NEUOFFENBARUNG16 October 1848
[JS.01_010,01] Here is another brief scene from the realm of spirits: the death of a poor day labourer, or rather his departure from this earthly life of trial into the true, eternal life of the spirit. The great of this world now call people of his sort ‘wretches’, ‘scoundrels’ and ‘miserable riff-raff’.
[JS.01_010,02] Come with Me into a wretched little room that resembles a bear's den more than a room fit for people to live in. The space inside scarcely amounts to two cubic fathoms. A badly damaged door leads into this hole. Above the door is an opening two spans wide and one span high, through which falls a light much broken and weakened by the dirty stable wall of a wealthy neighbour. It lights the interior just enough for its seven inhabitants to avoid putting out one another's eyes. This splendid specimen of a living room has neither stove nor hearth. In one corner a filthy, unhewn limestone scarcely a foot high serves as the latter. On it the poor inhabitants of this veritable ‘bear's grave’ cook a meagre meal if they are fortunate enough to obtain what they need by working and begging.
[JS.01_010,03] Take note: for this ‘splendid’ dwelling these poor people have to pay a wealthy landlord one guilder and thirty kreuzers a month in rent. They are even very satisfied with it, since their landlord at least does not press them too hard if they cannot pay the rent on the first of the month, and often waits as long as a fortnight. Indeed, their landlord is ‘so good’ that when their poor seventy-year-old father fell ill, he sent them thirty pounds of mouldy rye straw for twenty kreuzers and waited a full ten days for payment! Surely such a ‘kind-hearted’ and ‘patient’ landlord will one day be able to lay claim to mercy and patience from Me, the Lord!
[JS.01_010,04] Now look, there in the darkest corner of this hole lies our poor day labourer on the ‘fresh’ twenty-kreuzer straw. Some years ago, while doing heavy building work, he fell from a faulty scaffold and broke two ribs and an arm. He was taken to a hospital for the poor, where he was tyrannised by his doctors for six months, and then discharged in a badly healed state with a medical certificate declaring him well.
[JS.01_010,05] Sickly and weak from that time on, and thus no longer fit for heavy work, he got by with his equally sick and weak wife and his five daughters, the eldest of whom is fourteen, doing various small jobs within his strength. At times his wife or one of the children would beg a charitable gift from a rare, softer heart. Age, weakness, cold and the poorest food, as well as a lingering, cancer-like wound at the ribs, have now laid him on this most miserable sickbed, where we see him as we come to visit.
[JS.01_010,06] Emaciated like an Egyptian mummy from the time of the Pharaohs and in pain all over, he has sores on his hip, his tailbone and his spine, which protrudes at least an inch, from lying on the hard bed. With his stomach utterly empty and his hunger burning, he says to his wife in a very broken voice, ‘Mother, have you nothing left at all? Not a little piece of bread? No warm broth? No boiled potatoes? O God, O God! How terribly hungry I am! I cannot move for pain, and then there is this hunger besides! O my God, my God, release me at last from this torment!’
[JS.01_010,07] His wife, who can barely stand herself for weakness and hunger, says, ‘O my poor, dear husband! The three eldest children went out at six this morning to ask good, compassionate people for something. It is already three in the afternoon, and none of them has come back yet. I am trembling all over for fear something has happened to them. O Jesus and Mary! What if they fell in the water or into the merciless hands of the police? My hands and feet are shaking. May Jesus give you strength meanwhile. With God's help I will gather all my strength and go straight to the police to ask whether they know what may have become of our poor children!’
[JS.01_010,08] The sick man says, ‘Yes, yes, dear mother, go, go. I am already frightened and worried beyond measure! But do not stay away long, and bring me something to eat, or I will die of hunger. Remember, it is two whole days since any of us has eaten. What if the three poor girls have collapsed somewhere from weakness? O my God, my God, must every misery fall upon me?’
[JS.01_010,09] The woman goes out. Scarcely has she reached the street when she sees a constable driving the three children ahead of him. On seeing them the mother cries out in horror and lifts her hands above her head. ‘Just God! O Jesus! Those are my poor children!’
