Maria Valtorta

Maria Valtorta

Maria Valtorta in 1943, colorized
'Biography
Naissance	14 mars 1897 Caserte, Campania, Italie
Death	October 12, 1961 (age 64) Viareggio, Tuscany, Italy
Place of rest	Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata, Florence
Nationality	Italian
Père	Giuseppe Valtorta
Mère	Iside Fioravanzi
Activities	Mystic, writer
Ses écrits
Œuvre principale	L'Évangile tel qu'il m'a été révélé
Other works	Les Cahiers de 1943, Les Cahiers de 1944, Les Cahiers de 1945 à 1950, Leçons sur l'épître de saint Paul aux romains, Le livre d'Azarias, Les Carnets, Autobiographie

Maria Valtorta, born in Caserte on March 14 1897 and died on October 12 1961 in Viareggio, was an Italian Catholic mystic. She was the author of L'Évangile tel qu'il m'a été révélé, which recounts the life of Jesus, as well as dictée, dictée presenting teachings of Jesus in the form of dictée, the Mary, the Holy Spirit, her guardian angel and various saints.

She was the only daughter of Giuseppe Valtorta, a cavalry non-commissioned officer, for whom she had a great and deep affection, and a French teacher, Iside Fioravanzi, a very authoritarian and cantankerous woman who demanded her daughter's exclusive attention. She couldn't stand any of her daughter's suitors. She twice broke off her engagement.

Maria Valtorta moved to different parts of Italy, depending on the posting of her father's regiment. On March 17, 1920 while walking with her mother in Florence, she was attacked by "a petty criminal, son of a communist and our milliner. With an iron bar extracted from a bedpost, he came up from behind and shouted: "Down with the rich and the military!" while striking me, with all his might, a terrible blow" After three months of immobilization, she leaves, for two years, to convalesce with her maternal family in Reggio Calabria.

In 1924, the family settled permanently in Viareggio, in Tuscany where Maria Valtorta became involved in Catholic Action. In 1925, she offered herself to Merciful Love, and on July 1, 1931, offered herself to the Lord as an expiatory victim for the sins of men. Her health gradually deteriorated. From April 1, 1934, Easter Day, she was permanently bedridden. She remained bedridden for 27 years, during which time she wrote the entire œuvres mystiques for which she is known today.

Biography

Her mother, Iside Fioravanzi

Happy, austere childhood

A great deal of detail about Maria Valtorta's life comes from her Autobiography. She was an only child. Her mother didn't love her: she suffered from a liver disease that made her cantankerous, and she fulfilled her role as wife and mother authoritatively, out of duty and without affection.

Maria loved her father dearly, a cavalry non-commissioned officer, but he was often absent and had to deal with his wife's authoritarian nature. Professional disappointments, followed by health problems, kept him away from his daughter's trials and tribulations.

Her father, Giuseppe Valtorta

For Maria Valtorta, childhood as a boarder with the nuns at a college in Monza, north of Milan, was a happy time away from home. She received precious evidence, but always in austere form.

'At the age of 4, she was taken with the other pupils for the first time in front of a realistic statue of Jesus declawed from the cross. Many of her classmates were frightened, but the young Maria Valtorta overflowed with affection and compassion for Jesus.

'At the age of 8, she received confirmation from Cardinal Andrea Ferrari, beatified by John Paul II in 1987. At the laying on of hands, she felt "the transmission of the spirit of love and a close link with the Paraclete", whose "permanent presence, assistance and gentle comfort" she now perceived.

Maria Valtorta in 1907

'At age 11, on the day of her solemn communion, she lays, in a gesture of piety, her wreath of roses at the feet of the Immaculate Virgin and remains thereafter attached to the Mother of Seven Sorrows.

Maria Valtorta in 1912

'At 15, she experienced her last spiritual retreat at the college before her mother withdrew her from it. The retreat unfolded with particular fervor.

"Jesus descended into me," she writes, "with the Father and the Spirit, each bearing his gifts to little Maria... The Father entered, offering this youthful soul the vision of His Majesty and Power. The Son brought with him all the treasures of his Mercy and Wisdom. The Holy Spirit poured out his lights and the flames of his Charity... It was truly in the light that I lived those days. A light that made everything luminous in my eyes: the past, the present and the future. Everything was clear to me. This light made me understand, in the deepest sense of the word, what my life in God was to be, what God wanted of me in order to conquer the kingdom of God."

