Co-redeemer, Victim Soul, Reparative Soul, Host, Victimal Gift

See also: Redemption, Salvation, Redeemer.

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Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows

Co-redemption originates from the writings of Saint Paul, notably:

I now rejoice in my joy in the sufferings I endure for you, and what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, I complete in my flesh on behalf of his body, which is the Church.

Or again:

I bear in my body the stigmata of the sufferings of Jesus..

And finally, this key phrase:

With Christ, I am crucified. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

The term "co-redeemer" is synonymous with victim-soul, reparative soul, or host, depending on the vocabulary. In the works of Maria Valtorta, the term co-redeemer is often used, but the context leaves no doubt about the association (and not substitution) with the sufferings of the Passion.        

All victim souls base their vocation on love, the source of which is found in the Heart of God. They desire to immerse themselves in this outpouring of love by following Jesus in His Passion for Humanity. A passion understood in every sense of the word: burning love and path of suffering for others.    

It is also said that these souls offer themselves in "holocaust". This word originates from the sacrifices in Judaism in which animals were entirely consumed by fire to atone for the faults of an individual or the whole people. By His Passion, Christ offered Himself as a victim for the definitive atonement of the sins of all humanity.-          

These "co-redeeming" souls give gift of their human life to God, conditioning it entirely on divine will. They offer and immolate themselves, out of love, to repair their offenses and much more, those of others.

A phrase from the consecration act of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux perfectly illuminates this theme:

In order to live in an act of perfect Love, I offer myself as a holocaust victim to your merciful Love, begging You to consume me incessantly, letting overflow in my soul the streams of infinite tenderness contained in You, so that I may become a Martyr of Your Love, O my God!…

It should be related to the phrase of Saint Paul cited above:

With Christ, I am crucified. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

In her Hymn to Love and Suffering, Maria Valtorta exults:

Blessed be the suffering that makes me resemble You!        

Blessed be Your cross that lifts me up to heaven!    

Blessed be the love that gives wings to my pain!

Mary co-redeemer

The first and greatest co-redeemer was the Virgin Mary at the foot of the Cross. Not from stigmata that she would have borne as a reflection of the Passion of her Son, but from her real participation in His redemptive suffering.

While Christ suffered so many blows, wounds, derision, it was His body that terribly paid the price of sin. Mary, present at Calvary, suffered analogous pains of the same origin: Christ painfully shed the blood of the body, she shed the blood of the heart, said Arnauld of Chartres.     

Jesus thus willed that His Mother be intimately associated with all the sufferings of the Passion, until His death and His glory after death.  

The term co-redeemer gave rise to circumlocutions because of the great fear of equating Christ, the unique Redeemer, and His Mother. Hence she is called "cooperator," "collaborator," or "associate." Linguistic precautions, probably useful, but should not mask the reality of her participation in Redemption as so well described by Maria Valtorta:

To be the Mother of the Son of God is a blessed destiny; to be the Mother of the Redeemer is a destiny of dreadful pain, said the young Mary to Zachariah.

Maria Valtorta was a tertiary of the Servite Order. This order originated the devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows (Maria Addolorata). On March 25, 1239, Annunciation Day, the Virgin Mary appeared to the founders of the Order. She asked them to wear a black habit with a large scapular in memory of Christ's passion and Mary's seven sorrows. Maria Valtorta's scapular is displayed in the case of her room in Viareggio.

The cohort of co-redeemers

The movement of co-redeeming souls dives into history. Francis of Assisi is known as the first visible and recognized stigmatized saint. Between him and Paul, other souls certainly offered themselves as holocaust.

The current of "imitation of Christ" became identifiable in the 13th century, not only with the stigmas of Saint Francis of Assisi, but also with Flemish mystics such as Hadewich of Antwerp (c. 1210-1260). She advocated, in her visions, a mysticism free from intellectualism. This spirituality was followed by that of Blessed John of Ruusbroec (1293-1381) - whose writings influenced the golden age of Spanish mysticism (16th century) and the French school of spirituality (17th century) - and finally that of Gerard Groote (1340-1384), founder of the "Modern Devotion." This advocated the conversion of the heart, prayer, and contemplation: virtues crystallized in The Imitation of Christ, a work attributed to Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471), a 15th-century German monk.    

This imitation of Jesus Christ, with the golden age of Spanish mysticism, led to the emergence of acts of self-offering. It also explored the ways to union with God. In a country of eight million souls, recently freed from Muslim rule, and at a time of multiplying great schisms, prominent saints such as Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), founder of the Jesuits and author of the famous exercises, flourished.    

Saint John of Avila (1499-1569), doctor of the Church, was condemned by the Inquisition for his controversial positions. In his book Audi, filia (Listen, my daughter), he asserted that the only merits capable of saving the sinner are those of the Passion of Christ.  

Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) was stigmatized and gifted with levitation. This major spiritual figure is the first woman named Doctor of the Church in 1970. She wrote two main works: The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle where she formulates her act of self-offering. She originated the reform of Carmel and founded, during her lifetime, seventeen monasteries.      

Following her Carmelite reform emerged, three centuries later, Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, herself a Doctor of the Church, Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, and Saint Edith Stein. All were co-redeemer souls who made the victim offering of themselves to continue Christ's oblation.          

Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), Doctor of the Church, wrote his doctrine aiming at the soul's union with God in four main works: The Dark Night, The Ascent of Carmel, The Living Flame of Love, The Spiritual Canticle.

In the 17th century in France, a country emerging from 36 years of fratricidal religious wars, the spiritual revival gave birth to the "French school of spirituality." This period was called the "Great Century of souls" by Daniel-Rops.  

Jeanne de Chantal (1572-1641) was widowed at 29 and mother of four children. She took the veil after meeting Francis de Sales. She taught the "martyrdom of love" which would make "those happy enough to will it" suffer. She was the grandmother of the Marquise de Sévigné, whose real name was Marie de Rabutin-Chantal.    

From the Order of the Visitation she founded emerged, a few years later, Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690). She propagated the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus to whom He had appeared.    

Blessed Marie of the Incarnation (Mme Acarie, 1566-1618) was mother of six children. She animated a religious circle frequented notably by her cousin, Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle (1575-1629), who helped her implant reformed Carmelites in France.        

She received the stigmas at about age twenty-seven but hid them and imposed silence on her confessor until her death. Her spirituality was centered on contemplation of the Cross. At her death, the kingdom counted 27 Carmels.  

For Pierre de Bérulle, true freedom is found in Christ. To this end, he promoted the "vow of servitude" to Christ which many mystics, notably victim souls, adapted.      

This "vow of servitude" is complemented by the vow of servitude to Mary which Cardinal de Bérulle tried to generalize.        

Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673-1716) developed this vow of servitude to Mary. He presents it in Love of Eternal Wisdom. This vow expresses confident and total submission to Mary to fulfill, in one's life, Jesus' design. Maria Valtorta consecrated herself according to this formula.

Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort summarized this commitment in the formula: Totus Tuus, a motto that was also John Paul II's.  

In the 18th century many European Churches embraced the world, its power, and its riches. A violent rejection followed, fueling the revolutionary storm and its persecutions.        

However, in Italy, the current of victim souls persisted: among them, Saint Veronica Giuliani (1660-1727) and Saint Paul of the Cross (1694-1775).          

At 34, Veronica Giuliani received the mystical marriage, union of her soul to the suffering love of Christ, then the stigmata including the indelible mark of the crown of thorns. She then dedicated herself to the spirituality of the Passion, which initially worried the Holy See.        

At her confessor's request, she recorded her mystical experiences for 33 years in a journal eventually composing 22,000 pages handwritten: Il Tesoro Nascosto (The Hidden Treasure). A work comparable to Maria Valtorta's 15,000 pages. Veronica Giuliani died at 67 on July 9, 1727, leaving a spiritual testament leaving no doubt of the co-redeemers’ motivation and goal: “Love let itself be found! That is the reason for my languor. Tell everyone: I have found Love!”.      

Paul of the Cross founded the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ (or Passionists), whose vocation is to propagate devotion to Christ's Passion through itinerant preaching and spiritual retreats. To this end, he wrote:

It is excellent and very holy to keep the Lord's passion present to the mind and meditate on it, for this is how one reaches union with God. It is in this holy school that one learns true wisdom; it is indeed where all the saints have learned it […] love is a form of union, and it appropriates the torments of the Beloved. This fire penetrates to the marrow, transforming the lover into the beloved; love being more deeply mixed with pain, and pain with love, it becomes such an intimate mixture that one can no longer distinguish love from pain, nor pain from love. That is why the soul that loves rejoices in its pain and exults in its painful love.

Tomb of Maria Valtorta inscribed "Host pleasing to God" (Hostia Deo Grata)

In the 19th century, Catholicism was extraordinarily vital in every sense and on all levels.        

On October 13, 1884, Leo XIII witnessed a dialogue between God and Satan. Increased power and time were granted to Satan to test the Church. This century of purification, or century of Satan, saw flourishing of many victim souls. Among these known co-redeemers can be cited:          

Thérèse of Lisieux, Conception of Armida, Dina Bélanger, Charles de Foucauld, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Edith Stein, Josefa Menéndez, Elizabeth of the Trinity, Yvonne-Aimée de Malestroit, Marthe Robin, Luisa Piccarreta, Gemma Galgani, Padre Pio, Sister Faustina, Maximilian Kolbe, and of course Maria Valtorta, etc.          

The youngest was Antonietta Meo who died at six and a half years old. The oldest, Natuzza Evolo, died at 85.

We are all called, according to our capacities

We are called to unite with Christ’s sacrifice because "outside the Cross there is no other ladder to climb to heaven," Jesus told Saint Rose of Lima:

CCC § 618.   […] He calls his disciples to "take up their cross and follow him", because "he suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow his steps." He indeed wants to associate to his redeeming sacrifice those who are its primary beneficiaries (--). This is accomplished supremely for his Mother, more intimately associated than anyone else to the mystery of his redeeming suffering ().

The number of texts dictated to Maria Valtorta, cited below, leaves no doubt about the importance of answering this call. But God assigns to each creature the functions it is capable of fulfilling, according to its nature's possibilities. Indeed, God does not impose the impossible. If He calls exceptional souls like that of Maria Valtorta, He calls each of us to a daily life transcended by God.

