Aspiration

The Magi adore Jesus, their desire for God guided them - James Tissot

Every man has a natural desire to see and know God. This desire can be obscured by sin, sadness, or other realities, but it cannot be completely destroyed.

In "The Gospel as Revealed to Me"

• Desiring heaven for good reasons: "One day came when even my John and his brother desired that glory which, even in the realm of heavenly realities, dazzles you like a mirage. It is not only the holy desire for paradise that I want you to have, nor the human desire that your holiness be recognized."
• The Aspiration of all men to God: "And it is the hope, the desire, the hunger of the spirits, which are not different races but belong to a unique race: the one that God has created."
• Jesus awakens the good Aspirations of robbers: "The other life is not a bottomless abyss without thought and without memory of what one has lived, nor is it without Aspiration towards God, as you imagine. It will be a pause in the waiting for liberation by the Redeemer."
• Jesus encourages holy desires: "I never place obstacles to the good Aspirations of the enamored Soul. I have come to preach by facts that in suffering is found expiation, and in pain redemption. I cannot contradict myself."
• The Aspiration of Roman women: "No, Master. We admit it. We are unhappy, worried, like someone searching for a treasure and not finding it." "And it is before you! What makes you worry is the Aspiration of your spirit towards the Light, its suffering from your delays... to give your spirit what it asks for..."
• The desire for God leads to truth: "Every man can come to reach and possess Truth, that is God, whatever his starting point to achieve it. When there is no Pride of the Spirit and no depravity of the flesh, but a sincere search for Truth and Light, purity of intention and Aspiration towards God, a creature is surely on the path to God."
• The desire for God in all: "Every spirit tends towards this God, even if idolatry of all kinds or cruel heresies, schisms, lack of faith keep it in ignorance of the true God that would be absolute if the Soul did not have within it, indelible, an embryonic memory of Truth and an Aspiration towards it. Oh! nurture this memory and this Aspiration."
• The good Aspirations of Samuel: "The Father saw that in your Heart there was no hatred for God, but an Aspiration to glorify God by removing from the world the one they told you was the enemy of God and the corruptor of Souls. And so He created the circumstances to fulfill your desire to glorify your Lord. And now you are among us."

In other works of Maria Valtorta

In the Notebooks

• Catechesis of May 21, 1943: The change of Aspiration of Maria Valtorta: "And then, the light came into me: I understood that it was necessary to raise the goodness from the natural level to a supernatural level, caring not about the usefulness of being good in this life, but about the usefulness it will have for eternal life. I understood that it was necessary to be good and to bring others to be so, not for our joy, but out of 'courtesy' towards Jesus."
• Catechesis of March 22, 1944: The wrong way to aspire to marriage: "Good spouses no longer have the slightest thought for God once past the unavoidable custom of the religious ceremony — I speak of custom, and I repeat it, for the majority it is nothing else, and certainly not an Aspiration of the Soul to have God by their side at such a moment —. They make this sacrament a feast, and the feast an outlet for their bestiality, while in my mind the sacrament, far from ending with the religious ceremony, begins at that instant and lasts as long as the spouses' lives."
• Catechesis of May 29, 1944: God aspires to save us: "And I want that, where I am, that is, in the bosom of the Father, all men may also be. That would be my joy as it is my Aspiration."

In fundamental Christian texts

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church

• CCC 1818: The virtue of hope responds to the Aspiration for happiness placed by God in the Heart of every man; it assumes the hopes that inspire the activities of men..."

Notes and references

Note: Quotations from the work of Maria Valtorta on this page currently use machine-translated text and will gradually be replaced by the official English translation. Until then, the official translation may be consulted through the reference link provided with each quotation.