Gamaliel and the Expected Sign

In the month of Nissan 3769 (9 AD) Jesus reached the Age of His legal majority (12 years). A few days before Passover, taking advantage of the mandatory Pilgrimage and in accordance with legal prescriptions, Joseph presented his son to the doctors of the law for his majority examination.

A few days later, escaping the supervision of his parents, Jesus finds himself before the doctors of Israel. Maria Valtorta recounts the scene mentioned in Luc 2:41-47 Luke 2:41-47 by detailing the context, the participants, and the dialogues

Among the "doctors" there is a group led by a certain Gamaliel with another, old and almost Confessiongle, whom Gamaliel supports during the discussion. That one, I hear called Hillel (I put the H because I see there is an Aspiration at the beginning of the name), he seems to be the master or relative of Gamaliel because the latter treats him with both confidence and respect. Gamaliel’s group has broader views, while another group, and it is the most numerous, is led by a certain Chammaï (Shammaï) and is characterized by a hateful and backward intransigence that the Gospel so well highlights.

Christ among the Doctors, Vasily Polenov, 1896

The prophecy of the sign

The young Jesus intervenes by opposing Shammaï and siding with Gamaliel and, supported by biblical quotations, demonstrates why the announced Messiah has already been born, which Shammaï disputes. He concludes his debate with a prophecy that will strike Gamaliel and whose fulfillment he will await as Confirmation that Jesus is the Messiah:

"Wait for Me at My hour. These stones will hear My voice anew and will tremble at My last word. Blessed are those who, at this voice, have listened to God and believe in Him through Me. To them Christ will give His Kingdom, which your Saltfishness dreams will be all human while it is heavenly.".

Evolution of Gamaliel's state of mind

This journey of a righteous man shows, in its own way, the teaching of Jesus Salton according to which "No one puts a piece of new cloth on an old garment, because the patch added pulls on the garment, and the tear gets larger. Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wineskins burst, the wine spills, and the wineskins are lost. But new wine is put into new wineskins, and both are preserved."

• EMV 85.4: Gamaliel: "We already have John the Baptist and, Salton the teaching of the scribes, it takes at least a hundred years between him and the Messiah to prepare the people for the coming of the King. I say it takes less," he added, "because the times are now fulfilled." And he finally said: "However, I cannot admit that the Messiah manifests in this way. One day, I believed the manifestation of the Messiah had begun because His first gleam was truly a heavenly flash[2]. But after... a great silence fell and I think I was mistaken."