Write again for the souls I love, said Jesus to Sister Josefa Menendez, I want them to know how the desire for their perfection consumes me and how this perfection consists in doing, in intimate union with Me, their common and ordinary actions. If they understand this well, they will divinize their entire activity, and what value a day of divine life has !...

Saint John Eudes called this the "sanctification of ordinary actions." Jesus specifies to Maria Valtorta, in a catechesis on obedience, the founding virtue of Redemption (--) and thus the gateway for co-redeemer souls:

Even your little obedience to all the small things the Lord presents to you through everyday events acts like the wind on plants, grass in the meadows and gardens: from you, who are flowers, it produces fruit, fruit of eternal life.

It is then that a person, united to Christ, truly collaborates in His redemptive mission:

If He calls exceptional souls like that of Maria Valtorta, He calls each of us to a daily life transcended by God:

Write again for the souls I love, said Jesus to Sister Josefa Menendez, I want them to know how the desire for their perfection consumes me and how this perfection consists in doing, in intimate union with Me, their common and ordinary actions. If they understand this well, they will divinize their entire activity, and what value a day of divine life has !...

It is then that a person, united to Christ, truly collaborates in His redemptive mission:

(CCC § 307) To men, God even grants the power to freely participate in his providence [...] Often unaware cooperators of divine will, men can deliberately enter into God’s plan by their actions, prayers, but also by their sufferings. They then become fully "co-workers with God" and of His Kingdom.

In "The Gospel as it was revealed to me"

• Prophecy on Mary's role as co-redeemer.   
• Joseph, first of the co-redeemers.      
• Being the Mother of the Son of God is a blessed destiny; being the Mother of the Redeemer is a destiny of dreadful pain.  
• Mary wipes out Eve’s fourfold sin.         
• Mary's 4 sorrows.
• The highest dignity of men: to be co-redeemer.      
• Mary co-redeemer.   
• Mary will not disappoint God’s desire. She never has. From the request for total love to that of total sacrifice, she has given herself and will give herself... Every man who has lived, lives, or will live causes tears to Mary.  
• If I had wanted it for myself alone, your souls would not be saved. Reflect how great my sacrifice is. I give you a Son so He may be immolated for your souls.         
• As I do for all men, so a Woman will obtain for women, in a special way, grace and redemption."
• Consecration of Matthias: Lord, Most High God, God and Father of your people, who accept and consecrate hearts and altars and immolate victims pleasing to you, may your will descend like a fire and consume me as a victim with Christ, as Christ and through Christ, your Son and your Messiah, my God and Master. I commend myself to You. Hear my prayer.  
• Here is then the need for host souls who love and atone for all. They are the children, innocent and ignorant, who pay the bitter punishment of pain for those who only know how to sin; they are the saints who voluntarily sacrifice themselves for all.

In other works by Maria Valtorta

The Notebooks of 1943

• Catechesis of April 23: Suffer, Maria, and tell the righteous to suffer also to make up for the second martyrdom the Father does not want me to accomplish. To each creature who immolates herself, Heaven grants the salvation of some souls.         
• Catechesis of June 12, 1943: Jesus never frightens. You have been entirely absorbed. The confidence of one who loves me opens my God’s heart. The law of love for those who belong entirely to Jesus. If all souls became alive, I would say fin. Victims will save the world.
• Catechesis of June 14, 1943: As long as a soul does not accept to be admitted into the "secret of pain" which I, Christ, have tasted to the bottom, it cannot claim to fully know my doctrine or have superior insights than those granted to all. 
• Catechesis of July 6, 1943: When time ceases to exist, Mary will cease to suffer, for the number of the blessed will be complete. She will have begotten, with unspeakable pains, the imperishable body whose Firstborn is the head. If you consider this, you will surely understand that Mary’s pain was supreme pain. You will understand that great in her Immaculate Conception, great in her glorious Assumption, Mary was very great in the cycle of my passion, namely from the evening of the Last Supper to the dawn of the Resurrection. Then she was, in order and power, the second Christ.        
• Catechesis of July 18, 1943 : The time has come when Love will thunder with anger asking why it has been so scorned. And the present times are already the first convulsions of this vilified Love which, by justice and respect of its perfection, cannot bear the insult anymore. That is why I seek, like a beggar, someone who opens their heart to our very intense Love and makes themselves a victim, accepting to be consumed to relieve Love. What I offer is a pyre, I know it, I realize it. But do not flee it, you who are not yet sold to the Enemy.       
• Catechesis of August 4, 1943 : You can therefore be sure in your suffering that through the dying flesh, your spirit always grows: it feeds on the death of your body as a victim of love. How beautiful will be the day when, breaking the clay of its earthly vessel, your spirit will blossom, free and strong for the eternal joy of your Jesus, in Heaven.”
• Catechesis of September 17: Those who are in my hand like soft clay in the potter’s hand are the chosen of my heart. My hand is on them like a caress. My caresses model them, giving them my imprint and shaping them to the likeness of my gentleness, charity, purity, and the most beautiful of all likenesses: that of my Redemption. For they are the souls who continue my mission as Redeemer and to whom I constantly say ‘thank you’ that constitute the blessing that protects the most. And if Veronica’s veil is sacred because it bears my image, what will these souls be who are my true image?         
• December 4: "And since I love you with a love incomprehensible to you because it is perfect, not only do I save you, placing you among my troops, but I make you my collaborators in building the Temple that will not be destroyed and in which the Triple Glory will rest".

