heals all maladies. From this place I teach you to have faith. From here, as the King of Life, I give you Life. From here I bend over your diseases and heal them with the breath of my love.
“I do even more, O children. I descend from this altar and go out to meet you. Here I am, on the threshold of these houses of mine, where too few enter and even fewer enter with sure faith. Here I am, a figure of peace, who show up on your streets, where you pass by, downfallen, poisoned, and scorched by pain, self-interest, and hatred. Here I am, reaching out to you, for I see you hesitating wearily, under the weight of boulders you have imposed on yourselves which have taken the place of that cross which I handed to you so that it would be your support, as the staff is for the pilgrim. Here I am, saying to you, ‘Enter. Rest. Drink,’ for I see you exhausted and thirsty.
“But you do not see Me. You pass close by; you bump into Me, sometimes out of ill will, sometimes through the darkening of your spiritual sight; at times you look at Me. But you know you are dirty and do not dare to come near my whiteness as a Divine Host. But this Whiteness is able to take pity on you. Know Me, men, who distrust Me because you do not know Me.
“Listen. I wanted to leave the Freedom and Purity which are the atmosphere of Heaven and descend into this jail of yours, into this impure air, to help you, because I love you. I did even more: I deprived Myself of my freedom as God and became the slave of flesh. The spirit of God enclosed in flesh, the Infinite locked into a handful of muscles and bones, subject to hearing the voices of this flesh, for which cold and sun, hunger, thirst, and labor are affliction. I could ignore all of this. I wanted to experience the tortures of man, who had fallen from his throne as an innocent one, to love you more.
“That still wasn’t enough for Me. I wanted‑since to feel compassion one must suffer what those for whom compassion is felt suffer‑to feel the assault of all the feelings to feel your struggles, to grasp the crafty tyranny Satan puts into your blood, to understand how easy it is to remain hypnotized by the Serpent if one lowers one’s gaze for a single moment towards his seductive glance, forgetting to live in the light. Because the snake does not live in the light. He goes into the shadowy recesses which look restful, but are only treacherous. For you these shadows have a name: woman, money, power, selfishness, sensuality, and ambition. For you they eclipse the Light that is God. In their midst is the Serpent: Satan. He looks like a necklace. He is the rope to strangle you. I wanted to know this because I love you.
“That still wasn’t enough for Me. It would have been enough for Me. But the Justice of the Father could say to his Flesh, ‘You have triumphed over treachery. Man as flesh, like You, is unable to triumph now, and let him thus be punished, for I cannot forgive those who are filthy.’ I took your filthiness upon Myself. That of the past, present, and future. All of it. More than Job, immersed in a putrid dunghill to cover his wounds, was I immersed, when, submerged by the sin of the whole world, I did not dare even to raise my eyes any more to seek Heaven, and I moaned, feeling the Father’s indignation, building up for centuries, weighing upon Me, aware of the sins to come. A flood of sins on earth, from its dawn to its dusk. A flood of curses upon the Guilty One. On the Host of Sin.
“O men! More innocent than a baby kissed by his mother on his way back from his baptism was I. And the Most High was horrified at Me because I was Sin, having taken upon Me all the sin of the world. I sweated with repugnance. I sweated blood out of repugnance at this leprosy upon Me, who was the Innocent One. The blood broke my veins in the disgust of this foul pool in which I was submerged. And to complete this torture, to squeeze my blood out of my heart, there was joined the bitterness of being accursed, for in that hour I was not the Word of God‑I was Man. Man. The Guilty One.
“Can I, who have experienced this, fail to understand your dejection or fail to love you because you are dejected? I love you for this reason. I have only to recall that hour to love you and call you ‘Brothers and sisters!’ But calling you this is not enough for the Father to be able to call you ‘Sons and daughters.’ And I want Him to call you this. What kind of brother would I be if I did not want you with Me in our Father’s house?
“I thus say to you, ‘Come so that I can wash you.’ No one is so filthy that my lavacre will not cleanse him. No one is so pure that he doesn’t need my bath. Come. This is not water. There are miraculous founts which heal the wounds and diseases of the flesh. But this is more than those. This fount gushes from my chest.
“This is the lacerated Heart from which the cleansing water issues forth. My Blood is the clearest water in creation. Infirmities and imperfections are canceled out in it. And your souls become white and whole again, worthy of the Kingdom.
“Come. Let Me say to you, ‘I absolve you!’ Open your hearts to Me. In them are the roots of your maladies. Let Me come in. Let Me untie your bandages. Do your wounds cause you repugnance? When seen in my light, they appear to you as they are: teeming with disgusting worms. Do not look at them. Look at mine. Let Me act. My hand is light. You will feel only a caress… And everything will be healed. You will feel only a kiss and a tear. And everything will be cleansed.
“Oh, how beautiful you will be, around my altar! Angels among the angels of the Ciborium. And my Heart will rejoice greatly thereat. For I am the Savior, and I do not disdain anyone. But I am also the Lamb grazing among the lilies, and I take delight in being surrounded by whiteness, for to make you white I took up life and gave life.
“Oh, how I see the Father smiling at you and Love shining for you with his splendors because you are no longer stained with sin!
“Come to the fount of the Savior. Let my Blood descend upon the contrite spirit, and let a voice, in which mine is present, say, ‘I absolve you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”‘
1 Maria Valtorta, The Notebooks 1944, pg. 360; used by permission of the publisher Centro Editoriale Valtortiano srl, Viale Piscicelli 89-91, 03036 Isola del Liri FR, Italy