Punishment, penalty, to punish

Jesus, deeply saddened, prophesies the future destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, as a Divine punishment – James Tissot, Brooklyn Museum.

Jesus said: "Let me have the task of judging, punishing, rewarding. Only seek, for yourselves, to deserve my reward. And be consistent and honest (...)"

In "The Gospel as it was revealed to me"

• One does not have to be dead to receive reward or punishment.
• Jesus strikes with sudden leprosy the murderers who accused an innocent of their crime.
• The one who is in fault feels punished. This guilt must give you pain, but not the punishment itself.
• In the prophecies, it is symbolically said that misfortune will come upon those who do not welcome the Messiah. Can the Prophets lie? – No, Bartholomew. And what is said will come to pass. But the Most High is so good, infinitely good, that for punishing He wants much more than what happens now. Be good also, without always desiring punishments for those who have a Heart hard and a stubborn mind. Desire for them conversion, not punishment.
• The violent Alexander is struck with sudden blindness following one of his blasphemies: "May God blind me if I lie and if I have sinned."
• This is the fate of the one who does not remove from his Spirit all disorder against love. Today he asks to be able to punish. Tomorrow he punishes without asking. The day after tomorrow, he punishes even without reason.

In other works by Maria Valtorta

Notebooks of 1943

• Catechesis of July 24: Let me have the task of judging, punishing, rewarding. Only seek, for yourselves, to deserve my reward. And be consistent and honest. It is inconsistent, dishonest, cowardly to persist in attacking the defeated, whatever their defeat, whether it be just as punishment or painful as the result of undeserved circumstances.

• Catechesis of July 30: When the hour of indignation sounds in Heaven and justice descends to strike, have charity and prudence as your standard. Withdraw instead of clucking like young hens that see the kite, withdraw instead of murmuring, for judging belongs only to God, and pray to the Lord. Charity and prudence so that evil is overcome by the good and that peace triumphs in States, in institutions, in hearts. To punish, God does not need your advice. He knows when and how to use the sword to kill the eternally reborn, the monster that seduces you, who opposes the eternal Resurrected who saved you and saves you by His Blood; too often the great and the small of this world do not listen, remaining deaf to my prayers full of sadness, that you may give shelter to the weary Love, to your Jesus who suffers from His perfect love always rejected.

• Catechesis of December 2: By acting as you do, you not only push God to punish you in your fields, in your herds, by hunger and drought, but you prevent a dew from spreading from Heavens carrying more life than the nightly dew that pearls the stems in the meadows and makes the harvests and hay grow. It is the dew of grace in hearts that you forbid yourselves. It is the Christ who cannot operate in you.