The Experience of Hattin

The Experience of Hattin

Cover page (2023)
Work Details
Author	Severino Caruso
Preface	François-Michel Debroise
Postface	Daniel Fiorletta
Pages	205
Full title	The Experience of Hattin - "The Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes"
Subtitle	Discoveries and spiritual narrative of Pilgrimages in the Holy Land following the steps of Christ according to the work of Maria Valtorta
Publication	November 2023
Publisher	Centro Editoriale Valtortiano
ISBN	978-88-7987-404-5
Distribution	Bookstore - online sales - Publisher's site

Severino Caruso organizes Pilgrimages in the Holy Land "following the steps of Christ according to the work of Maria Valtorta." Assisted by the directions of engineer and researcher Jean-François Lavère, he was able to identify, during a previous trip, the precise place where Jesus took a retreat with the twelve Apostles before calling them. This is the subject of his first work "The Arbel Valley and the Election of the Twelve Apostles".

In this new Pilgrimage Severino Caruso explores the Mount of Beatitudes while listening to the great Sermon on the Mount. The location is different from the one traditionally visited by pilgrims, which seems chosen for its convenient access and proximity to the lake. Maria Valtorta suggests another nearby: the Horns of Hattin. A natural amphitheater with astonishing acoustics.

Severino Caruso and the pilgrims will live an uplifting spiritual experience in this place where Jesus invites us to move from the Law of the Old Testament to the Grace of the New. The travel journal gradually blends into a profound meditation.

Table of contents

• Preface 5
• Foreword 6
• “Seeing the crowds, He went up the mountain”

The discovery of the Horns of Hattin. 9

At the Rock of Beatitudes. 10

Descending to the foot of the mountain. 12

Return to our hotel in Tabgha. 14

Choosing the authentic location of the Beatitudes. 16

Christ, source of living waters. 17

Sitting in the Kingdom. 18

Understanding the Trinitarian dimension. 21

We are happy and Blessed. 23

The Salt of the Earth: 26

The light of the world. 27

Blessed walking on the mountain (of the Beatitudes). 31

Configuring to His Majesty, the notion of Transfiguration through prayer. 31

But why? 32

Before meditating on the Word, invoke the Holy Spirit. 33

Breathe with and in the Holy Spirit. 33

The fulfillment of the law and the prophets 34

The priestly transfer (The dimension of "Priest, Prophet and King") 36

The Lord's Prayer in the Work and in the Gospels 41

• Blessed conclusion 43
• Postface 46
• Acknowledgments 47
• Excerpt from the "Geographical Dictionary of the Gospel, according to Maria Valtorta" by Jean-François Lavère. 48
• Gospel Extract Saint Matthew from The Jerusalem Bible. 50
• VISIONS OF Maria Valtorta 55

Chapter 169: First Sermon on the Mount: the Mission of the Apostles and Disciples. 55

Chapter 170: Second Sermon on the Mount: the gift of Grace and the Beatitudes. 62

Chapter 171: Third Sermon on the Mount: evangelical counsels that perfect the Law. 70

Chapter 172: Fourth Sermon on the Mount: oath, prayer, fasting. The old Ishmael

Foreword

"I have the deep conviction that a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a high-level spiritual school.

The pilgrim sets out adventurously, as a believer, towards a sacred place that concerns his origin and identity. His main baggage is his Heart, a land of conquest, a battlefield, containing a maturing faith that must be nurtured and protected from the perverse attacks of the Evil One. Yes, our Heart is a land of conquest, conquered either by God, "the Light", or by the other, the one below, "the Darkness", who wants our downfall. In Christ and through Him, we are called to a new life, participative of the divine life. This new life given out of love confers on us the status of children of God, heirs of the kingdom, having authority over all forms of injustice.

Christ obtained this for us on Golgotha, then in the garden tomb in Zion, where through Him, we are all born anew, because He is risen.