The Notebooks of 1944

• Catechesis of January 17 : If you remain in me as children in the womb of their mother, our Father will see no other garment than the one you wear: myself, your Redeemer, who gives birth to you in heaven, and his Son; and he will shower his graces on his Son, the object of all his complacency for whom he has also made, in addition to all things, forgiveness and glory, for the joy of his Son who wants you to be forgiven and glorious.      
• Catechesis of March 16 : The value of obedience. Jesus reached perfection through obedience. The necessary obedience of co-redeemers. Obedience is also made of minute things every moment. This obedience of every moment is your spring. If the trial seems insurmountable to you, it is because you stiffen in pride. Dictations and visions serve an educational purpose to help you. You must relearn everything. What "Religion" means. Woe to those who prefer to return to darkness. Be worthy of the gift I give you. The purpose of enclosed convents. The joy of having become tertiary of the Servants of Mary.     
• Catechesis of March 30 : Mary Magdalene mortifies herself in memory of Christ’s Passion pains, who died also for her.
• Catechesis of May 20 : (Comments on the seven "swords" piercing Mary's heart). My first pain concerned not only my love as Mother of God. I knew my fate. I knew it because I did not ignore the destiny of the Redeemer. Prophecies foretold his great suffering. The Spirit of God, united with me, enlightened me even more than the prophecies said. That is why, from the moment I said: "Here is the servant of the Lord," I embraced suffering together with love.
• Catechesis of June 11 : Victim souls live in a spiritually balanced way. They live in limbo at the edge of bliss. Love impatient to unite with those who love. Victim souls compared to Ezekiel’s four living creatures. The only thing that can make you lose your spiritual balance is your will. Never say to yourself: "I am not capable of doing well what I do." At spiritual level, every human thought must die. The saint’s heroic virtues. The main thing is always to bear the world and love it supernaturally. There is no other way to save the world than through suffering. Christ, in heaven, still suffers.      
• Catechesis of July 5 : These are what little things are for a "true soul": they are flowers. Certainly, they are interwoven with many thorns, but whither! They are born on the paths of the earth, where man passes by sullying them with his fleshly trace, also where Lucifer sows his seeds of hatred. They are very different from my path flowers. They are my tears and Mary’s that made them grow, it is my Blood and that of my co-redeemers — among others yours, victim soul — that fertilized them. These flowers are eternal. They are reached by passing a thorny rampart: the world. But then... oh, then! What peace! I, who love, pick one of my flowers sometimes and bring it beyond this thorny rampart, for I do not want to see you cry without you obtaining some comfort from me, I who know what it means to suffer to be redeemer and unloved. […] But they are abysses. They will have to answer for wanting to remain abysses although my co-redeemers and I have made ourselves a net that dives into the depths of the abyss, willing to accept the bitterness of darkness — while we are children of Light — to bring them a memory of Light, to make them crave it, to bring them to it. To bring them out of darkness, that is the work of redemptors. Even when it seems to us that we ourselves are in darkness, we who are not darkness.
• Catechesis of August 2: No one, however great, can come before me if he does not recognize in Mary, the closed Door through which God alone has entered, the Mother of the Savior, the Virgin Mother, the Divine Mother. I have united her with my condition as the Living one in heaven to tell you what her glory is. She is only inferior to God because she is created by him. But her motherhood and co-redeemer’s sufferings exalt her above all creatures. Door of heaven, source of faith, hope and charity, temperance, justice, strength and prudence, grace and graces, salvation; it is through her that you have received the God made flesh.        
• Catechesis of August 6: You wanted to know again this joy, and you climbed up again. Two, three, ten rings higher and higher on the rough trunk, for more and more strength and fragrance, more and more dew, sky, and rubies on ever growing flowers. When you reached the halfway point, you knew the name of this tree: it was my cross. And it spoke to you with that voice of suffering and love. On its wood, you read the truths, written with the Blood of your God, that are life; you embraced them and tasted their flavor; and you desired to climb to the top, where a suffering Face smiled at you, letting flow tears and drops of blood, that is your dew and rubies. From that moment, you wanted nothing else.
  Then your Master and Redeemer made the trunk of his throne smoother and smoother and softer to help you rise. For love obtains in return love and mine, which loved you already to want you entirely for himself, now loved you with predilection as you loved him with all your being.
  My little voice, here you are having reached the knowledge of your Good. From the top of our scaffold of loving redeemers, you observe not with desire but with mercy, the distant earth, these poor plants who do not know how to come to the cross; then you turn your eyes to heaven to pray for them because, united with Christ, you share his divine thirst to love and save souls. From the top of the cross, you learn the highest knowledge and, like a bird at the top of a very tall cedar, you sing its teachings so that these poor plants may hear and come to the Light. You have received greater gifts. But the gift of gifts was love.        
• Catechesis of August 19: To cry is not a sin. It is the toll paid to our condition. I say “our” because your God was man and cried, just as Mary, who was free from all misery through her immaculate conception, cried: as co-redeemer, she had to live the Suffering, which she should not have known. The Man and the Woman cried. You may also cry, you who are certainly a soul closely united to God but not divine or immaculate.
  The essential thing is to know how to cry without these tears becoming sin, that is to say without bitterness, and to make these tears a currency that can redeem the slaves that Satan chains in his galley.
  Save, save! And do not be afraid. God is with you. 
• Catechesis of September 14: It seemed then impossible to love more. And since you loved your Jesus, particularly in his role as Redeemer, you desired to call yourself Maria of the Cross. The cross! It is all your love. It seemed impossible then to love more. But you see, my little spouse, that, as love for God belongs to God, it shares his infinity. One can always love more and never reach limits. Indeed, love increases as it fulfills and perfects.

