Maria Valtorta

Maria Valtorta

Maria Valtorta in 1943, colorized
Biography
Birth	March 14, 1897 Caserta, Campania, Italy
Death	October 12, 1961 (aged 64) Viareggio, Tuscany, Italy
Resting place	Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata, Florence
Nationality	Italian
Father	Giuseppe Valtorta
Mother	Iside Fioravanzi
Occupation	Mystic, writer
Her writings
Main work	The Gospel as Revealed to Me
Other works	Notebooks 1943, Notebooks 1944, Notebooks 1945-1950, Lessons on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, The Book of Azariah, The Little Notebooks, Autobiography

Maria Valtorta, born in Caserta on March 14, 1897, and died on October 12, 1961, in Viareggio, was an Italian Catholic mystic. She is the author of The Gospel as Revealed to Me, which recounts the life of Jesus, as well as other works presenting, in the form of dictations, teachings of Jesus, of the Virgin Mary, of the Holy Spirit, of her guardian angel, and of various saints.

She was the only daughter of Giuseppe Valtorta, a cavalry non-commissioned officer, for whom she had great and deep affection, and a French teacher, Iside Fioravanzi, a very authoritarian and ill-tempered woman who demanded exclusive attention from her daughter. She could not tolerate any suitor of her daughter and broke off Maria's engagements twice.

Maria Valtorta moved to various places in Italy, according to her father's regiment assignments. On March 17, 1920, while walking with her mother in Florence, she was attacked by "a small delinquent, the son of a Communist and our milliner. With an iron bar taken from a bed, he came up from behind and, while shouting, “Down with the rich and the military!” gave me a blow with all his might. After three months of immobilization, she went for two years to convalesce with her maternal family in Reggio Calabria.

In 1924, the family permanently settled in Viareggio, in Tuscany where Maria engaged in Catholic Action. In 1925, she offered herself to Merciful Love and on July 1, 1931, she offered herself to the Lord as a victim for the sins of men. Her health deteriorated progressively. From April 1, 1934, Easter Sunday, she remained bedridden permanently. She would stay there 27 years, during which she wrote all the mystical works for which she is known today.

Biography

Her mother, Iside Fioravanzi

Happy and austere childhood

A great deal of detailed information about Maria Valtorta’s life comes from her Autobiography. She was an only child. Her mother scarcely loved her: she suffered from a liver disease that made her ill-tempered and fulfilled her role as wife and mother with authoritarianism, out of duty and without affection.

Maria tenderly loved her father, a cavalry non-commissioned officer, but he was often absent and coped with his wife's authoritarian nature. Professional disappointments and health issues kept him away from his daughter's trials.

Her father, Giuseppe Valtorta

For Maria Valtorta, childhood, spent in the convent school where she was a boarder in Monza, north of Milan, was a happy period away from home. She received precious insights, though always in austere form.

At age 4, she was, together with other students, taken for the first time before a realistic statue of Jesus taken down from the cross. Many of her classmates were scared but young Maria Valtorta overflowed with affection and compassion for Jesus.

At age 8, she received Confirmation from the hands of Cardinal Andrea Ferrari, beatified by John Paul II in 1987. She felt the laying of his hands:

"truly infused into me the Spirit of love, tightening the bond of love between the Paraclete and me, whose presence, assistance, and sweetest comfort I constantly feel."

Maria Valtorta in 1907

At age 11, on the day of her solemn communion, she laid, in an act of piety, her crown of roses at the feet of the Immaculate Virgin and thereafter remained devoted to the Mother of Sorrows.  

Maria Valtorta in 1912

At age 15, she experienced her last spiritual retreat at the college before her mother withdrew her. The retreat took place in a particular fervor.

"He [Jesus] descended into me," she wrote, "The Father entered, giving the youthful soul the vision of his Majesty, his Power; the Son brought with Him all the treasures of his

Mercy and Wisdom; the Holy Spirit, his lights and his flames of Charity. [...]