• EMV 114.8/9: Jesus: ""What words did you hear? Who uttered them?" - Gamaliel: "It was someone coming out of childhood... but God shone on his innocent and charming face... I have been thinking about it for nineteen years and I keep that memory... and I seek to hear again that voice... which spoke words of wisdom... What part of the world understands it? I think: ...it was God. Under the appearance of a child so as not to frighten man. Like a flash that crosses the sky appearing swift to the east and west, north and south; He, the Divine, under his semblance of merciful goodness, with the voice and face of a child and a divine thought, travels the earth to say to men: "It is Me". Such is my thought... When will He return to Israel? ...When? And I think: when Israel will be an altar for His divine foot; and my Heart groans seeing the abjection of Israel: never. Oh! harsh answer! And it is true! Can Holiness descend in the person of its Messiah as long as abomination is in us?"      
• EMV 160.4: Jesus: – "Someone you believe in told you: “The stones will tremble at my last words” Why then wait for the last words of the Messiah? Won’t you feel remorse for not having wanted to follow me sooner? The last…! Sad words of a friend who dies and whom we have come to listen to too late. Yet mine are more important than those of a friend." - Gamaliel: "You are right. But I cannot. I wait for this sign to Believe."
• EMV 354.4: "Then, for Gamaliel, is this the Christ? Is that what he says? If Rabbi Gamaliel affirms it, the matter is settled. He is the Christ!" - Hermas: "He does not say that. He still cannot Believe it, to his misfortune. But he assures that the Christ is on earth because he spoke to Him, years ago, as well as the wise Hillel. And he awaits the sign that Christ promised him to recognize Him."
• EMV 364.8: After the gift of the Our Father: Joseph of Arimathea: "Well, Gamaliel? Does this not yet seem a word from the Lord to you?" - Gamaliel: "Joseph, it was told to me: "These stones will tremble at the sound of my words." - Stephen with impetuosity: "Perform the miracle, Lord! Command, and they will move! Let the building collapse, but let the walls of Faith in You rise in Hearts, that would be a great gift! Do it for my master!" - A group of furious rabbis: "Blasphemer!" - Gamaliel: "No. 'My' disciple speaks by an inspired word. But we cannot accept it because the Angel of God has not yet purified us of the past."
• EMV 478.10: Simon of Alphaeus: "Stephen said that the rabbi (Gamaliel), having learned what happened at Chuza (attempt to crown Jesus as king), exclaimed: "My spirit shudders wondering if He can really be what He says. But every question would be dead before forming in my mind, and forever, if He had consented to this thing. The Child, whom I heard, said that slavery as well as royalty will not be what we think, misunderstanding the prophets, that is, material, but of The Spirit, Through Christ, Redeemer of Sin and Founder of the Kingdom of God in spirits. I remember these words, and it is on them that I judge the Rabbi. If, in judging Him, I found Him below this height, I would reject Him as a sinner and a liar. And I trembled to see fade into nothingness the hope this Child gave me" - Joseph of Alphaeus: "Yes, but meanwhile, he does not call Him the Messiah."
• EMV 487.10/11: Dialogue between Gamaliel and Jesus: "Are the stones that must tremble perhaps those of our Hearts?" - "No, rabbi. These ones (and with a circular gesture, he indicates the walls of the Temple). Why do you ask?" - "Because my Heart trembled when I was told your words at the Banquet and your answers to the tempters. I thought that trembling was the sign..." -  "No, rabbi. It is too little for your Heart's trembling and that of a few others to be the sign that leaves no Doubts...
• EMV 548.14/15: Brief reply to the resurrection of Lazarus: "Be ready, oh rabbi. The sign will come soon. I never lie."
• EMV 549.9: (passage where, in the last paragraph, Gamaliel describes his own state of Soul). Dialogue of Gamaliel with the Sanhedrin: "But then for you He is the Messiah?! Say it!" - "He is not the Messiah." - "He is not? But then, what is He to you? A demon, no. An angel, no. The Messiah, no..." - "He is The One who Is." - "You are delirious! He is God? He is God to you, this madman?" - "He is The One who Is. God knows what He is. We see His works, God also sees His thoughts. But He is not the Messiah because, for us, Messiah means King. He is not, will not be king. But He is holy, and His works are those of a saint. And we cannot lay a hand on the Innocent without committing a sin. I will not subscribe to sin." "But with these words you have almost Called Him the Expected One!" - "That is what I said. As long as the light of the Most High lasted, I saw Him as such. Then... when the hand of the Lord abandoned me, raised in His light, I became again a man, the man of Israel, and the words were only words to which the man of Israel, me, you, those before us and, may God forbid, those after us, give the meaning of 'their,' of 'our' thought, not the meaning they have in the eternal Thought that dictated them to His servant."
• EMV 560.5: Truly speak the truth: apart from the joy of your Heart for the resurrection of the friend, would you not have preferred that [...I] bring down with my voice the stones and the walls on my Enemies, like the trumpets of Joshua did for the walls of Jericho [...] Yes, you would have preferred that because, Good as you love me much, your love is still impure and nourishes for that, desiring what is not holy, your Israelite thought, 'your old thought,' the one that is in Gamaliel as in the last of Israel."
• EMV 570.5: "Are you not Eleazar ben Parta? Yes? Then it is certain that you will see Gamaliel before Me. Tell him, in my name, that to him also I will give, after twenty-one years, the answer he awaits. Do you understand? Remember well: to him also, I will give after twenty-one years, the answer he awaits. Amen."  

• EMV 592.20: "The time has come when all these signs will be given. Those said by the prophets and marked with the symbols of our history, and those I have said: the sign of Jonah; do you remember that day in Cedes? It is the sign that Gamaliel awaits."