The Beatitudes, which He delivers to us at the beginning of His public life, are a hymn to love, a charter of mercy, a rule of Christian life to uphold, allowing the believer who imbues his life with this content to progress in a spirit of resurrection rather than in an empty tomb spirit.

When by faith and Baptism, we receive Jesus as Savior and Lord and pledge allegiance to Him by making a Covenant with Him, we become a new creature, because we receive in exchange a new nature, the very nature of God. In Jesus Christ, we indeed become participants in the nature of God, since He is God Himself and saves us by His redeeming sacrifice. The Gospel will enable the child of God we have newly been restored as, to exercise love, justice, and righteousness, while proclaiming Jesus as Lord and Savior. When man, marred by sin, is newly restored in Christ, he cannot do without the Gospel, the word of life and truth. Because he lives in the world but is also heir of the Kingdom of God, he will constantly need to readjust to the word of the Gospel, for his Heart, no matter how converted, remains a land to be conquered by the Enemy. Therefore, the Christian life is a battle that requires extreme vigilance. We must constantly readjust and renew ourselves with the Lord and His Church. The Gospel is like a compass on the path that is Jesus Christ.

Maria Valtorta inaugurates with her mystical work "The Gospel as Revealed to Me" a new era where it will be possible for the average Christian or seeker of deeper understanding, to go further and more profoundly into what the Lord reveals and wants us to know about Him and His work of Redemption. This miraculous illustration of the Gospels, a vision of the life of Jesus Christ in the Holy Land (Palestine), is a gift for the believer. It is an inspired work, not revealed. It is a private revelation, not equivalent to public and canonical Revelation.

The Lord Himself makes this clear to Maria Valtorta:

"The work delivered to men through little John (nickname given by Jesus to Maria Valtorta) is not a canonical book. Nevertheless, it is an inspired book that I grant you to help you understand certain passages of the canonical books, and in particular what My time as Master was, so that you may know Me, who am the Word, by My words.

I do not claim that the Work is a canonical book, nor even my spokesperson, whose absolute ignorance in this field even prevents him from distinguishing dogmatic, mystical or ascetic theologies; if he is ignorant of the subtleties of definitions and the conclusions of councils, he knows how to love and obey — and that suffices me, I expect nothing else of him —. Nevertheless, I declare to you, truly, that it is an inspired book, because the instrument is incapable of writing pages he does not even understand unless I explain them to him myself to remove all fear."

Dictation of January 28, 1947, excerpt from the "Notebooks 1945-1950", page 317. (Source Valtorta.org)

As a Christian and reader of Maria Valtorta, I allowed my faith, my whole being and immediate environment to be immersed in this monumental work. Over time I do not remember everything I read in the entire work, which is why returning to such or such passage helps me greatly and always nourishes my spiritual life more. The simple fact of being immersed, by this reading, in the time of the Lord (Anno Domini), near Him, confers on the believer that I am, Grace upon Grace, fullness and familiarity. This work accustoms us to the divine Master and His environment. Sometimes certain passages of the work, such as the Sermon on the Mount, which will be the subject of this book, really gave me the impression of being there, to the point that I could perceive the gentle breeze of the ambient air, the very particular light of the Sea of Galilee region, and the scents of the Galilean countryside. This also gave me the sensation of the scents of my childhood.

In today's world, it is difficult to capture smells. One feels that in nature everything has become neutral, and that the fragrances of the earth no longer reach us as before. Perhaps it is due to our excessive lifestyle, our abuses, our disrespect for life, that our olfactory faculties are noticeably diminished today.

The experience I offer you through reading this volume 2, is therefore an invitation to take a path both spiritual and physical. Indeed, after having gone many times to the Holy Land, following more and more precisely the Lord Jesus Christ through the descriptions contained in the work of Maria Valtorta, in agreement with the scientific and topographic research of Jean-François Lavère, The Experience of Hattin aims to be both a living and spiritual testimony of Pilgrimage, but even more, an invitation to say Yes without hesitation, not to submit you, but rather to help you, on the path of truth, to be Disciples of a "Yes!", conforming to the divine Master who, on the mountain, will make us move from the yoke of the law of the Old Testament, to the Grace of the New.