[JS.01_010,10] The children, weeping, gasp to their mother, ‘O mother, mother! This brutal man caught us in a street where we were begging someone for alms for our dying father. Then he locked us in a dark room. Because he said he had seen us begging before, he came back with a still more horrible man who looked like a gentleman. Although we pleaded with him on our knees, he had us beaten so hard with rods that our backsides are all bloody! Then he asked us harshly where we lived. When we could hardly tell him where our home was for the pain, he ordered this brutal man who beat us so terribly to take us home. O mother, mother, it hurts dreadfully!’
[JS.01_010,11] The mother, scarcely able to speak, sighs deeply to Me, saying, ‘O Lord, most just God! If You live, how can You look on such outrages and allow them to go unpunished? O my God, my God, how can You let such misery come upon us?’ Then she weeps bitterly. The policeman reproaches her for protesting in the street and drawing the attention of passers-by, and orders her to go inside at once.
[JS.01_010,12] The mother pleads the feelings of a mother and says through her tears, ‘O sir, how can I help weeping? My seventy-year-old husband is dying, lying on bare straw and desperate with hunger. None of us has eaten for two days. It is wet and already very cold this late in autumn, and we do not have a scrap of wood to warm our damp, cold home. I am weak and ill myself. These three girls were our only support, and you have beaten them until they are crippled! O God! How can I keep silent about it? How can you forbid me to weep when I have such cause? Are you no human being, no Christian?’
[JS.01_010,13] The policeman is about to push her back, but a stout-hearted man springs from behind a corner and shouts to him, ‘Hold there, friend! This far and not a hair's breadth further! Here are thirty guilders for you, poor mother. Use them to look after yourself as best you can. As for you, you most heartless hangman's lackey, be off at once, or I will put a couple of bullets through that tiger's skull of yours!’
[JS.01_010,14] The policeman means to arrest the benefactor for this threat, but the stranger immediately pulls a pistol loaded with live shot from the breast pocket of his coat and points it at the constable. The latter now decides that it would be wiser to make himself scarce as quickly as possible than to let this very serious-looking man drive his point home.
[JS.01_010,15] Once the constable is out of sight, the man too goes quietly and calmly on his way. The mother and the three children blow grateful kisses after him from afar. Then the mother, supported by her three beaten daughters, who have quite forgotten their pain on account of their benefactor, hurries straight to the nearest tavern and buys bread, some wine and meat. The waiter does look a little doubtful when this poor riff-raff asks him to change a ten-guilder note. But he thinks to himself that money is money, whether stolen or honestly earned, changes the note for the poor woman and gives her what she asked for.
[JS.01_010,16] Hurrying home with it, they find the poor man weeping with pain and hunger. The mother at once gives him some bread and wine. The eldest daughter runs to a nearby grocer's and for a few groschen buys wood, a tinderbox and half a pound of candles.
[JS.01_010,17] When she comes home with these things, to her horror she finds two constables at the poor family's door. They have hurried back to catch the kind man still there, or, failing that, to find out his station and address from the poor woman if they can. If she will not give them a full answer, she is to be arrested.
[JS.01_010,18] Sent by the police office on this ‘praiseworthy’ errand, they enter the dark room with the poor girl. They demand a light at once and threaten the woman that she must tell them all about the man or go with them to the police office. The poor woman collapses with fear on hearing this. The eldest daughter, also trembling with fear, lights the candle as demanded. The two constables see the sick man lying almost naked on the floor, partly covered with the scantiest rags, and at first recoil a little. But they soon pull themselves together and ask the half-dead woman for the man's station and place of residence.
[JS.01_010,19] The woman trembles and cannot answer. The two constables take this for cunning, drag her up from the floor and mean to take her away immediately. The sick man and the five children plead for mercy and compassion, but the two go silently about their ‘fine’ duty.
[JS.01_010,20] Just as the two constables are holding the woman at the threshold, however, our man comes with three strong helpers. First they free the woman, half dead with fear, from the grip of the two constables, then beat the men until they can hardly walk. They threaten them and their whole department, saying, ‘In the name of God! If you miserable beasts dare to enter this holy place again, where God's angels dwell, expect the most terrible vengeance from us! We are no people or beings of this world. We are the guardian spirits of these angels who are undergoing the trial of the flesh here!’
