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complete way and God has nothing greater to give us, to say to us than Himself. But
this very wholeness of God's giving of himself
–
that is, that He, the Logos, is present
in the flesh
–
also means that we must continue to penetrate this Mystery. This brings
us back to the structure of hope. The coming of Christ is the beginning of an ever-
deepening knowledge and of a gradual discovery of what, in the Logos, is being given.
Thus, a new way is inaugurated of leading man into the whole truth, as Jesus puts it in
the Gospel of John when he says that the Holy Spirit will come down. I believe that the
pneumatological Christology of Jesus’ leave-taking discourse is very important to our
theme given that Christ explains that his coming in the flesh was just a first step. The
real coming will happen when Christ is no longer bound to a place or to a body locally
limited but when he comes to all of us in the Spirit as the Risen One, so that entering
into the truth may also acquire more and more profundity. It seems clear to me that
–
considering that the time of the church, that is, the time when Christ comes to us in
Spirit is determined by this very pneumatological Christology
–
the prophetic element,
as element of hope and appeal, cannot naturally be lacking or allowed to fade away
(30 Giorni, January 1999).
In the same manner, I do not claim in any way, a status or an authority of my writings
coming close to Holy Scripture. The Holy Bible is inspired in an infallible way. I humbly
believe that the Lord touched me to journey with Him through a direct action in my soul
assisting me when called to write, but it is not inspiration in the same sense as Scripture is
and the result is not infallibility, but this does not mean either that there should be doctrinal
errors in my writings, which I am assured there are not.
In Fr. Marie-Eugène’s book
I am a Daughter of the Church
, he reminds us how God can
adapt Himself to the soul:
God’s direct action, being thus grounded in the human of which it makes use, is
marvellously adapted to the psychological life of the soul. This adaptation of God
should be underlined as an important characteristic of His interventions. God, who
consents to speak the language of human signs to give us His light, pushes
condescendence to the point of adapting Himself to our temperaments and our
particular needs in the choice of these signs, so as to reach us more surely. For a faith
that has kept its purity and its simplicity, He will speak in a language of external
brilliant signs that will make faith vibrate. For a faith that rationalism has rendered
prudent and critical, He will have a more intellectual language.
3
Cardinal Ratzinger has said, “that being able to set oneself up as the word and image of
interior contact with God, even in the case of authentic mysticism, always depends on the
possibilities of the human soul and its limitations”. I thus experience the Word of God
without effort, in other words, without me forcing anything, it just comes. I receive these
communications (interior words) namely in two forms. Please note here that in no way I
intend to say I know perfectly well how to express this phenomenon and how God can do
such things, but this explanation below is the best I can do:
1. Through the intervention of interior words, namely locutions. The words I perceive
are substantial ones, much clearer than were I to hear them through my ears. One
single word alone may contain a world of meaning such as the understanding on its
own could never put rapidly into human language. Any divine word or instruction
given to teach me, will not be in the manner of school teaching, that perhaps due to
limited time cannot be wholly explained all at once, or because of human frailty may
be forgotten, or even not quite understood. But the divine instruction or the word
given, will be given in such lapse of time and engraved in the mind in such a way that
3
Fr. Marie-Eugène, O.C.D.,
I am a daughter of the Church
, Vol. II, Chicago, 1955. p. 283.