Chapter IV
The Interior Life of Co-Redemptive Souls
Before co-redemptive souls can be "continuators" and "replacements" of Our Lord here below, they must be alter egos, perfect living images of Our Lord.
For this they need to conform to the point of identification with Our Lord, a conformity they have to draw out of a deep, interior life, and this conformity in return will make them (a) hosts and victims like Our Lord, and (b) apostles.
December, 1936
Silence is a precursor. A precursor to the coming of my love.
Silence is preparation because it purifies and attracts; at the least, deep authentic silence forgets the creature and invokes the divine.
Learn from Mary the secret of this attentiveness that draws you into contemplation, a life of prayer as eloquent as it is silent.
In this, be like Her, readily unmindful of the creature, impervious to the human.Â
Saturday, June 28, 1937
Learn from Mary's profound Heart what this is: The silence that calls forth the Word, that draws It into the soul, that makes It listen closely to the soul.
Yes, silence makes room for the word. This intimate silence coming from the ardent longing of the heart in search of the divine.
Silence that thereby deepens the soul, by freeing it from all human congestion.
All of you, be these silent souls who alone can be deep souls and souls eloquent to my Heart.
Eloquent because silent. For I am the great Captivator of all being and of all life, the Occupant Who is there in the ordinariness of external occupations, the constant Absorbent of the heart.
Oh, how these silent souls console Me in this way, and help Me in my redemptive work.
If these silent souls alone are eloquent to my Heart, they alone also communicate Me to souls, being as they are but faithful resonances of my love as Word.
These true apostolic souls of my Heart, these pure impersonal resonances, yes, I am in them . . . (and they are my helpers and consolers!), but I still have too few of them to lift up and save the world.
It is true, many are good talkers and can even speak abundantly of Me, but for all that are they always eloquent? Do they truly communicate Me to souls?
Truly silent souls alone are able to stay in close communion with Me, and my apostolic diffusion is conditioned by and proportional to the perpetuity of this continuous communion of love.
That is why the most silent souls are at the same time those who best diffuse the profound love of my Heart.
If I come back to this so often, to these two words communion and diffusion it's because they form one of the principal themes of Love by which I have conveyed to you your mission to be my faithful, little transmitting echo.
June 30, 1937
How is it that silent souls are so eloquent to Me, I would even say in my fondness, so appealing to my Heart?
You have guessed it. It's because they are humble, or bravely strive to be so.
Silence, the profound activity of a love that listens, the ardent longing of a heart smitten by God alone, is both a principle and a source of humility, abolishing words of excuse or vanity, stilling the inner buzzing of various conceits, resentments, of envy born of self-love.
To cultivate silence is to cultivate humility, this deep humility that makes room for Me to enter in, for all such deepness attracts my Heart.
1940
To be instruments of my Love for souls is nothing other than to be most pure resonances of Me, faithful transmitting echoes, free and living passageways of my Word of Life.
But in order to hand down and pass on, one has to receive.
In order to receive, one has to listen.
In order to listen, one has to be silent.
The true apostle is one who is able to make his own that word which I spoke to My Father: I have given them all the words You have given Me, and who, for that reason, is always listening to Me, is always at my school. And silence is part of the discipline of love in this divine school.
If too few words truly speak to souls to give them life, it is because this discipline has broken down, because the words are no longer listened to in prayer, in prayer made fruitful by sacrifice. Sacrifice that requires recollection so that silence may be imposed on the dark, confused, unsettling rumblings of egoism, so that I may be heard, Me, the Word of Life, instead of listening to one's self.