Jesus said to him:

"You will be penitent love. Your models will be creatures who have known the bite of evil, who have bitten the dust in the hour of moral disarray, who have suffered for the creature while losing sight of the Creator, but who are reborn with a soul of repentance and love. They rise so high in the spiritual life, that they acquire a splendor in no way inferior to that of the pure by the grace of God, for they have more merit: their life was more painful, hard to conquer, beyond all measure".

She continues:

"I understood clearly then that I was called by God to a life of suffering, that tears would be my companions and the cross my teacher and that from then on I had to, by renouncing the sweet dream of martyrdom that was that of the first Christians, prepare myself for the obscure martyrdom of the heart, unrecognized by all but God. A continual martyrdom, exercised throughout life and in all circumstances. The world was to be my arena of combat. I didn't know what the fight was going to be, but I knew clearly that it had to be played out in the world and not in the cloister".

'On February 23, 1913 she left college for good at her mother's request: she was about to turn 16. Looking back on this period, Maria Valtorta confides:

"I didn't become the little Maria-Hostie of Jesus through human words. It was Jesus who instructed me, who gently called me at times when he wanted the spiritual ear of his little Maria to be attentive to the words of life. I remember the gentle storm of love that certain particular lives of saints aroused in me... The first one I heard was "The Story of a Soul" by Sister Thérèse of the Infant Jesus. Her doctrine of trusting abandonment, of generous love, her little way of great holiness, imposed itself on me at once."

The first trials

After leaving college, the Valtorta family moved to Florence near Piazza San Gallo. Her mother preached religious indifference: for her, contrary to her daughter's wishes, there was no need to go to confession or take communion too often. She blocked Maria Valtorta's mystical growth: on Sundays, she could only go to early Mass, and heard almost no sermons or Lenten lectures. She didn't go on any retreats other than those she went on during her school years. She attended church in secret and remained attached to the first Friday of the month devotion. Her health is weakening.

'At 17, she falls in love with a neighbor, Roberto, Doctor of Letters. Confident, she confesses her love to her mother, who forbids her to pursue this relationship, which she believes is fraught with all sorts of dangers that the frightened young Maria could never have imagined. Her father consoles her with tears. Roberto died some time later in the war that had just broken out. Maria's suffering is unspeakable: she thinks that one cannot suffer more. She is overwhelmed by it, and struggles in "the blindest darkness". Her religious practice falters. She is beset by suicidal or sensual thoughts.

At 19, she has a dream that marks her deeply: Satan in an initially seductive guise tries to turn her away from Jesus and steal her soul. Jesus delivers his forgiveness to her in the end, with this warning:

"Know that it is not enough not to commit evil, but still not to desire to do it".

Some years later, discovering photos of the Turin shroud, she recognized the face, stature and hands of the person she had been talking to when she was 19.

Maria Valtorta in 1918

'At the age of 20, in 1917, she entered as a samaritan nurse, volunteer auxiliaries, to care for the war wounded. She flourished in the service of others, but narrowly escaped, like her mother, the Spanish flu epidemic that claimed tens of millions of lives at the time.

At the age of 22, when the war is over, she meets Mario, who falls in love with her. Their love is kept secret for fear of her mother's reaction. This new suitor gradually leads her back to religious practice. When he comes to ask for Maria's hand in marriage, her mother chases away the fiancé, who nevertheless continues a secret correspondence.

Then comes the event that will change the course of her life: on March 17, 1920, three days after her 23rd birthday, an anarchist strikes Maria violently in the kidneys with an iron bar to the cry of "À bas les riches et les militaires!" (Her father was a non-commissioned officer). The suffering is excruciating and lasts for several months: she thinks her end is near and welcomes it with resignation.

The following summer, convalescing with her family in Calabria, she sees Mario again, who tries to bend Maria's mother's will by letter. Maria Valtorta knows nothing of the exchange of letters: all she receives is a last love letter by way of farewell from her fiancé.

"I conceived such a great sorrow for it," she confesses years later, "that it resists and subsists even in the joy of my total gift to God".

But this loss of a human love makes the love of God grow in her, unlike the first sorrow.