The Yes of the Gospel is not the Yes of the world, but it is the Yes of Jesus Christ, that Yes which is frank, direct, fully assumed and lived. The Yes that confers light and restores order in this upside-down world in which we live and which refuses the truth.

The world is upside down because the Heart of man is sick and filled with refusal. That is why our approach of Pilgrimage to the places described in the work, is as Christ said to His Apostles, a necessity of comfort. A necessity on the spiritual level, and even more, on the whole dimension of our being.

Every place in this world is a place to be oneself. But the holy places where we go, faithfully described in the work of Maria Valtorta, are imbued with the Presence and special anointing of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is on that land that He once joined our humanity as the Word of God incarnate, to enrich us with His Presence and Grace. It is the land where He walked and proclaimed the words of eternal life, healing and blessing all good-willed sinners. It is the land where He shed His blood, blood of the new and eternal Covenant for the remission of sins. Finally, it is the land where, victorious from the cross, He rose from the dead calling us to eternal life. A believer's Soul cannot remain indifferent to all these aspects, it perceives this and becomes increasingly sensitive to this reality. That is why Pilgrimages to these places are a special Grace.

Immersions in the text corresponding to these places transform anyone desirous of a deeper conversion in Christ. This is what this book will be made of: a living and spiritual testimony lived on the very sites described in the work, as found and which we are the first pilgrims to tread in correspondence to Maria Valtorta's descriptions.

The Horns of Hattin, mountain where the Lord's Sermon and Beatitudes so recounted both in the Gospel of Matthew and Luke truly took place, is a unique place where we will once again be as close as possible to the truth. In addition to having lived a striking spiritual experience, we confirmed, by going up this mountain, that the description made by Maria Valtorta is in accordance with the geographical and topographical studies made by Jean-François Lavère. He has shown in several of his books, with meticulousness and precision, that everything that can be checked in the work of Maria Valtorta is perfectly accurate. What we pilgrims who saw with our own eyes were thus able to verify.

As in the previous work, those who are not yet readers of the work of Maria Valtorta will find, at the end of this book, in the appendix section, an excerpt from her work "The Gospel as Revealed to Me". This excerpt concerns the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes, an episode that took place a few kilometers as the crow flies from the Sea of Galilee, on a sacred mountain called the Horns of Hattin.

I am not a scientist, nor an exegete, nor an archaeologist, but simply a pilgrim. A Christian and passionate man who does not have all the answers, but certainly knows, like many others and without presumption, the One who has all the answers: Jesus Christ.

May this book modestly contribute to promoting the eternal Gospel of Jesus Christ, miraculously illustrated as a gift of God offered to humanity, through the work of Maria Valtorta "The Gospel as Revealed to Me".

Severino Caruso."

The first pages

The discovery of the Horns of Hattin

"We know today that the current Mount of Beatitudes in Israel, located between Capernaum and Tabgha, was ideally chosen, since the 1920s, by local tradition for religious tourism, as it is very close to the lake and easily accessible to pilgrims. In her inspired work, Maria Valtorta describes to us the exact place of the Mount of Beatitudes. She does not specify the name of this place, but Jean François Lavère, a renowned engineer and specialist of Maria Valtorta, locates it as usual through meticulous and chronological research of the descriptions in the work. It is the Horns of Hattin, not far from the plain of Gennesaret Lake or Sea of Galilee, in Galilee."

