The Way of Divine Love

[Stone]

THE MESSAGE

It is one of love and mercy. Nowhere is it fully stated, but it is found in fragmentary form all through the book. Its chief points were often reiterated, and with little verbal change.

Here is a short summary of them:

(a) In the first place, the Sacred Heart and the overwhelming charity of Jesus Christ for mankind are brought out in a striking way. It might almost be called a new revelation of the Sacred Heart, confirming and in certain matters completing and perfecting that previously given to Saint Margaret Mary.

More than two centuries and a half have elapsed since 1675, and new currents of devotion have arisen in the Church. At present, the mystical Christ is passionately (and very rightly) cherished by those souls who in their inmost being are conscious of Its reality and Its implications.

The devotion to the Sacred Heart would appear to have grown less, if anything, and to be less well understood;

In his recent encyclical on the Mystical Body of Christ (June 1943) Pope Pius XII tells us that devotion to the Sacred Heart has prepared souls to understand the doctrine of the Mystical Christ. The idea of reparation for others which Our Lord made an essential element in devotion to the Sacred Heart, implies the solidarity of all Christians—one with another—in the unity of the Mystical Body. But devotion to the Mystical Christ, the “whole” Christ, with its horizons attractive through their very vastness, inclines the superficially minded to find too limited a devotion, centered in the Heart of Christ. This mistake is due to a lack of understanding that devotion to the Sacred Heart is directed to Christ loving, wounded with love, and that by it all the members of the Mystical Body are united in this love with Him and with each other.

To some the devotion appears a mutilation of the worship of the whole Christ, or perhaps feminine with too much sentiment or even sentimentality in it.

Our Lord reacts strongly against this false impression. He reaffirms that there is no mistake, that it is indeed His Heart of flesh, pierced by the lance that He offers mankind; His Heart so full of love and so little loved in return, and of which the gaping Wound cries out how immense is His tender affection for men.

Like all true love, His is consumed by desire for a return in kind, all the more, that only so can man attain happiness here below, and everlasting beatitude hereafter. Let those who reject His love realize the horror of Hell to which they will be condemning themselves. . . . This was the appeal that, through Josefa, Jesus Christ sent out to the whole world.

(b) That men may be attracted (and herein lie the novelty and force of the Message) . . . the Sacred Heart manifests through her His infinite mercy. He loves them every one, just as they are, even the most despicable, even the greatest sinners, one can almost say, especially the most miserable and sinful. He does not ask for their good qualities or virtues, but only for their wretchedness and sins. Far from being an obstacle, their very faults are thus an encouragement to draw near Him.

Such is the gift God asks of His beloved sinners, on the one condition of a true repentance, and a readiness to turn away from their evil ways out of love for Him.

His Heart is there waiting for His erring sons with all the impatience of true love. He assures them beforehand of a free pardon. “It is not sin that most grievously wounds My Heart,” He said, “but what rends and lacerates It is that after sin men do not take refuge in It once more” (August 29th, 1922).

What He wants and ardently desires is their trust in His infinite goodness and mercy.

© To consecrated and therefore specially loved souls, Jesus offers a share of His redemptive life. He would like them to act as intermediaries for the saving of souls, and that is why He asks of all the spirit of sacrifice in love. As a rule, no great sufferings are to be borne, but He inculcates the importance of ordinary actions however insignificant, if done in union with Him, in a spirit of sacrifice and love (November 30th, 1922 and December 2nd, 1922). He lays stress on the value of the tiniest offerings, which not only can lead them far on in sanctity, but will effect the salvation of many souls (October 20th, 1922). On the other hand, He reminds them of the danger of slackening in their efforts in little ways, which may lead to greater infidelity and finally expose them to hell-fire, where their sufferings will greatly exceed those of less-favored souls (August 3rd, 1921; December 12th, 1922; March 14th, 15th, 20th, 24th, 1923; September 4th, 1922).

Let consecrated souls therefore re-animate their trust in the Heart of Jesus. “I easily condone their weakness; what I want them to know is that if after their faults and falls they humbly cast themselves into My Heart, I love them always, and pardon them all.” He adds: “Do you not know that the more wretched a soul is, the more I love her?” “The fact that I have chosen a soul does not mean that her faults and miseries are wiped out. But if in all humility that soul acknowledges her failings and atones by little acts of generosity and love, above all, if she trusts Me, if she throws herself into My Heart, she gives Me more glory and does more good to souls than if she had not fallen. What does her wretchedness matter to Me, if she gives Me the love that I want?” (October 20th, 1922).

So what the Heart of Jesus demands of His own is humility, trust, and love.

(d) Finally, He repeatedly offers to all the thought of His Passion, for it is the sign of His immense love for mankind and the sole hope of salvation.