Maria Valtorta en 1922

'At the age of 25, she reads St. Luke's Gospel for the first time. Until then, she had known the Gospels only from the fragments read at Mass. She dreamed of following Jesus to Galilee, listening to his teaching, taking communion from his hand, and so on.

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

On October 23 of the same year, the Valtortas moved to Viareggio, a seaside resort in Tuscany. In December, she felt a strong need for the four Gospels and "The Story of a Soul" by Saint Theresa of the Infant Jesus. She buys them with her pocket money. In the throes of emotion, she joyfully reiterates her daily act of offering herself to merciful love: the sufferings then come upon her "like rain" she writes.

'On May 21, 1929, at the age of 32, she was enjoying a happy stay with her family when she thought she was dying under a sudden onslaught of illness. Her mother called her back at that moment: she complied laboriously. Later, she wrote:

"For a generous soul, sacrifice is no longer an effort, and suffering no longer a torment... And even only one thing preoccupies a generous soul: it is afraid of not suffering. Herein lies the reversal of values. ... A generous soul is quite incapable of suffering in the bitter way that those who are not generous suffer. Suffering remains, because it's inevitable, but it no longer presents itself as an enemy: it's a friend who helps us to climb higher and higher. The mere thought that this suffering makes us like Christ and makes us continuators of his work, gives us an insatiable thirst for ever new and deeper suffering... I've been living this way for years and have found peace of soul."

In her mystical calendar, Maria Valtorta notes, opposite this episode:

"First contact with death and suffering: Long live love!".

The same year, she took the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The same year, she took the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

Commitment

This was when she became involved in Catholic Women's Action. She soon became a leader in spiritual reflection and gave lectures to a growing audience, but the Catholic Action hierarchy put an end to her growing influence on the local chapter.

'On Good Friday 1930, she turns 33 (the final age of Jesus). She suffers a violent attack of angina pectoris at the hour of Christ's agony. This lasted 3 hours. Maria felt as if she were being carried to the cross.

In June of the following year, she went through "an agony of blood", which she did not describe in detail. A few days later, she felt "blossoming in her heart" the terms of her Act of Offering as Victim to Divine Justice and Love. This is no longer an offering to "merciful love" as in 1925, but to God's justice and love. It does not, therefore, renounce the Love that gushes forth and overwhelms the rest. On July 1, feast of the Precious Blood, she solemnly pronounces her oblation. In particular, she asks:

"I too desire, in your imitation, to be lifted up on the cross of suffering, on your cross of salvation that most flee from with terror; crucified with you, for you, I want to atone for those who sin, to obey you for those who rebel, to bless you for those who curse you, to love you for those who hate you, to beg you for those who forget you, to live, in a word, in an act of perfect love, bringing everything back to you, recognizing you in everything, loving everything through you and in you, finally accepting everything from you, my infinite Good. O my Beloved, by the cross I ask of you, by the life I offer you, by the love to which I aspire, make me a happy victim of your merciful Love". On this occasion, she took the name 'Maria de la Croix'."

On December 18, 1932, at the age of 35, she was seized by violent heart attacks during a lecture she continued to give. It was several hours before she was able to return home, but her mother did not take the incident into account: she prepared her parents' dinner, served them and washed the dishes before going to bed. She is in great physical, moral and spiritual distress. While suffering martyrdom, she continues to run the errands her mother asks of her. At Christmas, she hears mass for the last time. on January 4, 1933, she is bedridden.

Under pressure from her mother, Maria has to do the housework while she can still get out of bed.

From April 1, 1934, she leaves her bed only with difficulty and for short trips, but on that day, Easter Sunday, she remains permanently bedridden until her death, aged 64, twenty-seven years later.

Disability

'In April 1935, she was 38. Isolina Diciotti, a neighbor who had recently died, appeared to her in a dream and confided her concern for her 25-year-old daughter Marta (1910-2001), who was losing her faith. Maria Valtorta promised to take care of her and succeeded in getting her hired. She joined the Valtorta family on May 24. She was Maria's assistant and confidante for over 26 years, until her death.