The Notebooks from 1945 to 1950

• February 10, 1945: Maria Valtorta’s mystical calendar. Her "offering act as victim to Justice and Love."      
• January 28 and 29, 1946: During the night. I complain about my excessive suffering. I say: “It is too terrible.” Saint Azarias tells me: “Why call terrible what comes from God? Why say it is unbearable? How can you call atrocious what is participation in Christ’s Redemption? Hell is atrocious. What comes from Satan is unbearable. Only what comes from Hate can be terrible. God never gives more than the creature can bear. His Son is the only one on whom he laid his hand heavily. These sufferings were the only ones without measure. Christ, who knew justice, endured them without calling them terrible, atrocious or unbearable, for that would mean accusing the Father of striking him without charity. Victim souls must conform to the Victim in all things. Cry, but do not claim to suffer too much.    
• February 17, 1946: Regarding you, the doors of heavenly blessings, of possession of God, will be opened, not because you are a "spokesperson" but because you are a willing victim: indeed, by the soul's word, by the word of love, you wrote "these" words and laid on paper what your soul was already doing. Only that will have value to judge you on earth and in heaven. That alone will explain why I made you my spokesperson: because you showed goodwill and strong love.
• March 13, 1946: If I carefully examine myself, on the eve of human judgment on my spokesperson work, if I scrutinize scrupulously my soul and all my being to decipher the true words within me, I can say that now I love, I understand that I love God with all my being. It took me forty-eight years to reach this total love, so total that I have no fear of condemnation, only the suffering that it may fall on souls I have led to God, and who, I am convinced, have been redeemed by Jesus who lives in me but who might depart from the Church, this link between humanity and God.
• May 3, 1946: Because I am above you. You are in the beam of my rays. All the light you receive is me. All the peace you enjoy is me. All the joy you feel is me. I stand above you, invisible yet present. You are protected, even if you believe yourself alone. For Love never fails in the agonies and sacrifices of those who work for God’s glory and the redemption of souls.
• January 19, 1947: (about the wedding at Cana) “Jesus’ Mother was there.” The Mother! Could she be absent where the new man had to be born? Could Eve be absent if from now on "Life" had to take the place of Death? Can the Woman be missing when the hour approaches when the Serpent’s head will be crushed and limits set to his freedom of action? Impossible! The Mother of the living, the spotless Eve, the Woman of the "Hail Mary" and "May it be done to me according to your word," the Woman with the powerful heel, the Co-redeemer is therefore present at the banquet where the union of humanity and grace is inaugurated.        
• April 7, 1947: Maria, it is I who lives in you, my dear victim souls and servants of love. What you give is still me, because you are completely given to me to the point of no longer existing for yourselves, but because I exist. You existed until you willed to be entirely mine, after which we merged. The greater, that is me, absorbed the smaller, you. You are the outer garment, but the rest is I who live in you. And souls feel my fragrance, they run. They glimpse my light, and they run. You are amphorae that give off the perfume filling you, veils that wrap the light but do not hide it. Souls speak to you to speak to me. Let them come.      
• May 14, 1947: My dear victim soul, in the chalice of propitiation offered every day on altars, there is my Blood and the generous tears of victim souls. For your pain is love. By love, you asked to suffer, by love I granted it, by love you endure it. Among victims, all is love: as much the smile for my love that consoles them, as the groans under the torture of flesh, or tears due to misunderstanding or betrayal by men, and even those of the sadness of feeling that your God is not loved.    
• May 16, 1947: Look, look, make it your delight. There is no more beautiful light in paradise than this, after ours. There is none sweeter. No. We, the Three Glorious, find our joy in it, and the blessed find theirs, as do the angels. Paradise shines with this light of the Immaculate Heart of our Mary. This light that you call indescribable — it is the voice and joy of paradise — emanates from that breast, from the Heart of the eternal Virgin. If only man accepted its diffusion on earth! It would be the second redemption, second pardon... final salvation! Ah, the pardon of the world! The pardon granted to the world by Mary! But the world rejects the Mother who would bring it to peace. Love, love for the whole world. Then Mary’s Heart light will fill you with the joy that makes us truly happy.
• September 14, 1947 (the Glorious Cross): Be at peace, my soul, my little crucified one. After being considered an object of horror, the cross was exalted for having borne me, thus becoming the instrument of redemption. The crucified, after being tested by suffering, will be exalted for having completed in themselves what was lacking in my Passion.  
• October 23, 1947: There can be no second redemption accomplished by me, Christ. But there can be still another one to save more souls from infernal spirals: that of glorious Mary. The secret of the final Redemption lies in her devotion.      
• March 1949: It is not a lack of charity to be just towards the guilty, and just by practicing justice in every act. Did I lack charity toward my Mother in exercising this heroic justice that consisted in doing all my Father’s will? No, indeed. On the contrary, by acting this way I made the Immaculate the Co-redeemer. I crowned her head with this second glorious crown that she would not have had otherwise. She did not refuse it, although it is a crown of disproportionate suffering.    
• August 15, 1949: Weep over my Mother’s torment, which finally bursts after her heroic suffering at Calvary. You, at least, must understand this double suffering of mother and first and perfect believer. No one understands it except you, who saw it and remember, who hear the voices, see tears and sobbing.
  Repair with your understanding love this lack of consideration toward Mary’s suffering, co-redeemer. This is what I ask of you: to repair the superficiality with which too many consider my Mother’s passion.
  I ask you today, on this feast of the Assumption, this day of Marian joy. However, Mary had to drink a cup as bitter as mine to have that joy... Mary was a sea of pain before becoming Queen of heaven.
  You are washed by my blood and by the sea of Mary’s tears. Yet no one thinks of it... As for you, repair for all those indifferent.  
• Apocalypse (p. 563): For pity for those poor men swept by the turmoil of blood, fire, persecution, death, infinite Mercy will make shine on this sea of blood and horror the pure Morning Star, Mary, who will announce the last coming of Christ. Consequently, the new evangelizers will teach the Gospel of Mary, indeed too much left in shadow by the evangelists, apostles, and all disciples, whereas broader knowledge of her would have served as instruction to many, thus avoiding numerous falls. She is indeed co-redeemer and plays the role of master: a master of pure, faithful, prudent, compassionate and pious life, at home as among men of her time.          
• Ib° (p. 564): Christ will seek to prevent that denial, not only of religion but also of reason, by opening new horizons and ways enlightened by spiritual lights, and by raising, in those who do not openly reject him, a powerful revival of spiritual life, with the help of these new evangelizers not only of Christ but also of the Mother of God. They will carry Mary’s banner. They will lead to Mary. And Mary, who was once already the cause and source — indirect but nevertheless powerful — of man’s redemption, will be again. She is indeed the holy Adversary of the perfidious Adversary, and her heel is destined to crush the infernal dragon forever, just as Wisdom, who established her seat in her, is destined to overcome the heresies that corrupt souls and intellects.

