The Book of Heaven
—Unofficial Version—

July 26, 1927

How the Divine Will has two characters: incessant act and unshakeable firmness. How the human actions serve as straw for the wheat.

I was lamenting because of the privation of my sweet Jesus, and pouring out my intense sorrow, I said to myself:  ‘How hard His abandonment is - I feel as though I am under a press, squeezed drop by drop.  Oh, Jesus! where are your promises?  Where is your love?  Where is the triumph of your Divine Will in my poor soul?  I feel as though betrayed by You.  How bitter my end is.  It is not the beginning that one must look at - it is the end that says everything!’  But while I was pouring myself out, my beloved Good, moving in my interior, told me:  “My daughter, my Divine Will has Its triumph in you, and this is why It squeezes you, drop by drop, under Its divine press, so that not even a drop of your will may be left in you.  Poor daughter, it is a Divine and unshakeable Will that works you in order to lay Its Kingdom in you, even in your littlest acts.  Therefore, patience, do not lose heart.  My Divine Will has two characters:  unshakeable firmness and incessant act.  This is why, when the soul has given herself to It, Its work is incessant.  Don’t you feel Its continuous motion within yourself?  And when I manifest to you a truth about It, with a mastery which is all Its own and divine, It places Its incessant motion in attitude, and It repeats it continuously within you; and while repeating it, It triumphs, because It does in you what It does within Itself of Its own nature.  Is this not, then, the triumph of my Will?”

Then, afterwards, He added:  “My daughter, all human actions – working, taking food, sleeping, the pains, the encounters, now of sorrow, now of joy – are nothing other than straw.  Now, wheat cannot be formed without the straw; on the contrary, the straw defends the wheat from frost, from the burning rays of the sun, from the waters, from all the intemperances of the air.  Like a garment, it covers the wheat and grows with it, and only when it has formed the wheat and given life to it – then does it detach from it; and the poor straw performs and receives this detachment by dint of threshing, after it has served the wheat and given life to it.  Such are the human actions:  from the littlest to the greatest, they are all straws, and if one lets the wheat of my Will flow within them, they serve in an admirable way to hide and preserve the wheat of my Divine Volition; and the more the straw, the more wheat can one hope to possess.  It is an enchantment, my daughter, to see a human action enclosing within itself the most pure wheat and the refulgent gold of my Divine Will.  Like straws, it seems that they have primacy over the wheat, and they can boast, saying:  ‘It is true that we are straws, but we hide within ourselves a Divine Will which is more than wheat.  We remain at Its service and give It the field, that It may be formed in our action.’  On the other hand, if my Will does not flow within them, the human actions remain as straws, worthy of being burned, because they have not formed within them the pure wheat that serves the Celestial Fatherland.  Now, just as the straw is detached from the wheat by dint of threshing, in the same way, the human actions are detached from the pure wheat of my Divine Will by means of death which, knocking down what is human, crushes the garment which kept the gold wheat of my Will clothed, and letting it out, it manifests whether it was wheat or straw that the soul possessed.  Therefore, it is not the human actions that indicate the value of them, but the will by which they are animated.  How many actions, apparently beautiful and holy, will be found as full of mud, if done for the purpose of interest; full of wind, if done for the purpose of esteem and personal glory; full of rot, if done to please creatures; full of smoke, if done out of attachment to what is human.  How many things do the straws of the human actions hide; but on the last day of life, when the threshing comes and crushes the straws, it will make known everything they kept hidden inside.”

Afterwards, I continued my abandonment in the Divine Fiat, and my always lovable Jesus, moving in my interior, told me:  “My daughter, the human will rendered man like a cracked and collapsing factory, which man had no virtue of being able to repair by himself.  The Divine Maker was needed, who had built it with so much love, and who, knowing the secrets of His art, could repair it and make the vital fluid of His divine repairing strength flow into the cracks, so as to render it solid again, just as He had built it.  But it is necessary that man draw near the Divine Repairer in order to receive the benefit of His art; that he let himself be handled by Him, and that he no longer let the human will act, the primary cause for his becoming a collapsing factory.  Otherwise, in spite of the coming of the Celestial Constructor, man will always be cracked and collapsing factory.”