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Jesus promptly departs from His Mother, although His Most Tender Heart undergoes a shock.
Are we ready to sacrifice even the most legitimate and holy affections in order to fulfill the Divine Volition? (Let us examine ourselves especially in the cases of separation from the sense of the Divine Presence or from sensible devotion).
Jesus did not take His last steps in vain. In them, He glorified the Father and asked for the salvation of souls. We must place in our steps the same intentions that Jesus placed—that is, to sacrifice ourselves for the glory of the Father and for the good of souls. We must also imagine placing our steps in those of Jesus Christ; and as Jesus Christ did not make them in vain, but enclosed in His steps all those of the creatures, repairing for all their missteps, to give the glory due to the Father, and Life to all the missteps of creatures so that they might walk along the path of good—so we should do it in the same way, placing our steps in those of Jesus Christ with His own Intentions.
Do we walk on the street modest and composed, so as to be an example for others? As the afflicted Jesus walked, He talked to the apostles every once in a while, speaking to them about His imminent Passion. What do we say in our conversations? When the opportunity arises, do we make the Passion of the Divine Redeemer the object of our conversations?
In seeing the apostles sad and discouraged, Loving Jesus tried to comfort them. Do we place in our conversations the intention of relieving Jesus Christ? Do we try to do them in the Will of God, infusing in others the Spirit of Jesus Christ? Jesus goes to the cenacle. We must enclose our thoughts, affections, heartbeats, prayers, actions, food and work in the Heart of Jesus Christ in the act of operating; and by doing this, our actions will acquire the Divine Attitude. However, since it is difficult to always keep this Divine Attitude, because it is hard for the soul to fuse her acts continuously in Him, the soul can compensate with the attitude of her good will, and Jesus will be very pleased. (See May 27, 1922 from Volume 14 below) He will become the vigilant Sentry of her every thought, of her every word and of her every heartbeat. He will place these acts as cortege inside and outside Himself, looking at them with great Love, as the fruit of the good will of the creature. Then when the soul, fusing herself in Him, does her immediate acts with Jesus, Good Jesus will feel so attracted toward that soul that He will do what she does together with her, transmuting the work of the creature into Divine Work. All this is the effect of the Goodness of God, which takes everything into account and rewards everything, even a tiny act in the Will of God, so that the creature may not be defrauded of anything.
O my Life and my All, may Your steps direct mine, and as I tread the earth, let my thoughts be in Heaven!
***
Book of Heaven
Volume 14; May 27, 1922
The prevenient act and the actual act.
I was thinking to myself: “If one act done in His Will is so great, how many of them, alas, do I let escape!’ And my sweet Jesus, moving in my interior, told me: “My daughter, there is the prevenient act and the actual act. The prevenient act is when the soul, at the first rising of the day, fixes her will in Mine, and decides and confirms that she wants to live and operate only in my Volition. She anticipates all of her acts and makes them all flow in my Will. With the prevenient will, my Sun rises, my Life remains duplicated in all of her acts, as though in one single act; and this makes up for the actual act. However, the prevenient act can be shaded – obscured by the human ways, by one’s own will, by self-esteem, by negligence and other things, which are like clouds before the Sun, that render its light less vivid on the face of the earth.
On the other hand, the actual act is not subject to clouds; on the contrary, it has the virtue of dispelling the clouds, if there are any, and it makes many more suns rise, in which my Life is duplicated, with such vividness of light and heat as to form as many new suns, one more beautiful than the other. However, both of them are necessary: the prevenient act gives the hand, disposes and forms the plane for the actual act; the actual act preserves and expands the plane of the prevenient.”