I truly lived in the light in those days. A light illuminating everything for me: past, present, future; a light which explained all to me; a light inflaming me entirely; a light that made me understand, in the deepest sense of the word, what my life in God, in relation to God, willed by God ought to be so that I would conquer the Kingdom of God."

Jesus said to her:

"You shall be penitent love. [...] ["uncontaminated virgins"] will not be your guides, but the creatures who knew the sting of evil, who bit the dust in an hour of moral collapse, who yearned for the creature, losing sight of the Creator, and then managed to rise again and be reborn with a new soul formed of repentance and love, raising themselves so high in the life of the spirit that they regained a radiance not inferior to that of the pure through the grace of God and certainly more meritorious, for it was painful and laborious beyond every other mode of conquest."

She continues:

"I grasped—this was quite clear—that I was called by God to a life of pain, that weeping would be my companion and the cross, my standard, and that, renouncing my sweet dreams of martyrdom like that of the first Christians, from that moment on I should prepare myself for the obscure martyrdom of the heart—overlooked by all except God—continuous, exercised throughout life and in all the contingencies of life. [...] The world was to be my arena of combat. I did not know what the combat would be, but I knew it must take place in the world and not in the cloister."

On February 23, 1913, she definitively left the college at the request of her mother: she was about to turn 16. Looking back on this period, Maria Valtorta confides:

"I did not become His little Maria-host through a human word, though holy words have been addressed to me from the altar. It was Jesus who instructed me, calling me sweetly in the hours in which He wanted the spiritual hearing of his little Maria to be closely attuned to words of life which He would later illuminate with divine light in me. I remember.... I remember what a gentle tempest of love certain special lives of saints stirred up in me. [...] The first one I heard was The Story of a Soul. At that time St. Theresa of the Child Jesus, who had died only eleven years before, was simply Sister Theresa... [...] Her doctrine of confident abandon, of generous love, her little great way of holiness imposed themselves upon me at once."

The first trials

After leaving the college, the Valtorta family settled in Florence near Piazza San Gallo. Her mother preached religious indifference: for her, contrary to her daughter's desire, it was useless to confess or to receive communion too often. She blocked the mystical development of Maria Valtorta: on Sundays, she could only attend very early low Masses and heard almost no sermons or Lenten conferences. She did not make any retreats other than those experienced during school. She secretly attended church and remained devoted to the First Friday devotion of the month. Her health weakened.

At 17 years old, she fell in love with a neighbor, Roberto, a doctor of letters. Confident, she revealed her love to her mother, who forbade her to continue this exposed relationship, guarding Maria from all dangers the young Maria, frightened, could not even imagine. Her father consoled her in tears. Roberto died some time later in the war that had just broken out. Maria's suffering was unspeakable: she thought one could not suffer more. She was deeply shaken and struggled in "the deepest confusion." Her religious practice wavered. She was assailed by suicidal and sensual thoughts.

At 19 years old, she had a dream that deeply marked her: Satan, initially appearing seductive, tried to divert her from Jesus and take her soul. Jesus ultimately granted her forgiveness with this warning:

"Not to do evil is not enough. You must not wish to do it."

A few years later, upon discovering photographs of the Shroud of Turin, she recognized the face, stature, and hands of the interlocutor from when she was 19.

Maria Valtorta in 1918

At 20 years old, in 1917, she entered as a Samaritan nurse, a volunteer auxiliary caregiver, to care for war wounded. She blossomed in service to others, but narrowly escaped, as did her mother, the Spanish flu epidemic which caused tens of millions of deaths at that time.

At 22 years old, after the war, she met Mario who fell in love with her. Their love was secret for fear of her mother's reaction. This new suitor gradually brought her back to religious practice. When he came to ask for Maria's hand, her mother chased the fiancé away, who however continued to correspond in secret.

Then occurred the event that would change the course of her life: on March 17, 1920, three days after her 23rd birthday, an anarchist violently struck Maria on the loins with an iron bar shouting "Down with the rich and the military!" (Her father was a non-commissioned officer). The pain was atrocious and lasted several months: she thought her end was near and endured it with resignation.

