Animals, Domestic Animals

See also: Creation, creatures, Genesis.

---

Sermon to the Birds - Legend of Saint Francis of Assisi - Giotto

In the Gospel, Jesus frequently integrates animals into his teachings just as he does with agricultural work. He relies on animals to illustrate Providence, humility, wisdom, and divine love. He thus suggests a vision of the world where every creature has a place and value in the eyes of God. This is evident, for example, in what he says about Birds- and sheep.- Animals are also signs of God's care for men, as shown by the miraculous fishing at the end of a fruitless day.- "The beasts, cattle, and creeping things" of Genesis are subject to divine will just as the fish carrying the stater (coin) for the Temple tax.- This obedience of animals to the divine Law is given as an example to men. That is why the Catechism of the Church recalls that "Animals are creatures of God. He surrounds them with his providential care. By their simple existence, they bless him and glorify him. Thus, men owe them kindness.

This is reflected in the work of Maria Valtorta in several aspects.

In Maria Valtorta

She describes with accuracy the fauna of Palestine, sometimes showing remarkable knowledge known not to come from specialized documentation. This knowledge emerges from details of her descriptions rather than from a formal exposition which she never gives. Some of this knowledge serves the authenticity of the depicted scene such as the Palestine viper (Daboia palaestinae) which lethally bites the grandson of the Pharisee Eli of Capernaum, or the wild donkeys (onagers) whose behavior is perfectly described several times by Jesus.

In Maria Valtorta’s work are found the teachings of the Gospel given through comparisons with animals, but also original teachings or parables issued according to the occasion of place or moment, such as: horses (on God's faithfulness to his refractory people), ants (on the strength of united groups), the scapegoat (on idolatrous practices), bees (on God's workers), etc.

Pets

Maria Valtorta and her cat (Documentary fonds of the Maria Valtorta Heritage Foundation)

Maria Valtorta personally loved animals and shared the sorrow of their loss. She admits it: "the morning of the death of Giacomino, my poor little bird."

"I was crying because... I am silly. I was crying because I get very attached. I was crying because, in my isolation as a sick person lasting ten years, I really desire affection around me, even if it is just the affection of small animals […] when one of my birds or a dog dies, I weep for months.

But she gives meaning to these trials by making a gift of this pain and immediately feels a physical and real Consolation. When grief resurfaces sometimes, it is greatly alleviated:

"Then I felt two arms surrounding me and pulling me Against a Heart, my head on a shoulder. I perceived the warmth of a hand Against my cheek, a breath and the beat of a Heart in a living chest. I surrendered to this embrace hearing above my head a voice whispering in my hair: ‘But I, I am still near you. I hold you on my Heart. Do not cry because I love you.’ And I no longer cried. And I no longer felt pain [...] Sometimes, it happens again, but less intensely.".

"One may love animals; one cannot divert to them the affection due exclusively to persons," says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Jesus explains this in a long commentary in response to Manaen (Manahen), who asked him this question: "Master, is it allowed to love the animals that serve us and often do so with more faithfulness than man?"

"The living soul of lower creatures mentioned in Genesis is not a soul like that of man. It is life, simply life, meaning being sensitive to current things both material and emotional. When an animal dies, it is insensitive because with death, for it, it is the true end. There is no future for it, but as long as it lives, it suffers from hunger, cold, fatigue and is sensitive to wounds, to suffering, joy, love, hatred, illness, and death. And man, in remembrance of God, who gave him this means to make his exile on the Earth less harsh, must be humane toward the inferior servants that are the animals for him.".

In "The Gospel as it was revealed to me"

• Consider the animals, all the animals. Have you ever seen a male and a female go toward each other for a sterile embrace and an impure relationship? No.
• If you also knew how to question your Soul, it would tell you the meaning … of this word for "to dominate," which is this: "That man should dominate over all. Over his three states. The lower, animal state. The intermediate, moral state. The superior, spiritual state. And that all three incline toward one single end: to possess God".  
• Man was the perfection of creation. He had from the angel The Spirit and the animal a perfect balance in all his animal and moral being.  
• I had been God. I became Man. Now, triumphing over the animal joined to the human nature, now I was the Man-God.
• What makes you man is the Soul. Without it, you would be nothing more than an animal gifted with speech.  
• Where … a living being breathes, an animal lives, a tree grows, I am there with Him from whom I come … you must say: "Man is generated like all animals by a union between male and female. But the Soul, that is to say the thing that differentiates the man-animal from the brute-animal, comes from God. He creates it every time a man is begotten, or rather: conceived in a womb and implants it in this flesh which otherwise would be only animal.".          
• Jesus saved a nest that fell from a tree, with a brood of chicks: The Deuteronomy prescribed laws of humanity, because then men had a childish spirituality... But when I came, I perfected the Mosaic rules… The letter is no longer "everything". It is The Spirit who has become "everything". Beyond a small human act towards a nest and its inhabitants, one must see the meaning of my gesture: to bow, Me, the Son of the Creator, before the work of the Creator. Even that brood is His work.
• "Dear Birds! How they are an example for men! They content themselves with little, and only with what is permitted and holy. (…) Animals are always happy because they feel no remorse in their Hearts which reproach them nothing."
• At the equality of conception, formation, and way of birth of children of a man and a Woman on Earth corresponds another equality in Heaven: the creation of a Soul to infuse into the embryo so that it is that of a man and not of an animal.          
• (The ReIncarnation) is an erroneous theory. Souls, once their stay on Earth is over, never return to Earth in any body. Not in an animal, because it is not fitting that something as supernatural as it is, dwell in a brute. Not in a man.    
• All the laws attached to human nature that God gave the first parents were good: the need for food, rest, drink. Then, with sin, the animal instincts penetrated and mixed with the natural laws with disorders, sensualities of all kinds, spoiling what was good due to lack of moderation.      
• The living soul of lower creatures mentioned in Genesis is not a soul like that of man. It is life, simply life, meaning being sensitive to current things both material and emotional. When an animal is dead, it is insensitive because with death, for it, it is the true end. There is no future for it, but as long as it lives, it suffers from hunger, cold, fatigue and is sensitive to wounds, to suffering, joy, love, hatred, illness and death. And man, in remembrance of God who gave him this means to make his exile on Earth less harsh, must be humane towards the inferior servants that are the animals for him.