• EMV 602.5.7: On the evening of Holy Thursday: "Gamaliel, tonight is at Bethphage. I know it. When we arrive at Gethsemane you will go find Gamaliel and you (Simon the Zealot (Apostle)) will tell him: 'Soon you will have the sign you have awaited for twenty-one years.' Nothing else. And then you will return with your companions."
• EMV 604.10: Brief dialogue during the arrest of Jesus: "Who are you? Tell me." And Jesus, softly: "Read the prophets and you will have the answer. The first sign is with them. The other will come."
• EMV 609.28/30 (where he makes a very beautiful prayer at the foot of the Cross): Gamaliel: "Terrible thing! I was in the Temple! The sign! The Temple wide open! The purple and hyacinth curtain hanging torn! The Holy of Holies is uncovered! Anathema on us!" - Gamaliel: "The sign! The sign! Tell me you forgive me! A groan, even a single groan, to tell me you hear and forgive me." - Gamaliel: "It was You! It was You! We can no longer be forgiven. We asked Your Blood on us. And it cries to Heaven, and Heaven curses us... Oh! But You were Mercy! ...I tell you, I, the shattered rabbi of Judea: 'Your Blood on us, please.' Sprinkle us with it! For only it can obtain forgiveness for us..." - Gamaliel: "I have the sign asked for... But centuries and centuries of spiritual blindness remain on my inner sight, and against my will now rises the voice of my prideful thought of yesterday... Mercy on me! Light of the world, in the Darkness that did not understand You, send down one of Your rays! I am the old Jew faithful to what he believed was justice and was error. Now I am a burnt wasteland, no longer any of the old trees of the ancient Faith, no seed nor stem of the new Faith. I am a dry desert. Work the miracle of making a flower rise that bears Your name in this poor Heart of a stubborn old Israelite. You, Liberator, penetrate my poor thought, prisoner of formulas. Isaiah says: '... he bore the sins of sinners and took upon Himself the sins of multitudes.' Oh! mine too, Jesus of Nazareth..."
• EMV 644.5: Lazarus evokes Gamaliel’s conversion struck by the sign: "Yes. The sign, the famous sign he awaited to Believe that Jesus was the Messiah, shook him. It cannot be denied that the sign was able to break even the hardest heads and Hearts to yield. And Gamaliel, by this very powerful sign, was shaken, shaken, knocked down more than the houses that collapsed on the day of Preparation while it seemed the world perished at the same time as the Great Victim. Remorse tore him more than the veil of the Temple was torn, the remorse for never having understood Jesus for what He really was. The closed tomb of his old stubborn Hebrew mind opened like the tombs that showed the bodies of the just, and he now seeks, in anguish, the truth, the light, forgiveness, life. The new life: that which one can have only through Jesus and in Jesus. Oh! He will still have to work very much to totally free his old 'self' from the thicket of his old way of thinking! But he will make it. He seeks Peace, forgiveness, knowledge. Peace for his remorse, and forgiveness for his obstinacy. And full knowledge of The One whom, when he could, he did not want to know completely. And he goes to Nicodemus to reach the goal he has now set himself."
• EMV 645.5.10: Gamaliel tells Saul (Paul), fierce adversary of Christ, of his encounter with the young Jesus: "I had the privilege of hearing the Most High speak through the mouth of a child who was then a just, wise, powerful, holy man, and who was justly put to death because of these qualities. The words he spoke then were confirmed by facts that happened several years later, at the time predicted by Daniel... Wretched am I for not understanding before! For having waited for the last terrible sign to Believe, to understand! Wretched people of Israel who did not understand then and do not understand, even now! The prophecy of Daniel and those of other prophets and the Word of God continue, and they will be fulfilled for stubborn, Confessiongle, deaf, Unjust Israel who continues to persecute the Messiah in His servants!"
• EMV 647.2/5: Gamaliel, grown old and Confessiongle, turns to the Virgin Mary to perfect his conversion: "Gamaliel, can you Believe that I, who am the Seat of Wisdom, the Full of Grace who, by the Wisdom that took Flesh in me, and being by the Grace He gave me, full of the knowledge of supernatural things, can give you good advice?" - "Oh! Yes, I believe it! It is precisely because I believe that you are that that I come to you for light. You, Daughter, Mother, Spouse of God, who certainly from your conception was filled with the lights of Wisdom, you can only show me the path I must take to have Peace, to find the truth, to conquer true Life. I am so aware of my errors, so crushed by my spiritual misery, that I need help to dare to go to God."