August 27, 1975
KEEP SILENT AND ATONE
My son, I repeat for the second time: Be convinced and do not doubt!
When you pray, when you write what say, Satan does everything not only to distract you and make you stop these acts, but also to make you impatient, and if possible, to make you proud. Satan has sinned through pride, and in it he will remain forever; therefore we should overcome him with the opposite virtue: humility.
This afternoon, if instead of having become impatient, you would have made an act of humility, you would have realized the acts: “To keep silent, to accept, to suffer and to atone,” and you would have conquered Satan, by this mortification of your own “ego,” of your own will. The ego is pride, and if Satan were scorned and humiliated, after a little while he would have released his prey; and you were the prey, for he looked toward you, by means of X .....
I said that he would go away humiliated, for there is nothing more that irritates him than an act of humility, and the shame upon seeing himself conquered by a man inferior to him by nature, exasperates and wounds him.
How clumsily and coarsely they err who favor and augment these passions of haughtiness and pride, thus favoring Satan in his demolishing and devastating action of the soul, for they are materialized and blind, and in the name of “your own personality” that is to say, of your own ego, receptacle of pride, of vanity and presumption, they counsel: “realize yourself,” “you can do it,” “trust in yourself;” “you need more personality,” etc.
The Prince of lies makes people think that what in reality is weakness is strength, and what is strength is weakness, and in this way many souls are driven and dragged toward their own ruin.
My son, you have touched your negligence with your own hand, and you see the foolishness and silliness of one who lets himself be bound by this snare of pride. And they were not lacking my counsels, they did not lack my examples, nor those of my Mother and of the saints.
The basic virtue
Did I not say: “Learn of Me, for I am meek and humble of heart?” It costs more, and more strength is required, to mortify one's own ego, one’s own will, than any other thing.
Satan sinned through pride; by pride he induced man to sin; man's victory is to defeat Satan with the powerful and efficacious weapon of humility.
Humility is the basic and fundamental virtue, without which no spiritual progress can exist; without it the construction of the kingdom of God in souls is impossible. Think, meditate and reflect how great is this virtue; Satan fears the humble, because he is always defeated by them.
My son, your Jesus, infinite ocean of love, is thirsting for love, but men, submerged in the material, have made themselves incapable of seeing me and of understanding Me, and therefore incapable of loving Me. Love Me, my son; do it for the vast numbers of Christians who do not love Me, for so many, many priests that do not love Me, and who have made themselves materialized professionals of the values of my Redemption. I bless you.