In other works of Maria Valtorta

The Notebooks of 1943

• Catechesis of May 13 : The pain of Maria Valtorta faced with the loss of her pets.  
• Catechesis of June 6 : Without Grace, you would simply be animal creatures, evolved enough to be endowed with reason and a soul but a soul at the level of the earth, capable of evolving within the contingencies of earthly life but unable to rise to the regions of spiritual life.   
• Catechesis of June 13 : God is always ready to intervene to help you, but he demands from you the desire to receive Him ... Then He embraces you, penetrates you, lifts you up, inflames you, deifies you, makes you change your poor animal nature into a fully spiritual nature, makes you like Him.
• Catechesis of August 7 : The tomb is a place where the mortal clothing returns to its dust nature, releasing the spirit while waiting for the hour when what was created will reform for entering into glory or damnation with the perfection of creation that God made for the human being, that is, the union of a spirit to a flesh. Immortal spirit like God, its Creator and Father, mortal flesh as formed by a terrestrial animal, king of the earth, heir of Heaven, but who too often prefers the earth to Heaven, ‘animal’, not because he is endowed with a soul [anima], but because he lives no less, and sometimes more, as a brute than animals in the strict sense.  
• Catechesis of September 14 : I poured it there (My blood at Gethsemane) to sanctify the earth and the workers of the earth, among whom are also included the shepherds of the different species of animals that the Father gave to humans to help them and ensure their subsistence.
• Catechesis of September 29 : You deny not only your God but your dignity as human beings, your intelligence which makes you like God above all animals created by the Father, the only ones capable of thinking and acting, not with the rudimentary instinct of beasts, but with a splendid intellect that raises you to spheres very close to ours.      
• Catechesis of October 21 : Too often you forget, O humans who believe yourselves Gods; if your spirit is not vivified by Grace, you are nothing other than dust and decay, animals who add to animality the cunning of the Beast, which makes you perform beastly deeds, worse than beastly deeds, of demons.
• Catechesis of October 31 : You are more foolish than animals who, obeying the order of instinct, know how to regulate themselves as to feeding, mating, and choice of lodging.
• Catechesis of November 11 : The animal deprived of breathing is nothing other than filthy carcass. Its only life is in its breath. With its nostrils closed to this breath, it ceases to exist and becomes a corpse. There are many human beings who are hardly superior to the animal, having no other life than their animal life that lasts only as long as their breath.
• Catechesis of December 18 : Here is the perfect work of the Creator, here is what I created in my image and likeness, fruit of a divine and creative masterpiece, marvel of the Universe, which sees, enclosed in a single being, the divine in the immortal spirit like God and like Him, spiritual, intelligent, virtuous, and the animal in the most perfect flesh before which every being of the three kingdoms of Creation bows. Here is the testimony of my love for the human, for whom I created the perfect organism and the happy fate of an eternal life in my Kingdom.

The Notebooks of 1944

• Catechesis of January 7: A spirit merges with a flesh to make man like God, who is not flesh but spirit, not animal but supernatural. When the flesh decays as its twilight comes, it falls like a filthy carcass, like a simple covering, into the nothingness from which it was drawn, and the soul returns to its life: happy if it lives, but damned if man has made his flesh his lord instead of making God the lord of his soul.
• Catechesis of January 8: You do not see the seal of God engraved on the things your eye looks at. For you, they are only stars, mountains, stones, waters, herbs, animals. For the believer, they are works of God.
• Catechesis of January 10: My Being extends over the entire universe; my Light bathes the stars, planets, seas, valleys, plants, animals; my Intelligence runs over all the earth, instructs the most distant, gives all a reflection of the Most High, teaches how to seek God; my Charity penetrates like breath and conquers the Hearts.

The Notebooks from 1945 to 1950

• September 6, 1947: Without God, man can only be a wild animal. More than an animal, a demon. Because the animal lets itself be dominated by man, it is tamed, it bends under the power called "man", it bends with love or by love among the most evolved and domesticated animals, by fear otherwise. From animals, originally free and wild, man made his subjects and helpers, or even his friends, except obviously the most despicable.        
• September 17, 1947: Man deprived of Grace, in other words as he is at the moment he is born of Woman, is an animal-man in the eyes of God, like a corpse whose corrupt body cannot come to contaminate the eternal Temple where shines the throne of God; likewise.
• Comments on Revelation, chapter 1: Death: in everything God had created, it did not exist, nor suffering, nor sin, this cause of death and suffering.
• Comments on Revelation, chapter 2: It would indeed seem that, better than men, many animals know how to praise what is good and good in creation, that they are grateful to the sun that warms them, to the water that quenches them, to the fruits of the earth that feed them, to man who loves them.