Lessons on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans

These 48 inspired lessons illustrate the Pauline Letter – the full text of which is given at the beginning of the volume – and ends with two indexes: topics and biblical quotations.

The value of revelation to Maria Valtorta can be appreciated, other than in The Gospel, in the precious teachings that we find in the Lessons on the Epistle of Paul to the Romans: a very high theology dictated by the Holy Spirit who wants to be called “Sweet Guest” [1].

The text is not always easy to understand, although made simple for the simple. The following brief summary aims only to entice the reader to read the book, which is magnificent in style and theological content.

This work supports The Gospel as Revealed to me in highlighting the sublime mission of Mary, left too much in the shade by the canonical texts.

1 - THE SUBLIME MISSION OF THE MOST HOLY MARY

The Blessed Virgin has been present in God’s mind since eternity. She contains the Holy Trinity and is contained by it. The Divine Author speaks of Her (Lesson III, January 6, 1948, p. 43, emphasis added), outlining Her apocalyptic role: In his before-last coming, the Lamb of God, the Redeemer, the Holy of Holies, will have as a precursor not the penitent of the desert, salted by maceration, and salting the sinners to heal them from burdens and make them lively to welcome the Lord, but will have as precursor our Angel, She who, despite having flesh, was Seraphim, She in whom we made our abode – nor could we have had a sweeter and more worthy one – the most beloved Ark of pure gold which still contains us as it is from us contained, and who will fly in the skies, radiating Her love to prepare for the King of kings the perfumed and royal path and to prepare to generate and give birth, in a last maternity, as many living germs are and will want to be born to the Lord.

Another essential point, remarked several times, in this as in other texts dictated to Valtorta, is the excellence of the “host souls” who accept, like Valtorta herself, to consume themselves in pain for the salvation of others, including enemies. They are “little Christs”, similar to the Great Host, Christ himself, immolated for the salvation of all, including the enemies.

2 - FORMALLY BELONGING TO THE CHURCH WILL NOT SAVE

Following the Pauline text, the commentary carries on to analyse the current conditions of the Church. Unfortunately, it is in a debilitated condition: too many clerics are equal to the Pharisees. They believe that the only formal belonging to the Church will save them.

On the contrary, adherence to and observance of natural morality and instinctive love for God save many who are not Christians as long as they believe in good faith in the dictates of their religion. In fact: “When the pagans, who do not have the Law, by nature act according to the Law, they, although not having the Law, are a law to themselves” [2]. Those who have not known Christ will have the “child’s reward”, Limbo, which is already a place of joy, and at the Final Judgment they too will enter Paradise. And, as the Supreme Poet teaches (Paradiso XIX, 106-108):

But see: many cry out “Christ, Christ!”,

who will be in much less judgment

to him, to whom that does not know Christ; (…)

3 - THE INFINITE WISDOM OF SACRIFICE

The most frightening words cannot give the idea of the horrendous reality of hell, which Saint Teresa of Avila saw and vividly described in “The book of her life”. Similarly, words can hardly describe the wonder of Heaven. Saint Paul, who ascended to the third heaven, did not see everything and in particular he did not see the supreme horror of the final era of the antichrist.

A drop of divine blood would have been enough to erase all his sins, the one spilled with the circumcision. Becoming a man of God would have been enough, then He could have gone back to heaven. But the pride, the unbelief, the wickedness of humankind would have regained the upper hand (even so, after all …).

Instead, the sacrifice of the Man-God, unjustly tortured and murdered by a Jerusalem full of hate against God, and His glorious Resurrection followed by the Ascension and Pentecost, in the presence of all the peoples gathered in Jerusalem had an incomparably greater efficacy than that which would have had the simple Ascension of a holy Lawgiver who had not suffered the Passion and was not resurrected. The empty tomb remained on earth, an incontrovertible sign of God’s Infinite Love and an invitation to conversion.

“Charity, Faith and Hope allow the carnal man to follow the spiritual law, thus in contrast with the law of sin that lives in his members.” The grace of regenerating oneself while remaining faithful to the inner man was announced by the angels on Christmas night: “the grace of peace to all men of good will”. Note the “peace” granted to “men of will”, not “to men whom God loves”, as if God, in true Calvinist style, loved some and others did not: an evident Protestant derivation of badly done post-conciliar translation.

4 - CARNALITY AND SIN

Apostles and disciples were carnal men, therefore imperfect. Only St. John was a virgin: Christ, being God, could have flowed across the earth and found twelve and seventy-two pure men for his priesthood and gathered them to form the first cell of the Church, but he did not. On the contrary, he used the crude raw material he had available in Palestine to show how even the carnal man full of imperfections can be sanctified. He took away all excuses, otherwise we would have said: “He went to choose the very best, so that’s why we can’t succeed.”

God created everything with love and order. Because of sin – first the one of Lucifer and then the ones of the progenitors – disorder and the struggle between the flesh, that tends to sin, and the spirit, that tends to the good, entered the Creation. Too many, who have the name of Catholics, try to keep an intermediate path of impossible reconciliation between the divine law and that of the flesh and of Satan, for which they remain downwards, prey of hell.