[JS.01_010,21] Then the four helpers vanish. The two constables, now thoroughly sobered, also leave, never to return.
[JS.01_010,22] The woman soon recovers, and, thanking Me for this deliverance, sees to it that her husband, who is very near his end, has some hot soup. It is soon ready and is brought to the old man with a thousand blessings. Thanking Me and his family, he eats it with a hearty appetite.
[JS.01_010,23] Somewhat strengthened, he says to his wife and children, ‘You, my dear wife, and you, my beloved children, have endured much on my account. But you have also seen for yourselves that the Lord's hand fought for you and drove away your enemies like an evil spectre. Trust in the Lord from now on. He will be nearest to you when your need is greatest! Forgive all who were hard on us and especially on you. They are mechanical tools of a blind police authority hungry for power, and act without asking or knowing what they do. Let the Lord alone be their judge!
[JS.01_010,24] Bear your cross patiently and never seek the good fortune of this world, for the world's favourites are no children of God. What is glorious in this world is an abomination before God. Fear nothing so much as worldly fortune, for it is the greatest misfortune for the spirit.
[JS.01_010,25] Look, what would it have profited me, or what could it profit me now, if I were one of the richest people on earth? At the end of my earthly course I would have nothing before me but certain eternal death. But how different things are for me now! Death has shed all its terrors. For me there is no more death! I am already delivered from all my earthly sufferings, and before me the glorious gate into the kingdom of God stands wide open!
[JS.01_010,26] Look, my body, this worn-out saddle by which the soul bore God's cross, already lies cold and dead on the hard straw. But I, soul and spirit, who inhabited this body for seventy years and have now shed it in death, am free. I already live an eternal life and have neither seen nor felt the body's death. In a wondrous moment of which I was scarcely aware, I was freed from my burdensome load. Feel the body and see for yourselves that it is quite dead.’ (The wife and children feel the body and find it cold and stiff and dead.) ‘And look, I live all the same, and now I speak with you more perfectly than ever before!
[JS.01_010,27] The reason is that I have always believed in Jesus, the crucified One, and have acted according to His commandments as far as I could. What He taught in the Temple, that those who receive His word and live by it will neither see nor taste death, has now proved eternally true in my case. I laid aside my body without feeling how or when.
[JS.01_010,28] I leave you no fortune. My great earthly poverty is the inheritance of you all! But rejoice in it. If the blind rich of the earth knew what wealth earthly poverty is for the spirit, they would flee their moneybags like the plague! In their great blindness they take for gain what kills them for ever. So let them go their way to ruin. If you wish to be as happy at the end of your earthly journey as I am now, flee worldly fortune and never seek it!
[JS.01_010,29] Believe me, for I am already speaking to you from the world beyond. The greater one's cross and the harder it is to bear, the easier and less perceptible the passage will be from this world of matter into that of the spirit. For all who follow Christ must go the way of the flesh. All must be crucified in Christ and die in Him, or they can never be awakened and raised in and through Him!
[JS.01_010,30] Through poverty, want and other hardships of life the flesh is already crucified and put to death in Christ. Thus everyone who lives as we have lived and as you are still living will be awakened where the rich, at the end of their earthly good fortune, die in the truest sense. On what appears to be a deathbed, such a person will reap full resurrection to eternal life! For the poor person who yields to the Lord's will dies continually. When the appointed end comes, that person has finished with all death and can no longer die, but only rise in Christ. It is quite different for anyone who has lived continually for his desires. At the end of his life in the flesh, such a person dies truly and completely, and can be awakened in the world beyond only with difficulty, if indeed he ever can.
[JS.01_010,31] Keep all this in your hearts and be full of joy when the world despises you, calls you shameful names and pursues you with all the weapons of its wicked, hard heart. For the Lord watches the wicked world at all times and knows its plans! I tell you, when you rise, it will perish. So seek above all the kingdom of God and its righteousness. All the rest will be given you freely.
