Trials
See also: Misfortune, Unhappy, Curse, Pain, Suffering, To Suffer.
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Through the original sin, Evil, suffering and Death entered the world. These bring Trials into the life of every human being, allowed by God for the conversion of sinners and for the sanctification of the just who endure them with resignation and love by offering them to God.
In "The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me"
- Let us always trust God. The greater the trial, the more we must have confidence.[1]
- Move forward, without weariness, without haste, without becoming discouraged by defeats, without being disturbed by delays.[2]
- By one torment or another, you will all be tested. For now, it is the renunciation of your comforts, your affections, your interests. Afterward, it will be an increasingly vast sacrifice.[3]
- Such is the thought of union with God in this life. Men wound, steal, slander? But God heals, restores, justifies. And without measure. Men say: "God has rejected you"? But the calm Soul thinks, must think: "God is just and good. He sees the causes and He is benevolent.[4]
- Suffering has not been useless. I believe, I know it has served you more than an entire year of teaching. Suffering, the meditation on the evil that man can inflict on his fellow man, pity, faith, hope, the charity you had to exercise, even by yourselves, have matured you like children becoming men...[5]
- What charity would it be for someone who, being happy and seeing an unhappy person, would feel contempt and hatred for them?[6]
- In truth, truly I tell you that true charity, true faith, and true hope are tested more in pain than in joy.[7]
- Life has tested you greatly. Men have greatly harmed you. Both could have made you an irreparable ruin. Behind them was Satan, who was envious of your Soul, but upon you was the eye of God, and that eye blessed stopped your Enemies.[8]
- One of Mary's Trials: Her Tearful spiritual childbirth: She says: "But believe me, my daughter, there never was nor ever will be a childbirth torment like my childbirth of a Martyr of a spiritual Maternity fulfilled on the hardest of beds: that of my cross, at the foot of the gibbet of my Son who was dying.
What mother is forced to give birth in such a way, and to mix the torment of her tearing entrails upon hearing the gasp of her agonizing Creature with the inner tearing to have to overcome the horror of having to say: 'I love you. Come to me, who am your Mother' to the assassins of her Son (...)."[9] - Mary's help in the Trials: All suffering is soothed on Mary's breast : Elizabeth says to her: "Let me put my hands on your breast". "Oh! if in your suffering you would always ask me this!" (...) "And all pain calms down and all hope blooms and all Grace flows for those who come to me and lay their head on my breast."[10]
- Our Mother in Heaven continuously prays for us: "I pray for you. Remember this. The blessedness of being in Heaven, living in the radiance of God, does not make me forget my children who suffer on earth. And I pray. The entire Heaven prays, because Heaven loves. Heaven is living charity. And Charity has pity on you.
But, if it were only me, that would already be a sufficient prayer for the needs of those who hope in God, since I never cease to pray for you all: saints and the depraved, to give joy to the saints, to give the wicked the repentance that saves."
"Come, come, O sons of my sorrow. I await you at the foot of the Cross to grant you Grace."[11]
In other works of Maria Valtorta
The Notebooks of 1943
- Dictation of June 22, 1943: It is up to you to make good what is not, to transform Trials, Temptations, misfortunes — which completely ruin Souls already collapsing — into as many props and foundations to erect the Temple that never dies: the Temple of God within you.[12]
- Dictation of December 27: Sometimes God subjects us to Trials which are nothing other than tests of the gold of the Soul.
The Notebooks of 1944
- Dictation of May 22: Evil always comes under the fleeting and deceptive appearance of human profit. Never be mistaken. The true profit is supernatural. Trials are the currency used to acquire it.
- Dictation of August 25: The Fruits to be drawn from the meditation on the fourth sorrow (of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows) are patience in Trials to imitate the Patient bent under the cross, an irreproachable life so as not to increase its weight on the back of the Sufferer and the suffering of the Mother because of this burden.
In fundamental Christian texts
In the Catechism of the Catholic Church
- Until her last trial, Mary did not cease to believe.[13]
- Faith can be tested. The Virgin Mary in "The Pilgrimage of Faith" went even into the "night of faith".[14]
- Faith in God the Father Almighty can be tested by the experience of evil and suffering.[15]
- The divine permission of diabolical activity is a great mystery, but "we know that God makes all things work together for the good of those who love Him."[16]
- Christ affirmed before His Ascension that it was not yet time for the glorious establishment of the messianic Kingdom but that it is also still a time marked by "distress" and the trial of evil which spares not the Church.[17]
- The consummation of the Church, and through it, that of the world, in glory will not happen without great Trials.[18]
- The Christian must strive, by patiently enduring sufferings and Trials of all kinds [...], to accept these temporal pains of sin as a Grace.[19]
- The sufferings to endure may mean that "I complete in my flesh what is lacking in the Trials of Christ for His Body which is the Church".[20]
- The more we are docile to the impulses of Grace, the more our inner freedom and assurance in Trials increase.[21]
- The virtue of fortitude makes one capable of overcoming fear, even of death, to face trial and persecution.[22]
- The beatitudes [...] mark the path through the Trials awaiting the disciples of Jesus.[23]
- The Holy Spirit makes us discern between trial, […] and Temptation.[24]