The following summer, convalescing in Calabria with her family, she saw Mario, who tried to soften Maria's mother by letter. Maria Valtorta knew nothing of this exchange of letters: she only received a last love letter as a farewell from her fiancé.

"For as long as I live I shall bear this pain driven into my heart" she confessed years later, "it is such a pain that it withstands and subsists even amidst the joy of my devotion to God."

But this loss of a human love increased her love for God, contrary to the first sorrow.

Maria Valtorta in 1922

At 25 years old, she read for the first time the Gospel of Saint Luke. Until then, she knew the Gospels only through fragments read at Masses. She dreamed it: she followed Jesus in Galilee, listened to His teachings, received communion from His hand, etc.

The following year, she wrote her very first offering to God. The first graces obtained strengthened her vocation. On January 1, 1924, at 27, she renounced the world and took a vow of chastity.

On October 23 of the same year, the Valtorta family settled in Viareggio, a seaside resort in Tuscany. In December, she felt a strong need to have the four Gospels and The Story of a Soul by Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus. She bought them with her pocket money. Overcome with emotion, she joyfully renewed her daily act of offering to merciful love: since then, "sorrows have come raining down upon me", she writes.        

On May 21, 1929, at 32 years old, she had a happy stay with her family when she thought she was dying from a sudden attack of illness. Her mother called her at that moment: she laboriously obeyed. Later, she wrote about it:

"Sacrifice is no longer an effort, and pain is no longer a torment for the generous soul. [...]

The generous soul is, rather, concerned about one thing alone—the question of not suffering. In this is found the reversal of values. [...]

Hence the generous soul’s inability to suffer in the bitter way characterizing the ungenerous. Pain remains, for it is inevitable, but not as an enemy—as a friend helping us to keep rising higher and higher. Just the thought that this pain, abhorred by so many, makes us similar to Christ and continuators of his work gives us an unquenchable thirst for ever newer and more profound sufferings. [...]

I have lived this way for years, having found my peace in this life."

In her mystical calendar, Maria Valtorta noted beside this episode:

"The first touch of death and pain. Long live love!"

That same year, she pronounced the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

Commitment

It was then that she engaged in the female Catholic Action. She soon directed the spiritual reflection there and gave conferences that attracted an increasingly large audience, but the hierarchy of Catholic Action ended her growing influence over the local section.

On Good Friday 1930, she was 33, the final age of Jesus. She suffered a violent attack of angina pectoris at the hour of Christ's agony. It lasted 3 hours. Maria felt as if carried on the cross.

In June of the following year, she went through an "agony" which she does not detail. She foresaw upcoming events: wars, famines, massacres, … A few days later, she felt the terms of her Act of offering as a victim to Divine Justice and Love "blossom in her heart". It was no longer an offering to Merciful Love as in 1925, but to the Justice of God and Love. Thus, she did not renounce Love, which sprang forth and overwhelmed the rest. On July 1, the feast of the Precious Blood, she solemnly pronounced her oblation. She notably asked:

"I, too, imitating You, want to be raised up on the cross of pain, on your Cross of salvation, which most flee in terror, and, crucified with You, for your sake, I want to expiate for those who sin, obey You for those who rebel, bless You for those who curse You, love You for those who hate You, and entreat You for those who forget You in a word, live in an act of perfect love, referring everything to You, seeing You in everything, loving everything for your sake and in You, and accepting everything from You, my infinite Good.
O my Beloved, by the cross I ask You for, the life I offer You, and the love I long for, make me the happy victim of your Merciful Love."

On this occasion, she took the name 'Maria of the Cross'.

On December 18, 1932, at age 35, she was seized by violent heart attacks during a conference she continued to deliver. She could only return home several hours later without her mother taking note of the incident: her mother prepared dinner for her parents, served them, and washed dishes before going to bed. She was in great physical, moral, and spiritual distress. While suffering martyrdom, she still did the shopping her mother asked for. At Christmas, she attended Mass for the last time.

On January 4, 1933, she was bedridden.