"In January 2019, I went there for the very first time to realize this with my first group of pilgrims ("Valtorta 1 following the steps of Christ according to the visions of Maria Valtorta). For lack of time, we had not climbed it and had discussed passages of the Sermon on the Mount at its base. Nevertheless, with us was a filming crew and photographers who did go to this place described by Maria Valtorta as a natural amphitheater in the middle of a plain, on the heights, which suggests that a single person positioned at the end of the valley can calmly speak to a multitude of people and be heard and understood without speaking too loudly.

When leaving this place with the pilgrims, and after collecting testimonies from the filming team, I already knew that in a few months I would have another opportunity to climb this mountain and spend some time there with the pilgrims of the 2nd Pilgrimage following the steps of Christ with Maria Valtorta. At the moment I write these words, we are the only ones to have visited these completely exclusive places linked to the words of life pronounced by Jesus Himself.

A few months later, for this second Pilgrimage, we all climbed this mountain which is both a mountain as described by the evangelist Matthew and a plain as described by the evangelist Luke in their respective accounts. We did like the people who followed the Master in His time to be healed or to listen to His teaching. We sat on scattered stones in the valley between the two ridges described by Maria Valtorta and which are still visible, although slightly altered by agricultural exploitation and a stone quarry.

Everyone could see that there was a kind of natural amphitheater predisposing the place to an uncommon acoustic, which is not the case on the traditional Mount of Beatitudes that all pilgrims in the world visit not far from Tabgha, very close to the lake."

At the Rock of Beatitudes

Horns of Hattin: location of the Rock of Beatitudes. Map base: Google maps

At one point, I asked the pilgrims to look for a large rock because I knew that in the excerpt of the work of Maria Valtorta – which I had in hand at that time –, it is said that Christ climbs a little higher in the meadow that stretches at the bottom of the valley and leans against the wall of a rock to begin speaking to the crowd.

Almost immediately, a pilgrim alerted me. I saw with my own eyes that there really was a large rock as described in the work that still dominates the valley to this day. It was astonishing to see. We took a moment of silence then I leaned on the rock as the Lord did. I then invited the pilgrims to sit down, and we immersed ourselves in an excerpt of the work corresponding to the Sermon on the Mount, in this very place where the Lord taught and healed. It was a very beautiful and very peaceful place, conducive to meditation and prayer. After immersion in the work of Maria Valtorta, we took a long moment of silence. This time of meditation was moving for each person present.

I observed the faces, I saw Father Samuel, who accompanied the Pilgrimage, in a state of real beatitude. Others like Henri, a 75-year-old pilgrim, raised their hands to the sky and prayed, in deep joy. Henri had this attitude always and everywhere, even during the Masses we celebrated on the Holy Land sites. I wondered and went to see him to ask if he was charismatic to pray in this way. He answered very firmly no. For him, this attitude made him feel a certain contact with the divine. Thus, his whole being was in prayer.

This man exactly reproduced the attitude described in a Psalm I was used to praying: "Yes, I will bless you in my life, at your name I will lift up my hands". I was fascinated by this spontaneity, this prayer attitude, which I myself would reproduce later, in prayer meetings and more commonly at Eucharistic ADoration that I have been responsible to lead in the parish for several years, every Thursday evening. To pray the Lord, to sing praises, raising hands with all one's Heart and body, satisfies the Soul, as this same Psalm 63, which I just quoted, tells us in the next verse: "So my Soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips."

At each assembly, sometimes even during Mass, I adopt this attitude, risking to surprise, I raise my hands to the sky, remembering Henri’s jubilation on the Horns of Hattin. It changes everything: Try it and you will see. It is a direct and striking point of contact with the divine.

There was on this mountain, at that precise moment, a kind of Transfiguration atmosphere. A very bright light reigned there, but which however did not dazzle our eyes amazed by the beauty of the landscape. Many of us wept with joy.

I looked afar, and saw opposite, about 4 or 5 km as the birds fly, the Arbel Valley we had left a few hours earlier. There too, reading the passage corresponding to the place, in the work of Maria Valtorta, touches the pilgrim’s Soul and prepares the Christians that we are to be nourished more by the bread of the Word, that is to say by The Gospel. I related this in my first work.