A prize that Maria Valtorta wins then Maria Valtorta unexpectedly brings in a substantial income: it enables her mother to meet the expenses incurred by her daughter's bedridden condition and her husband's declining health. Giuseppe Valtorta's death on June 30 was a terrible shock for his daughter. Bedridden, she was unable to assist the father she loved so much, and even the doctor refused to transport her. She couldn't even see the body. Worse still, her mother violently slapped her for her supposed indifference to her father's death.

During these years, Maria Valtorta led the life of a victimized soul. She endured temptations, bullying, slander and assaults of suffering, but she confided that she had made a solemn pact with Jesus: every crisis that seized her was worth the redemption of a soul. More and more people come to consult her, without her knowing who is sending them.

She confides on this subject:

"I've been realizing for years that it's God who's working in me. For years, that is, since I did away with my human 'self' and was rebuilt by God, forgetting myself and seeing only him. Even my own perceptive perceptions of what's happening in other people's hearts have nothing to do with me. For by myself I would be deafer than a mole to all the sound waves emanating from my kindred souls. But a force far greater than my own enables me to divine the needs of creatures. Sometimes I stand open-mouthed as I realize that by talking like this, almost at the suggestion of a third party, I'm really putting my finger on a wound. And I confess to myself: It really is God who works for us when we are totally abandoned to him."

Her illnesses and infirmities

Spring 1940: Her mother falls seriously ill. Maria Valtorta was deeply affected, but was unable to serve her. The result was a sudden deterioration in her health. In her Autobiography, she draws up an impressive list of what she calls her "service record".

Diseases she already had :

1. A spinal injury caused by the 1920 attack.
2. An ovarian tumor akin to ovarian cancer.
3. Myocarditis, causing chest pain, fever and sometimes cardiac arrhythmia.
4. Paresis, which gradually caused her to lose motor skills in one part of her body, but left her hands free.
   And then, suddenly :
5. A neuritis that inflames the optic nerve. She has spasmodic pains so severe she begs the doctor to make her die. Her heart condition precludes most painkillers.
6. Pachymeningitis that makes her stiff "like a mummy", she says. The slightest movement makes her scream.
7. Inflammation of the bladder, extending to the renal pelvis and cavities (pyelocystitis). Kidney and bladder haemorrhage occurs.
8. Peritonitis with symptoms of intestinal obstruction.
9. Pleuritis with painful adhesions.
10. Lung congestion, with relapse after relapse.

She writes to her confessor:

"Do you think my suffering is enough for me? Not at all. Yet it is great. So great that without a special grace from my God, my being could not bear it and my heart would break in a final convulsion. But it's not enough for me. And even if God wanted to increase it, it would never be enough for me, never. Never would I be satiated with it, for my Savior's sufferings were infinite and I desire mine to be infinite too".

From Suffering to Light

A dizzying contrast deepens in her life:

On the one hand, the authoritarian tutelage of her mother who had shattered her youth and engagement. On the other, a vocation to suffering that was often brighter for others than for herself. This becomes clearer in the light of Thérèse de Lisieux's last years, when in the same night of the senses and spirit, she no longer wanted to be anything but suffering, like Christ on the cross at the hour when he went so far as to say 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 the Father Romualdo Migliorini (1884-1953). He was a servite of Mary, a mendicant order founded in Tuscany in the 13th century. He had been Prefect Apostolic 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 her life story, as Maria Valtorta thought her end was near. She did so in two months, from February to April 1943, at the age of 46.

At the height of the war, he provided her with the necessary school notebooks. In them, she first wrote her "Autobiography", but also all the other works that were to inspire her until 1950. The whole covers 15,000 pages in 122 quires.

Maria Valtorta in 1943

On April 23, 1943, Holy Thursday, Maria Valtorta receives her first vision and the dictations of Jesus for our time begin.

"Suddenly," she writes, "I saw, mentally, a very stony and arid terrain, surrounded by a vast horizon. At the very top, a violet plant had sprouted. Only one violet had fully bloomed. ...I then saw a large plank sunk into the ground... A meter and a half from the ground, maybe less, I saw two feet pierced. Blood trickled down the heels to the ground. More dripped from the toes onto the clump of violets. So that's where the violet, the only clump of green in this barren land, was turning to: to the blood that nourished it. With his silent word, Jesus tells me that my place is more than ever at the foot of the cross. I must draw my life from his Blood alone. My only duty is to be incense at the foot of his Redeemer's throne. Incense only exhales its fragrance by burning and being consumed: that's what I must do. The vision also tells me that the flower can draw other eyes to the cross ... by accepting to live, to this end, in an arid desert, alone with the cross."