Under her mother’s pressure, Maria had to do the housework as long as she could still get up.

From April 1, 1934, she no longer left her bed except with difficulty and for short trips, but on that day, Easter Sunday, she remained permanently bedridden until her death, 27 years later at age 64.

Disability

In April 1935, she was 38. Isolina Diciotti, a neighbor recently deceased, appeared to her in a dream and entrusted her with her concern for her daughter Marta (1910-2001), aged 25, who was losing faith. Maria Valtorta promised to take care of her and succeeded in getting her hired. She entered the Valtorta’s service on May 24. She was Maria's assistant and confidante for over 26 years until her death.

An unexpected prize earned by Maria Valtorta brought in considerable income: it allowed her mother to cover expenses caused by her daughter's bed confinement and by her husband's declining health. Giuseppe Valtorta died on June 30: it was a terrible shock for his daughter. Bedridden, she could not assist her beloved father and the doctor even refused to transport her. She did not even see the funeral. Worse: her mother violently slapped her for her supposed indifference to her father's death.

During all these years, Maria Valtorta lived as a victim soul. She endured temptations, bullying, slanders, and attacks of suffering, but she confided having made a solemn pact with Jesus: each crisis that seized her earned the redemption of a soul. More and more people came to consult her without her knowing who sent them.

She confided about this:

"I have realized for years that it is God who is acting in me. For years—that is, since I effaced my human self and let myself be formed anew by God, forgetting myself and having Him as my only aim. Even my very intense perceptions of what is stirring in another heart are not at all my own. I would be deafer than an adder to all the waves of sounds issuing from my sister souls. But a force far above my own makes me capable of intuiting the needs of creatures. At times I am left agape on discovering that in speaking this way, virtually at the suggestion of a third party, I place my finger squarely on the place that hurts. And I admit to myself, “It’s really God who acts through us when we have abandoned ourselves to Him completely.”

Her illnesses and infirmities

Spring 1940: Her mother fell seriously ill. Maria Valtorta was deeply affected and unable to care for her. This caused a sudden deterioration in her own health.

She explicits her health condition, in addition to the illnesses she already had:

1. A spinal lesion caused by the 1920 attack.
2. An ovarian tumor comparable to ovarian cancer.
3. Myocarditis causing chest pains, fever, and sometimes cardiac stops or arrhythmias.
4. A paresis gradually causing loss of motor abilities in part of the body, but leaving her hands free.
   Suddenly adding:
5. Neuritis that inflamed the optic nerve. She had spasmodic pains so severe she begged the doctor to kill her. Her cardiac state contraindicated most painkillers.
6. Pachymeningitis that made her stiff "like a mummy," she said. The slightest movement made her scream.
7. Bladder inflammation extending to the renal pelvis and kidney cavities (pyelocystitis). Renal and bladder hemorrhage occurred.
8. Peritonitis with symptoms of intestinal obstruction.
9. Pleurisy that formed painful adhesions.
10. Finally, a pulmonary congestion with relapses.

She wrote to her confessor:

"Do you think my suffering suffices? No. It is enormous! To such an extent that without a special grace of God my being could not stand it, and my heart would split in agony. But it is not enough. For me, Maria of the Cross, a soul belonging to Christ, it is not enough. And even if God increases it, it will never, ever be enough for me. Because the sufferings of my Savior were infinite, and I would like mine to be so..."

From suffering to Light

A dizzying contrast deepened in her life:

On the one hand, the authoritarian tutelage of her mother who had broken her youth and her engagements. On the other, the vocation to suffering often more luminous for others than for herself. This is illuminated by the last years of Thérèse of Lisieux when, in the same sensory and spiritual night, she wanted to be nothing but suffering like Christ on the cross at the hour He uttered His last words according to Mark: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Maria Valtorta’s spiritual guide from 1942 to 1946 was Father Romualdo Migliorini (1884-1953). He was a Servite of Mary, a mendicant order founded in Tuscany in the 13th century. He had been Apostolic Prefect of his order in South Africa before becoming Prior of the San Andrea convent in Viareggio. He was struck by the greatness of Maria Valtorta’s soul and asked her to write the story of her life because Maria thought her end was near. She complied in two months, from February to April 1943, at age 46.