While everyone is still recollected, I head towards the rock face on which, in the passage of the work, the Lord leans to dispense His teaching to the crowd. Ordinarily, I am not in a fetishistic approach, but there I feel very deeply inside me that I must lay my hands on this blessed rock. I then immerse myself in deep prayer. Time stops for a moment, and I feel at that moment a very strong intimacy with the Lord. I close my eyes and inwardly see a dove flying over the group. My Heart is joyful. At the same time, I hear a pilgrim, very close to me, crying, visibly very moved by this singular moment we all share.

In the secret of my prayer, I ask the Lord to renew in me all that He placed there for the glory of His name and for the relief of suffering. This was especially dear to my Heart, because I have accompanied many sick people for years in my work, and sometimes I pray the rosary for their intentions.

One day, in 2014, I felt called to pray for one of them in a very particular way. This patient, also a friend, suffered from severe unexplained and suddenly appearing kidney problems during his vacation. After seeing him suffer for weeks, I had the audacity, by the Grace of God, to propose to pray for his healing. I had felt in my Heart that the Lord would answer our prayer under the condition that he put a little faith, as small as a mustard seed, as the Lord says in the Gospel.

A few days later, my friend found himself in the hospital. His whole body began to peel, as if he had a sunburn all over. Although in pain, he found great relief, a new and perfectly normal kidney, just 4 days after we prayed for his healing. It was astonishing and he and his wife could not Believe it. That is why since then, I always keep in Heart to pray for the sick, to assist them, to listen to them. Sometimes I pray for them in the name of the Lord, at their request or on my own initiative if I feel so in my Heart, in view of expecting a possible healing. I only do this very rarely and in circumstances that do not belong to me, because it is the Lord who decides, when, how and with whom. Everything happens at the level of the Heart; it was there that He spoke to me one day, and He continues to speak to me. I hear a voice, which however is not audible. It is like that, I do not explain it. I have learned to know when it comes from Him, or when it is the mind that wants to fail me.

Thus, praying on the rock, I asked Him to renew my Heart on this matter, I asked Him to give me a tiny part of His anointing, so that I may always be more, for the glory of His name and for the coming of His Kingdom, an instrument of Peace and relief for my Neighbor. I testify this to you with all humility. I do not claim to be a thaumaturge, simply a man who prays. All of us, as Christians, have the duty of relieving suffering. At least that is my spirituality, directly linked to that of St Padre Pio, also a reader of Maria Valtorta, for whom I have deep devotion.

I surrender myself for a moment to this prayer on the rock. Then the silent time ends.

Before leaving, I extract from this rock two pieces of stone and under it a small other one. To me, these are Relics, I have the deep conviction."

Descending to the foot of the mountain

We prepare to descend, and it is at that moment that a shiver ran through my body, as if I had an electric shock. I was a bit afraid at first of having a heart attack, but everything was fine. After a little while, as we slowly descended the valley of this small mountain with the pilgrims, I understood that I had just lived what I would call the Experience of Hattin. Indeed, the Heart rejoicing, the mind sharp, the Heart on Fire, as I went down, the Lord continued to teach me. I understood why he went to this place 2000 years ago, drawing a multitude of people behind Him. I especially understood why people came to find Him precisely in this place. The Sermon on the Mount of the Gospel and its deep reflection in the work of Maria Valtorta The Gospel as Revealed to Me is a hymn to life, a challenge to be met by believers only on the condition of being one with the Lord Jesus Christ by faith and prayer.

First part of the Bible from the book of Genesis until before the coming of Jesus Christ. Parallel

Person who analyzes the historical, cultural, and literary context of Biblical texts to better understand what they meant at the time they were written and how they can be interpreted today.

Holy person who performs miracles of healing or resurrection (Example: Jesus the Divine Thaumaturge).