On October 4, 1943, her mother dies. Maria Valtorta implored Jesus' presence and solicitude as she felt the abandonment of the orphan nailed to the bed in pain. Jesus lovingly consoles her and reveals:

"(Your mother) didn't say thank you, but I'm telling you for her sake. And now she's already saying it to you because my Light has illuminated horizons for her that her humanity veiled. Don't cry, my daughter. Continue to pray and suffer for her and hope in me."

Then he adds:

"The hour of her judgment must have been long before now. I came twice throughout your years of pain to observe this spiritual plant that even your prayers couldn't make it produce fruits of eternal life. Both times I had in my hand the axe ready to cut down this life that resisted Grace's invitations. Both times I held back the blow to allow this soul not to come to me bereft of good works."

She had ended her Autobiography with this plea:

"Because of my hidden sacrifice of every moment, O Father, give me throngs of souls to offer you. Bring them forward, and me too, into the light."

Sickness and the writing of the work

In 1943, bedridden for nine years, Maria Valtorta thought her end was near. Her confessor, struck by the ardor of this victimized soul, asked her to write down her life. She did so in less than two months.

As the pages turn, the dialogue with Jesus becomes more present and intimate. Suddenly on Holy Thursday, she receives the vision of Jesus on the Cross and the meaning of her mission: She can draw other eyes to the croix "by accepting to live, for this purpose, in an arid desert, alone with the cross". She accepts.

She then begins to "receive" the Gospel scenes. All her writings were recorded in 13,193 pages of school notebooks, from which is extracted her work "L'Évangile tel qu'il m'a été révélé": 10 volumes and 5,374 pages. This œuvre was completed on April 28, 1947, by dictation from Christ. It took four years to write, almost to the day.

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

During this period, she is accompanied by Father Romualdo Migliorini, a Servite of Mary (o.s.m.) who would become the zealous, even excessive, promoter of the work.

Maria Valtorta clarifies what she calls her work:

"writing under dictation or describing what presents itself to me. If it's dictation and it relates to a passage in the Bible, Jesus begins by having me open the Book to the passage He wants to explain. [...] If it's the vision that presents itself, as I said, with an initial image that is usually the climax of the vision, and then unfolds following the order [...] I describe that point, then what precedes and what follows".

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

"If you only knew what slavery it is to be an instrument of God [...] It brings sleep, hunger, suffering, fatigue, the desire to think of something else, to read writings that are not words from a supernatural source, to speak and hear ordinary things, the desire to be and live like everyone else, if only for a single day : all this, the inexorable burning of God's will prevents them from having and realizing. On all this, the hargne of men deposits its salt and acid, as if the master of the galley put salt and vinegar on the burns of his slaves".

End of life

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

Like all her illnesses, this prostration remains inexplicable in many respects. Opponents interpreted it as a sign of madness, but more well-founded scientific opinion proves otherwise.

La tombe de Maria Valtorta

She died on October 12, 1961 at 10:35 am. Twenty months earlier, her work had been placed on the Index. According to Jesus' directives, its publication was to be posthumous. As a spiritual testament, Maria Valtorta leaves as a memento the following sentence: "'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 the servites of Mary) - Hostia Deo grata (Host accepted by 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 Servites of Mary of Florence, was unsuccessful. The Archbishop of Tuscany, after consulting the bishops, judged that it was not opportune "at least for the moment" (almeno per il momento).

On October 15, 2011, the mass for the fiftieth anniversary of his death, was presided over 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 Poor Clare Missionaries of the Blessed Sacrament, then Père Gabriele Allegra (1907-1976), translator of the Bible into Chinese.

In 2019, on the initiative of the Maria Valtorta Heiress Foundation, Mr. Carlo Fusco, lawyer of the Rota and postulator for the cause of the saints, has received the mandate to act before the competent ecclesiastical authorities to gather testimonies on Maria Valtorta's life and, on this occasion, evidence of her heroic practice of the Christian virtues.

A priest from the Vicariate of Rome has begun collecting testimonies to this effect.