The Book of Azarias

• Passion Sunday: I (Jesus) said: "I must pass through this suffering here below to reach the glory above." You likewise, if you want to advance amid the cruel thorns of your road sown with snakes, thorns, pitfalls, carrying your burden on your shoulders, to reach the goal — the immolation that is also the goal, in other words co-redemption —, you must constantly keep your eyes fixed on this "goal," on perfect charity for souls, which is accomplished through total self-sacrifice. There is no greater love than to give one’s life for one’s brothers and friends. I said it, and I did it. (Text also found in the Notebooks of April 7, 1946).        
• Palm Sunday : The forces of evil curse the innocent and accuse them of crimes to crush them even in spirit and "to distance them from salvation." Oh! My soul, even if you were accused of sin, O expiatory and redemptive victim for men’s sins, victim who offers herself to continue the Redeemer Jesus’ work, loaded with accusations of sins as Christ was in those terrible hours, then think it is an outer burden, an external garment [...] These garments whitened by the pain of pains, by the Victim of victims and by the great tribulation of the true faithful, the "victims," those martyred to be co-redeemers, these garments are adorned with these precious stones which are your sufferings and unjust accusations.    
• Second Sunday after Easter: "Do this in memory of me." By these words, the eucharistic rite is established. But not only that.
  These words also contain counsel to the elect among his redeemed. This counsel is: "To be worthy of the election to which I have forechosen you, you, my true servants among all my servants, do, in memory of me who teach you by these words what is and how to become masters and redeemers, do the breaking of yourself, without reluctance, pride, fear, or human considerations. Break yourself, shatter yourself, annihilate yourself, destroy yourself, give yourself, deliver yourself to men, for men, and out of love for me who gave myself to those who wanted to break me as I gave myself to those who wanted miracle and instruction."
  He who does not know how to break and give himself cannot be a true disciple. The generosity, the immolation of one who knows how to break oneself to satisfy the hunger of his brothers is the sign that identifies the true servants of God [...] Blessed apostle Peter confirms my words in his epistle: "Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you would follow in his steps." The sheep of the true fold would no longer be so if they abandoned their shepherd and followed traces that are not his, toward meadows not belonging to the flock’s master. His traces are not those of material joy, but those of suffering, fruitful for those who endure it and for others, because suffering with Christ and in Christ means continuing Christ’s redemption.       
• Corpus Christi : Mary immolated herself, was reduced to dust between the millstones of obedience and suffering, she, the Untouched one whom neither marriage nor childbirth nor death succeeded in weighing down, violating, or corrupting as happens to every mortal. Only love. Love alone delivered her to the millstone by which the Co-redeemer, from a grain she was, became a wheat flower.
• Seventh Sunday after Pentecost: Therefore love suffering and mortification as means firstly to atone, then means of sanctification, praising the Lord who grants you to offer a continual sacrifice holier than material offerings of silver or gifts like rams and calves of the old Law. Offer the sacrifice of your will, your passions, your entire human "self" to God’s fatherly providence, so that He may lead you, even to death on the cross like his Son, to become, better than your own co-redeemers, the co-redeemers of your brothers. Yes, Maria. Offer your sacrifice for your brothers and associates.          
• Ninth Sunday after Pentecost: Currently, in the Law of Love, offenses are still washed away by sacrifices. Not by killing the guilty, but by offering oneself as a victim for faults like the Redeemer. Then it is no longer simply about the hands nor only the priestly blessing, but the whole being is consecrated to receive the blessing which opens God’s Kingdom to the saints, to those who immolate themselves to save sinners and repair offenses done to God.
• Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost: Console your Mother. The apostle too was torn, yet he consoled the torn Mother. John had his own sorrow. But she, she suffered from all her present and future co-redeemer pains. And you know them...
• Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost : But how beautiful, how it must fill you with grateful joy to think that, to serve and help him in redemption and apostolate, God uses men and not angels and that, to transform men into gods, his sons, he uses his power which is all love!        
• Immaculate Conception and 2nd Sunday of Advent : Mary obtained all this for you because she knew how to carry the garments of the beloved of the Eternal with the true joy of the humble, because she knew how to sing the praises of God and of him alone, even amid the sobs and desolations of the passion.
  She exulted! What a profound word! Her spirit always exulted magnifying the Lord, even when her humanity suffered the mockery of a whole people, even submerged and oppressed by her pain and that of her creature. She exulted thinking that her pain, and Jesus’ pain, glorified God by saving men.
  Beyond the Mother’s groans, beyond her womanly lamentations, her co-redeemer spirit sang. It sang with submission in that dreadful hour, full of hope in Wisdom’s words. Her spirit sang love that blessed God for having pierced her! […] They say that Ave is the reversal of Eva (Eve). But Ave is still an echo recalling Yahweh, the most holy name of God, just as, even more vividly, the Word’s name recalls it: Jehoshua.
  In the sacred tetragram formed by the children of God’s people to pronounce, in the spirit’s secret temple, the name not to be said, there is already Ave, the word’s beginning by which God made the Most Beautiful the holy Mother and Co-redeemer. Ave: it is almost as if — what actually happened — the Lord, announcing himself by his name, entered her womb to become flesh, in the unique womb that could contain the Unique.

Lessons on the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans

• Lesson No. 6 : I address the host-souls. God needs pure hosts, holy hosts, hosts made immaculate by their charity that purifies them from human weaknesses. He needs hosts. Hosts of love, in reparation for all offenses against Love. Hosts of expiation, in reparation for the world’s sins. Hosts of purification. The stench of sins that infects the world is so vast and powerful that it reaches the Heavens. Purify the immense cathedral of the Universe so that God may still look upon it with that saving compassion.
  And be happy to be called, to be desired by God in this host function. For maintaining human life, the sacrifices of victim souls are more necessary than the elements themselves. It is Love that tells you: "Those who accept to be holocaust victims are the legions of archangels who repel demonic legions. They uphold the world by appeasing God’s wrath. Those who accept to be hosts are imitators of Christ, and among the most authentic. Those who sacrifice themselves engender children to the Lord their God".
• Lesson No. 14: Mary is the Co-redeemer who tirelessly cooperates in God’s final triumph. She is that inexhaustible charity that works tirelessly for God’s glory and in servant’s garb despite her queenship glory. She is the Mother, the perfect Mother of all who ask her for Life.
• Lesson No. 17 : "I will set my rainbow among the clouds and remember my covenant." Oh! Truly the Rainbow of Peace, the Co-redeemer, is among the clouds, above the clouds, a gentle star shining in God’s presence to remind Him He promised mercy to men and gave His Son so men may obtain forgiveness. She is there not as a mere sweet thought, but as a true, complete reality, with her immaculate soul and incorrupt flesh. She is not content to be happy and adoring there. She shows herself active. She calls and attracts humanity to Salvation. Mary’s hour. This very hour.        
• Lesson No. 19 : In him and through him. How many are those who by generous obedience or heroic request became "hosts," "redeemers," "capable of continuing and completing Christ’s Passion"!
  But even if we ignore these singular heroes of the highest charity, you all, Christians, are "living hosts," and you are bound "to offer your members as instruments of righteousness." To offer them purified from all fault, for now you "are no longer under the law but under grace." Freed as you are from the slavery of sin, supported as you are by Grace, you must no longer know death of the spirit, and you will not know it if voluntarily you do not become again servants of fault.

In fundamental Christian texts

In the Bible

• Jesus said to them: "The cup that I am going to drink you will drink, and the baptism which I am baptized with you will be baptized." Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother: "He is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that will be opposed — and you yourself a sword will pierce so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed." I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, I complete in my flesh on behalf of his body, which is the Church.