At the darkest time of the war, he provided her with the necessary school notebooks. She first wrote her Autobiography, but also all other works inspired to her until 1950. The whole represents 15,000 pages on 122 notebooks.  

Maria Valtorta in 1943

On April 22, 1943, Holy Thursday, Maria Valtorta received her first vision and the dictations of Jesus for our time began. She wrote:

"Mentally, I suddenly saw a very rocky, arid terrain. It looked like the top of a knoll, resembling so many to be seen on our hills. Devoid of vegetation, abounding only in rocks and rough, whitish flint, it was entirely surrounded by a vast horizon. Right at the top a plant with violets had arisen-the only living thing in the midst of such desolation. I distinctly saw the very thick, closely pressed tuft of the leaves, as if to offer resistance to the winds pounding the summit. A few violet buds, more or less open, were sticking out their little heads from the green cluster. But there was only one completely open-lovely, in full color, open, and stretching out towards the sky. [...]

And I saw a board, a big board driven into the ground. It looked like a trunk that had just been planed, almost unhewn and rough. Half a meter above the ground, perhaps less, were two transfixed feet… I saw those alone last night. Two tortured feet. And the fact that they had been harshly tortured was conveyed by their being contracted, with the toes nearly bent towards the soles, as with the spasms of tetanus.

Some blood, trickling along the heels, was falling onto the rough board and streaming down to the ground. Other drops were falling from the contracted toes and raining down upon the cluster of violets. That was what the little violet, leaning entirely upwards, was stretching out to! To that blood, which nourished her [...]

Jesus, my Master, with his soundless word, tells me that more than ever my place is at the foot of his cross. I must draw life from his Blood alone… And my task is only that of being incense at the foot of his throne as Redeemer. Incense which, with its fragrance, covers the stench of sin, wickedness, and cruelty exhaled by the earth. Incense does not give off fragrance except by burning and being consumed. And I must do the same.

He also tells me that the flower can attract other gazes to his Cross, bend other creatures under the rain of his Blood. This is the flower's task in regard to her neighbor and God. Loving reparation to Jesus and attraction to Jesus of many hearts, by agreeing to live for this purpose in an arid desert, alone with the cross."

On October 4, 1943, her mother died. Maria Valtorta implored the presence and solicitude of Jesus because she felt the abandonment of the orphan, bedridden in pain. Jesus tenderly consoled her and revealed:

"(Your mother) did not say 'thank you' to you. But I say it for her. And now she is already saying it to you, for my Light has illuminated horizons for her which her humanity concealed from her. Daughter, don't cry. The rest will come later. Go on praying and suffering for her. And hope in Me."

Then He added:

"Her hour of judgment was long before now. And I came twice over the course of these years of pain of yours to observe this spiritual plant, which not even your praying led to produce fruit of eternal life. And both times the scythe was already in my Hand to knock down that life, which resisted the invitations of Grace. And both times I held back the blow to provide the occasion for that soul not to come to Me naked as regards good works, performed with the soul reconciled with Me."

She had ended her Autobiography with this plea:

"And for my secret sacrifice of every minute, O Father, grant me multitudes of souls to offer to You. Make them and me walk in the light, in your light"

Illness and composition of the work

In 1943, bedridden for nine years, Maria Valtorta thought her end was near. Her confessor, impressed by the zeal of this victim soul, asked her to write her life. She complied in less than two months.

As the pages progressed, the dialogue with Jesus became more present and intimate. Abruptly, on Holy Thursday, she received the vision of Jesus on the Cross and the meaning of His Mission: She could attract other gazes to the cross "by accepting to live, for that purpose, in an arid desert, alone with the cross." She accepted.

She then started "receiving" the scenes of the Gospel. They were written without apparent order, in a single draft, without erasures.

