Age

Statue of Jesus seated among two children, in Virginia.

The Age of reason, when a child can discern Good and evil, and the reasons why God can grant a long life to a person.

In "The Gospel as it was revealed to me"

• Intelligence does not come to everyone in the same way or at the same Age. The Church has set 7 years as the Age of responsibility because it is the Age at which a child, even delayed, can distinguish, at least rudimentarily, Good from evil. But there are children who, Good earlier, can discern, intend and will with a reason already sufficiently developed.
• Spiritually speaking, you are still only children, deficient. Here, you will reach the spiritual Age of reason. The rest will come later.
• Man, having reached the moment of birth, is born with his Soul which until the Age of reason was like a field left fallow by its master. But, upon reaching the Age of reason, man began to reason and to distinguish Good and Evil.

In other works of Maria Valtorta

In the Notebooks of 1943

• Catechesis of August 9, 1943: The reasons why God gives a long life: "(...) the gift of life, of a long life, why can I grant it? For two reasons.
  The first is that the creature, which exists, is an enlightened spirit who has the Mission to be a beacon for other spirits still enveloped in the Darkness of materiality. A great number of my saints have reached an advanced Age precisely for this reason. And I alone know with what eagerness they desired, on the contrary, to come to me.
  The second is that I give a long life to provide a shapeless creature the means, all the means, to form itself. Studies, friendships, holy renunciations, pains, joys, readings, the punishments of wars or illnesses, I give it all so that it grows in my Age which is not like yours. I mean that growing in my Age means growing in my wisdom, and one can be adult in my Age while still being children in yours, or be childish in my Age while being a hundred years old in yours. (...)"
• Catechesis of October 19: When Age brings death near, one must prepare with care: "(...) the last times of the earth are a preparation for Heaven. When my goodness gives all the signs and all the time for you to prepare yourselves for life, when through the work, not only of my mercy, but also of the human will, the means is given to see the final preparations of your coming to life, blessed are those who prepare with a care that is never excessive.
  If you put that care, you all whom Age or a long illness, or the merciless contingency of War put in almost certain death, there would not be so many painful stayings in the Purgatory."