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church

• Men can deliberately enter into God’s plan by their actions, prayers, but also by their sufferings. They then become fully "co-operators with God."
• Our participation in Christ’s sacrifice: "He indeed wants to associate to his redeeming sacrifice those who are its primary beneficiaries. This is accomplished supremely for his Mother, more intimately associated than anyone else to the mystery of his redeeming suffering."

In other sources

John Paul II – Audience of April 9, 1997

She collaborated to obtain the grace of salvation for all humanity:

"Applied to Mary, the term "cooperator" takes on a particular meaning. The collaboration of Christians in salvation takes place after the Calvary event, in which they commit to spreading its fruits through prayer and sacrifice. Conversely, Mary’s contribution took place during the event itself and as mother; it therefore extends to the entirety of Christ’s salvific work. She alone was associated in this way with the redeeming offering that brought salvation to all men. United with Christ and subject to Him, She collaborated to obtain the grace of salvation for all humanity."

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet - The compassion of the Holy Virgin

"Do not believe, my brothers, that the holy Mother of our Savior was called to the foot of his cross only to witness the torment of her only Son, and to have her heart torn by this horrible sight. There are higher designs of divine Providence on this afflicted mother. And we must understand today that she is led to her Son, in this state of abandonment, because it is the will of the eternal Father that she be not only immolated with this innocent victim, and nailed to the Savior’s cross by the same nails that pierce him, but also associated with all the mystery that is accomplished by his death."

Lumen Gentium - Chapter 8 § 61

"The Blessed Virgin, predestined from all eternity, within the plan of the Incarnation of the Word, to be the Mother of God, was on earth, by virtue of a disposition of divine Providence, the worthy Mother of the divine Redeemer, generously associated to his work in a completely unique way, humble servant of the Lord. In conceiving Christ, in giving birth to him, in nursing him, in presenting him in the Temple to his Father, in suffering with her Son who died on the cross, she brought an unparalleled cooperation to the Savior’s work by her obedience, faith, hope, and ardent charity, so that supernatural life would be restored to souls. Therefore, she became for us, in the order of grace, our Mother."

Jesus to Ottavio Michelini - Jesus' confidences to his priests and faithful - November 30, 1976: Victim souls

My son, write:

Who are the victim souls? What is the purpose of victim souls? Why are victim souls known to very few other souls? Why do victim souls often incur aversion, misunderstanding or persecution by those who, logically, should understand and support them in all ways? Who are they? Victim souls are souls specially chosen by Heaven, by the Divine Trinity, whose daughters and spouses they become; they are the souls most loved by the Father, most intimately united with the Son and the Holy Spirit.

They are souls who generously, often heroically, give their human life to God, subordinating their entire life to the divine will, wanting only what God wills for them, desiring only God, true, unique, greatest good, Alpha and Omega of all and everyone, offering and immolating themselves, out of love for God, Supreme Good, reason and end of life, to repair their own offenses and those of others. What do they do? They climb with Christ on the Cross.

Victim souls are privileged souls who ask not only to be able to follow Christ, in accordance with his word: “Whoever wants to come after Me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me”; they do not only content themselves with following Christ on the way

of Calvary, but they climb with Christ on the Cross. They are courageous, heroic, and generous souls; they are souls who deeply feel the social nature of the Church, especially the weakened Church, and who offer themselves for it. Victim souls are enlightened souls who understand that there cannot be love of God and love of our brothers without suffering; they are the most faithful and authentic interpreters and executors of the two commandments of Love. Victim souls are souls who, being above the dense darkness enveloping humanity, want to rise and, in fact, rise to the heights, above the polluted and corrupted atmosphere of this materialistic humanity and, although walking on earth, their souls and thoughts are on the heights, in Heaven, turned towards God, in God and with God.

Victim souls are the lightning rods of humanity; woe to men, woe to the Earth, if there were no victim souls! Divine Justice would have already followed its inexorable course, reducing everything and everyone to ashes. Why are they so little known? Because, my son, true good, true virtue, disdain publicity, worldly noise, worldly thoughts, worldly lifestyles; that is why they love to live withdrawn, hidden, in silence, always ready to catch the voice and lights from Above, to conform to the divine will that undoubtedly wants them in the world, but hidden from those who neither know nor can understand them, for these God-obsessed souls can only unfold their dialogue

with God in their humble reserve. They are still little known, my son, because men not understanding them would see them as foolish and senseless;

thus the world does not love them, often despises, mocks, and avoids them, but in reality fears and often opposes them, because their heroic self-denial itself means a severe condemnation and a just warning that warped consciences cannot tolerate.

Our insensati… credebamus

Men will one day have to rectify their thinking and judgments on victim souls which, deliberately, they ignored and despised. Men will one day see, as the rich man saw poor Lazarus he neglected, in Abraham’s bosom. Men one day will turn to victim souls exclaiming:

“Nos insensati, ergo erravimus a via veritatis. Nos credebamus…”

My son, I have told you before that my ways are different from your ways; whoever believes in Me will not get lost in the dark labyrinths of a world dominated by the Evil One, but whoever believes in Me will follow me on the paths I traced for all with my life on Earth. I bless you, my son, and love Me. Come, son, behind Me; come and follow Me and you will not regret it.