Creation is subjected to vanity, not by its own will but by the will of the One, that is God, who subjected it with the “hope” that it would free itself. Now the heretics say: “You see that your fall was willed by the Father.” But it is not so: omniscient God knew that man would fall bringing disorder into creation, but He never took away from man the predestination to the Grace and used every means, patriarchs, prophets, up to the immolation of His Son, to save humanity.

Being omniscient, God does not know hope. He knew from eternity that man would fall, and from eternity He had prepared the remedy: the Incarnation, the Cross, the Resurrection, as the proof of His infinite love. Man on the other hand, does not know what his destiny will be, and it is for his best, because those who knew they were not going to be saved would become even more unbridled and dangerous to themselves and to others, while those who knew they were safe would cease to strive to improve [3]. Salvation will come for those who have shared the Cross.

5 - HOW TO GET READY FOR HEAVEN

The creation groans in the pains of childbirth, for the sufferings of the mortal condition. The man of good will prepares himself for heaven in hiding, with secret prayers and self-offering, until he identifies himself with Christ [4], helped by the prayer of the Holy Spirit who prays for us and knows how to pray.

The only secret to achieving salvation is love, and this will be seen at the Final Judgment. In fact, there will then be great astonishment: it will be seen that many are saved who were not Christians but exercised love and obeyed the moral law, while many Christians will be reproached because they did not make use of the talents received. All have received talents capable of bringing them to salvation, and those who have used them well will have full eternal happiness, albeit in different degrees, but no one will suffer to have lesser because each will reach the maximum compatible with his nature, so every blessed will enjoy infinite happiness.

Christ and Our Lady, the new Adam and the new Eve, very pure, deserved to ascend to heaven in body and soul. Likewise, Adam and Eve would have ascended if they had not sinned. But it was only after the murder of Abel that the forefathers measured the abyss into which they had fallen and then turned to the Father seeking comfort and acknowledging their guilt.

We cannot escape the corruption of the flesh and we cannot immediately ascend in body and soul like Jesus and Mary, but we do not differ from them in everything else. We will have the glory of Heaven like them, but also the tribulations like them. Nothing can separate us from God, except sin. Crying for suffering does not detach us from God, even Jesus and Mary wept. We have the constant help of the archangel Gabriel who fights with us and for us.

6 - FAULT AND REDEMPTION

Paul suffers from the division of Israel, ready to renounce to Christ in order to bring the Jewish brothers back to Christ. The fanaticism of the persecuting Saul has been transformed into absolute zeal for the Christian cause: it is the supreme love for the enemies, who have lost their belonging to the People of the Promise, while the pagans have become children of God and have the new Promise that replaces the old.

God, the Most Good, draws good from everything. From the first Guilt, of Eden and of the second Guilt of the Temple, He drew Redemption. Only the good-will of man is needed. No one suffered as much as Christ and His Mother, and man must become an imitator of Christ, to draw good from what God allows to happen to him. The Father had in fact loaded Christ with all the sins of the world and withdrew from Him, leaving Him alone.

No one can accuse God of evil, since this comes from man’s sin. Those who are tempted to accuse God must think about how much Christ suffered, not only at the Passion but throughout His life, when Satan, close to his defeat, unleashed his hatred against Him. By drawing good from evil, Christ was able to attain the Church for all men from the satanic rebellion of the Jews. As a father disappointed with his terrible children, adopts an orphan, so God rejected the Israelites and adopted the Gentiles as children, along with the few Israelites willing to welcome Christ.

Worthy of reproach is the Israelite contempt for the Gentiles, tenacious even among the apostles who expected the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel even after the Passion and Resurrection. So Israel was crushed and always will be until it is converted [5]. Even those who had never heard of Christ, if they aspired to the Good, were and will be saved, while no opponent of Christ has had and never will have victory.

The Israelites had the Law and the prophets but they only knew how to accuse Christ of being in cahoots with the devil: even if He had descended from the Cross, as they challenged Him to do, they would have said that He had done so thanks to demonic help. The Israelites had become gods to themselves. God is patient with Israel and waits, but pride prevents the Israelites from recognising the truth: they had the letter of the Law but not the spirit because they lacked humility and charity. They said: “Who is this people who dares to teach in the squares and in the streets?”, While they, the great ones, sat on Moses’ chair in the Temple. The humble Peter knew how to recognise Christ. The only apostle of great culture, linked to the clique of the Temple, was the one who betrayed him: Judas of Kerioth, damned forever.

7 - THE HOLY SPIRIT ENLIGHTENS WHOEVER HE WANTS

It is not enough to believe in the truths of faith, but it is also necessary to believe in the infinite power and mercy of God who, as He sent His Son to evangelise the world and the Holy Spirit to enlighten the apostles and disciples, in the same way raises fires and lights where and when He wants those who have deserved that gift so that they strengthen faith and charity. They are persecuted, but nothing is as effective as persecution in strengthening an idea or a religion.

8 - REFERENCES

[1] He is in fact the “Sweet Guest of the soul”, as the Pentecost sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus says, in the verse Dulcis hospes animae.

[2] Romans 2, 14.

[3] The very rare cases of great saints who, while still alive, received the announcement of their future glory, as it happened to Maria Valtorta, are an exception.

[4] “It is not I who live but Christ in me” (Galatians 2:20).

[5] Other than “older brothers”: those who know the Talmud know well how many curses and blasphemies it is stuffed against Christ and the nosrim, that is, Christians, branded as animals.