His sad and suffering Heart is again and again presented to us; He exhorts and entreats us in virtue of His immeasurable pains to return to Him. How great must have been the love that could bear such agony for us, and at the same time how terrible is the misfortune of those who through their own fault let such a Redemption pass them by! Man has put his sin between himself and God—a chasm impossible to bridge—yet our Jesus comes with His suffering Passion, and oversteps our sinfulness, even veils our crimes with His Blood. The road to salvation is once more opened, but it must and can only be through the Passion. This is the only way to establish contact with God again. The choice lies between the Passion and Hell!

So the work of consecrated souls is to enter into the Passion of Christ and, by personal sacrifices, to pass on its fruits to other souls for whom they pray and immolate themselves.

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THE OPPORTUNENESS OF THE MESSAGE

How striking is its actuality today!

Everywhere sin is increasing to an appalling degree. The pride of man leads him to discard his God and attempt to make a paradise of earth. He has so far succeeded only in making it a vestibule of Hell, where impiety, immorality, and the worst passions have free scope; wars rage that are more terrible than any yet heard of, the majority of mankind suffers poverty and slavery, and all without the comfort which faith alone can impart.

The Heart of God inclines in pity towards His forlorn children, and He points out to them the way of happiness, peace, and salvation.

This Message is not only transmitted by Josefa, but reproduced in her life through Christ’s operations in her soul, for facts are more calculated to move than are mere words.

If anyone wants to realize the love of the Heart of Jesus for souls, let him read the pages in which Josefa notes down how she listens to the Heartbeats of her Master. “Every heartbeat is an appeal to a soul,” He told her (September 25th, 1920).

Surely we cannot doubt the reality of His love, when the flames issuing from His Heart are seen to kindle Josefa’s with a love so valiant and intrepid that she braves the sufferings of hell-fire to save the souls He loves. Nor can we doubt the immensity of His love, when for the same purpose she accepts unutterable tortures, and she who knew tells us that her love, “her poor love,” is as nothing beside that of her Master, just as the torments she undergoes are but a shadow of those of the Passion (October 28th, 1920). The grief of Jesus at the loss of souls and His joy at their return, which are so plainly shown in Josefa’s life, make it impossible for us to doubt the goodness of His love! (August 25th, 1920; December 26th, 1920; August 3rd–4th, 1921; July 29th, 1921; September 3rd, 12th, 25th, 1922). “Help Me,” He would say, “help Me to make My love for men known, for I come to tell them that in vain will they seek happiness apart from Me, for they will not find it. Suffer, Josefa, and love, for we two must win these souls” (June 13th, 1923).

We get an inkling of the intense love of the Sacred Heart from that of Josefa for these same souls; it was so real and true that it could have been inspired only by Him.

Infinite Mercy, too, is manifested by Josefa’s life. “I will love you,” He told her on June 8th, 1923, Feast of the Sacred Heart, “and by the love I have for you souls will realize how much I love them.” “Since I forgive you so often, they will recognize My mercy.” He even said to her one day: “I love souls even to folly” (September 27th, 1922).

Such a statement surprises us, yet in Scripture do we not read (and Scripture is inerrant): “Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? and if she should forget, yet will not I. Behold, I have graven thee in my hands” (Isa. 49:15, 16). “He will put away our iniquities and he will cast all our sins into the bottom of the sea” (Mich. 7:19). “Thou hast delivered my soul that it should not perish, thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back” (Isa. 38:17). “He loved me and delivered himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

We may well call these statements divine folly!

As to the reality of Hell, again we see the Message lived by Josefa. The sufferings of the Passion which continue uninterruptedly in her, all the demoniacal persecutions and descents into Hell have only one end: to snatch souls from perdition and bring them back to salvation from which they have strayed. We see here exemplified the dogma of the Redemption and of the communion of saints. How, then, would it be possible to deny on the one hand the existence of the devil, of Hell and of Purgatory, and on the other the adequate power of Redemption which suffering has when borne for others? These great supernatural realities we read in the moving pages in which Josefa has them graven in her very flesh and soul.

The Message itself cannot be called a new revelation, but it unveils in a most striking manner what faith has already taught us. Our Lord Himself told this to Josefa: “I repeat to you again that what I have said is not new, but souls need a new impetus to make them advance, just as a flame needs fuel, if it is not to burn itself out.”

How great is the force of the appeal which the humble little Sister transmits to us from her Lord!

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THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE MESSAGE

We have been enabled to realize how the Message consists not only in the words entrusted to Josefa, but in her whole life. By her very existence, this soul, so beloved of Jesus, speaks to all who will listen, and her life stands as evidence of the divine action upon her.

