Maria Valtorta (Itália, ano 1897-1961) - Obra: "O Evangelho como me foi revelado" (1944-1950) [Jesus says:] And there has been no greater and more complete sorrow than Mine. I was One with the Father. He had loved Me from eternity as God alone can love. He had taken delight in Me and had found His divine joy in Me. And I had loved Him as a God alone can love, and in My union with Him I had found My divine joy. The ineffable relationship that ab aeterno ties the Father to the Son cannot be explained to you even by My Word, because while it is perfect, your intelligence is not, and you cannot understand and know what God is until you are with Him in Heaven. Well, like water that rises and presses against a dam, I felt the rigour of the Father grow hourly towards Me.
As evidence against brute-men, who did not want to understand who I was, during the time of My public life, He had opened Heaven three times[4] at the Jordan, at the Tabor and in Jerusalem on the eve of My Passion. But He had done that for men, not to give relief to Me. I was already the Expiator. Many times, Mary, God makes men become acquainted with one of His servants, so that through him they may be roused and dragged to Him, but that happens also through the suffering of that servant. It is he who, by eating the bitter bread of God’s rigour, pays personally for the comfort and salvation of his brothers. Is it not so? The victims of expiation know the rigour of God. Then comes the glory. But after Justice has been appeased. It is not the same as happens with My Love, that kisses His victims. I am Jesus, I am the Redeemer, He Who has suffered and knows, by personal experience, how painful it is to be looked at by God with severity and be abandoned by Him, and I am never severe, and I never abandon anyone. I consume just the same, but through the fire of love.
The more the hour of expiation approached, the more I felt the Father move away. The more I was separated from the Father, the less My Humanity felt it was supported by the Divinity of God. And because of that I suffered in every possible way. The separation from God brings fear, attachment to life, languor, tiredness, boredom. The deeper it is, the stronger are its consequences. When it is total, it leads to despair. And the more he who, by God’s decree, experiences it, without having deserved it, the more he suffers, because the living spirit feels the excision from God, as live flesh feels the excision of a limb. It is a sorrowful prostrating stupor that one, who has not experienced it, cannot understand.
I experienced it. I had to know everything in order to be able to plead with the Father for everything in your favour
[in favor of men]. Even for your despair. Oh, I experienced what it means to say: "I am alone. Everybody has betrayed and abandoned Me. Even the Father, even God no longer assists Me". And that is why I work mysterious wonders of grace in poor hearts overwhelmed by despair, and I ask My beloved ones to drink the cup of so bitter an experience, so that they, those who are shipwrecked in the sea of despair, may not decline to accept the cross that I offer as anchor and salvation, but they may grasp at it and I may take them to the blessed shore where only peace reigns.