All her writings were recorded in 13,193 pages of school notebooks from which her work "The Gospel as Revealed to Me" is extracted: 10 volumes and 5,374 pages. This work was completed on April 28, 1947, by a dictation of Christ. Its composition lasted four years, almost to the day.

Visions and dictations continued at a slower pace until 1953, then ceased, at least those recorded in Maria Valtorta’s other writings.

During this period, she was accompanied by Father Romualdo Migliorini, a Servant of Mary (o.s.m.) who became the zealous, even excessive, promoter of the work.

Maria Valtorta describes what she calls her work:

"writing by dictation or describing what presents itself to me. If it is writing by dictation and the dictation is based on a point in the Bible, then Jesus first has me open to the point He wants to explain. […] If it is a vision, it presents itself, as I said, with an initial figure which is generally the culminating point in the vision and then develops in an orderly way. […] I describe that point and then, when the preceding one is shown, I write that one and the sequence"

Maria Valtorta discreetly mentions, in some personal notes, the sufferings she endures. But Jesus, in a dictation, is more explicit and of more general scope:

"If you only knew, O men, all of you, what slavery it is to be instruments of God! […] Sleeplessness, hunger, sufferings, weariness, the desire to think of something else, to read things which are not the words of ultramundane sources, to say and hear ordinary words, the desire to be, at least for one day, ordinary creatures and lead an ordinary life‑these are all things which the inexorable lash of God's will keeps them from having and turning into reality. And upon all of this the resentment of men pours its salt and its acid, as if the master of the galley were to make salt and vinegar fall upon the wounds caused by the whiplashes."

End of life

The last years of her life were painful: from 1956, Maria Valtorta withdrew into a kind of psychic isolation after having offered everything to God, including her own intelligence. Emilio Pisani, her chronicler, interprets this last immolation as a response to the opposition that her work began to encounter.

Like all her illnesses—ten in total—this prostration remains inexplicable in many aspects. It was interpreted as a sign of madness by opponents, but more grounded scientific opinions prove that this is not the case.

Maria Valtorta’s tomb

She passed away on October 12, 1961, at 10:35 a.m. Twenty months earlier, she had seen her work placed on the Index. According to Jesus' directives, its publication was to be posthumous. As a spiritual testament, Maria Valtorta left this phrase as a remembrance: "I have finished suffering, but I will continue to love". On July 2, 1973, her remains were transferred from Viareggio to Florence in a chapel of the Santissima Annunziata. Her tomb, in one of the chapels, mentions her titles of glory:

Tertii ordinis servorum Sanctae Maria sodalis (Tertiary of the Order of Servants of Mary) – Hostia Deo grata (Host pleasing to God) – Divinarum rerum scriptrix (Writer of divine things, or historian of God).

Cause for beatification

A first attempt to introduce her cause for beatification, supported by the Servants of Mary of Florence, did not succeed. The archbishop of Tuscany, after consulting the bishops, judged it inappropriate "at least for the moment" (almeno per il momento).

On October 15, 2011, the mass for the fiftieth anniversary of her death was celebrated in Florence by a former apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Pier Giacomo De Nicolò, titular archbishop of Martana.

The following year, in the last year of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI beatified in quick succession two fervent promoters of Maria Valtorta’s works: Mother Maria Arias Espinosa (1904–1981), founder of the Missionary Poor Clares of the Most Holy Sacrament, then Father Gabriele Allegra (1907–1976), translator of the Bible into Chinese.

In 2019, on the initiative of the Maria Valtorta Heritage Foundation, Me Carlo Fusco, advocate of the Roman Rota and postulator for the cause of saints, was given the mandate to act before ecclesiastical authorities to collect testimonies about Maria Valtorta’s life and, at that occasion, the proof of heroic exercise of her practice of Christian virtues.

A priest of the Vicariate of Rome has begun to collect testimonies accordingly.

Person who presents themselves to a priest to confess their sins and have them forgiven by God by receiving the sacrament of penance (or reconciliation).

Preliminary stage to canonization recognizing that a deceased person can be called Blessed because of their holiness.