She alone heard the words of Our Lord, and so is the sole witness; but her life testifies to the truth of the Message, and, moreover, she was closely followed up by qualified observers, who testify to the undeniable virtue of the obscure little messenger of infinite love, and to the reality of her supernatural states, of which tangible proofs were not wanting. All who had to do with her attested her very real virtue; not that she shone in a striking manner, for she was ever more imitable than admirable, but all felt the unconscious influence she exercised around her. No self-seeking, but rather self-denial in everything, unquestioning obedience, gentleness, and patience: all the result of true humility.

“You are the echo of My voice,” said Our Lord to her (December 10th, 1922), and, in fact, everything in her was an echo of the divine. Her unaffected virtue led one to a conviction that God was acting on this soul, and this by itself could have provided clear evidence that her supernatural communications came from God. Nevertheless, Superiors and her Director remained for a certain length of time deliberately hesitant and uncertain, and they deserve our thanks for their reserve and wary misgivings, which insisted on proofs.

With her innate candor and honesty, she could never have practiced willful deception. Perhaps one is justified in asking whether she was led astray by her heart or imagination—a not infrequent trait in persons of sincere holiness. But (and this is a good sign) Josefa lived in perpetual fear that such might be the case, and was quite prepared, had Superiors deemed her to be in illusion, to consider all that had taken place as delusion. Such action was characteristic of her.

When she went to Rome to carry a message from Our Lord about the Society of the Sacred Heart to the Mother General, she was suddenly seized with a blinding fear (at the devil’s instigation) that all was a dream and that she had no message from Heaven to deliver. Without hesitation or reflection on the harm it might do her cause in the eyes of her Superiors, she confessed her anguish of mind, and the certitude she now felt that all was a chimera of her imagination, and she humbly begged that no credence should be given to anything she might say. That she should have had this anxious concern at such a moment is another proof of the truth of her mission.

She could not have acted so had she not been profoundly humble and self-forgetful; her writings bear the same impress of sincerity.

It was by the express command of Our Lord and of Our Lady that she kept her Superiors informed of all that passed: “You must write,” said Our Blessed Lord to her. This, no doubt, was meant to secure that none of His words should be lost (August 6th, 1922), but also His divine purpose may have been that all Josefa’s actions should be controlled and witnessed from start to finish. In all she wrote there never occurs a useless word, nor anything false or equivocal; nothing that could be regarded as self-praise nor that betrays a shadow of vanity. All is true, reasonable, moving, and holy.

The same control was exercised over her supernatural states. When she was carried off into Hell, or when she returned to consciousness after an ecstasy, her Superiors were present; they watched with solicitous and maternal eyes her gradual return to life’s interests, noting carefully words that escaped her in those impressive moments.

When she had communications with souls in Purgatory who came to ask her prayers, the name, exact date, and place of their death, if given, were always found on investigation to be correct.

No possible doubt exists concerning the forcible abductions of Josefa by the devil; they took place under the very eyes of her Superiors, who were powerless to prevent them. Likewise the effects of fire which burned her were seen on her garments and flesh; fragments of scorched linen are still preserved.

The most convincing feature of these diabolic visitations (visions of Satan, descents into Hell), which to most people would have been terrifying, was that they seemed neither to have troubled her imagination, nor to have disturbed the calm equilibrium of her eminently sane temperament. So also the divinely supernatural, with those simple and homely proofs of affection she received from Our Lord and His Mother,

Delightful apparitions of the Holy Child at Christmas … of Our Lady, “in all her beauty and so motherly,” as Josefa always describes her.

must surely have moved her feelings to an extraordinary degree, yet they left her peaceful, silent, and apparently without even the natural desire to talk over her wonderful experience with anyone. The Mothers noticed how very discreet she was, never speaking of the favors she received, except to the two witnesses already mentioned. Finally, all the sufferings (nights spent in Hell, or in bearing the Cross, or in wearing the Crown of Thorns) which might have made her beg for relief, only gave her a greater desire to suffer for love of Our Lord and of souls.

So her writings and her life confirm each other as evidence that all that took place in her was divine in origin. Even the most extraordinary happenings have an aim and significance. There are no useless details, no record of revelations that do not bring out in clearer light and force some dogmatic truth, giving us deeper insight into the Heart of Our Lord, His love, the value of souls, the happiness of Heaven, the irreparable loss of the damned.

Everything in Josefa’s life is grace-giving and profoundly moving. The writings of this unassuming Sister, regarded as ignorant in the world’s eyes, will, no doubt, be scrutinized and pondered over by theologians and masters of the spiritual life, and as in the case of Saint Thérèse of the Child of Jesus, numerous books will be written to develop the profound doctrine contained in these writings, and to make known the mysteries of love. But better still, the mere reading will bring numberless graces and lead many to conversion and holiness. The world may be astonished at the great things that come from a life so simple; but it is precisely in her nothingness that the overwhelming proof of the authenticity of her Message lies.

In very truth it was countersigned by a Hand that was nothing less than divine.

Digitus Dei est hic
(Signed) H. Monier Vinard S.J.