November 20, 1975
INVITATION TO PRAYER
Write, my son:
Many times I have lamented the crisis of faith that afflicts my Church, from the top to the bottom. My Church languishes; my Church suffers, because my ministers are gravely infected.
When the body is not nourished, strength is diminished and is lowered; the weakened body does not react to the enemies that assault it, and that more or less slowly, kill it.
The lamp that is not nourished is extinguished. Also the lamp of faith that is not nourished is extinguished and within the soul obscurity is created; night is created. If a small herb or flower is not nourished, they die quickly. If a fresh, fragrant flower is not cared for or nourished, what does it become? A few faded, dried-out leaves, a fragile stem that disintegrates upon contact with another body.
An imprisoned angel
What is the soul of the Christian without faith? What is the soul of the priest that does not pray? It is the most fragile and vulnerable thing that exists. Submerged in darkness, it is lost and is inexorably swept away by the concupiscence of the spirit, or by that of the senses, and very frequently by both. It becomes an angel made prisoner by Satan in the putrefaction of the senses, or in the impurity of the spirit, in error and heresy.
What is the soul of the priest who is in a crisis of faith, because of a lack of interior life? He is a puppet and a toy of Satan, who discharges upon him his hatred and jealousy, soiling him with all his brutishness, making him his slave. It is the despairing revenge of Satan, who vomits all his poisoned spittle upon that poor and unfortunate soul, that did not want to use the valid means of defense that I placed at its disposition.
Oxygen of the soul
The first means of defense is prayer.
- Prayer that elevates the soul toward God.
- Prayer that is the breathing of the soul.
- Prayer that is the oxygen of the soul.
- Prayer that unites the soul to God in an intimate and profound way.
When a soul clasps Me strongly, who can snatch it from Me, from my Heart?
The soul that does not pray is like an infected fruit; no one notices the increasing putrefaction in its interior, but in the end the fruit will fall to the earth, and one knows how these fruits end, in the garbage can.
I, Jesus, the Son of God, prayed night and day, although I had no necessity of doing so. I desired that the example should precede the teaching, but for very many Christians and priests, my example has served for nothing.
If someone refuses to eat, no one can blame Me if the physical forces of his body diminish; if someone refuses to pray, no one can blame Me when all spiritual energy in him is extinguished. He who does not pray is like a shipwrecked person upon the stormy waves of a world that is without God, and if he does not swim, how can he be saved?
An impressive number of priests has let my invitations to prayer fall into a vacuum; how can they be saved? Do they not notice that their feverish activity is sterile, that it is not blessed by God, and that many times it goes in the opposite direction and is thus counterproductive?
They no longer believe in sacramentals, and they no longer use them, with few exceptions. They live outside of spiritual reality; they are as if hypnotized by the evil one.
To light the fire
Son, they believe only in themselves; they believe in magazines and in newspapers; it is from these sources that they drink avidly. It would be sufficient to look slowly and retrospectively at the life of the Church, to realize that without prayer, no saint has been sanctified. No martyr, and there are millions, has witnessed with his blood to his faithfulness to Me, without having been supported by prayer, but they do not look at this. Then, what are they nourishing their soul with? In many of them, the life of grace is extinguished.
How much blindness! What a dark night!
It is terrible: the chosen ones have rejected and do now reject enlightenment and life, enlightenment and life that they could have communicated to souls.
My son, I am the love that they reject. I am the life that they extinguish. I am a flame, and what do I desire, except that this fire may burn? Therefore I desire many fires to be enkindled in towns and cities. Woe to those shepherds who oppose my Will!
I want the friends of my Eucharist to serve as an example, as I told you before.
I have chosen you for a great thing: to carry my Word to the successors of the Apostles, to priests and to my Faithful. It is the last opportunity of being saved and of saving souls.
They have not believed in Me; they have not believed my Mother; they will not believe; many will persist in their blindness, but I desire them to know that the hour is near.