[JS.01_010,32] So never rejoice over the rich of this world. Pity them instead, for they are all exceedingly poor in spirit. Rejoice all the more over those who, like you, bear crosses and suffer want of every kind! Such people die daily to Christ, so that in the end they may die no more but rise to eternal life in Christ.
[JS.01_010,33] Let these last words of mine in this world be the great wealth I leave you. You will have no taxes to pay on this inheritance! But take this body of mine out of the room soon, for it is quite dead. Be sure to make no ceremonies over it, for all such ceremonies are an abomination before God. And do not pay for a Mass, for the Lord God abhors a paid prayer. Let all that you do be a living praise to the Lord, for He has been pleased to show me so great a grace. To Him alone be all honour, all praise and all our love for ever. Amen.’
[JS.01_010,34] With these words he falls silent to this world. His body has already been quite dead for some time.
[JS.01_010,35] At once he sees three exceedingly friendly men standing beside him in white, flowing garments. They greet him most lovingly and hold out their hands to him in everlasting brotherhood. Gladly and joyfully, forgetting all his earthly sufferings, he reaches out his own hands to them, still as though sitting upright above his earthly body. He says, ‘O dear friends, still quite unknown to me, friends of the Lord Jesus Christ, which you surely are! In the full seven decades I lived on this hard earth, I had few good days in earthly terms and all the more sorrowful ones. The last were surely the bitterest. Pain and the deepest want simply rained down on my poor sinful skin. But let it all be offered to the Lord, and to Him alone be all my praise and all my love for it for ever! For although I have truly suffered much, there were never lacking comforts from time to time which lifted my heart again and taught me, in the name of the Lord, to make light of all the terrible, bitter, deathly pains and wounds of the body. And now by the great grace, help and mercy of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, I have come through it all. With the very patience that so often eased my sufferings on earth, I await what the Lord's most holy will ordains for me. To Him alone be all my love, all my praise and my worship. May His will, which alone is holy, be done!’
[JS.01_010,36] One of the three men clad in white says, ‘Dear friend, what would you do if the Lord, for the sake of His great holiness and because of your venial sins, were to send you, in accordance with the faith you profess, to purgatory for an indefinite time, where you would have to suffer exceedingly great pains? Could you still praise and glorify the Lord amid the greatest pains of the fire? And could you still love Him?’
[JS.01_010,37] The poor man says, ‘O dear friend! The Lord's boundless holiness does require the greatest purity of a soul that is to be worthy of seeing Him. But His equally boundless wisdom and goodness know how much pain a poor soul can bear, and He will therefore not burden it beyond its strength. If His justice requires this of me for the sake of His infinite holiness, let His holy will be done in this too! I see His great love even in this. He ordains such cleansing for the soul only so that it may become worthy to be received into the sight of God!
[JS.01_010,38] I say that the Lord is always the purest love and therefore infinitely good, and that all He does is good. May His most holy will alone be done! Even if I pleaded to be spared and for mercy, that would surely never be as good for me as what the Lord's highest wisdom and love ordain and determine for me. So I say once and for all eternity: Blessed be the Lord Jesus Christ, who, as the one Lord God, reigns and governs with the Father and the Holy Spirit from eternity to eternity! May His most holy name be praised, and may His will, which alone is holy, be done!’
[JS.01_010,39] The man clad in white says, ‘You have now spoken quite rightly and truly. But remember that you died without confession and communion. Might it not easily be that, if you now had to stand before Christ's judgement seat, a mortal sin would be found in you, and in that state, without grace, you would have to go to hell for ever, according to your Church's teaching? How would you praise and glorify the Lord then?’
[JS.01_010,40] The poor man says, ‘Friends, I have surely done what I could. It was no fault of mine that I could not confess at the end. Besides, I confessed three weeks ago, and my confessor assured me that I would not need to confess again for a long time. O friends, if I nevertheless have a mortal sin of which I am unaware, then do pray to the Lord for me, a poor sinner, that He may show me grace and mercy! For to go to hell after an earthly life full of suffering would surely be the most terrible thing of all! O Lord, may Your will indeed be done, but have grace and mercy on my poor sinful soul!’
[JS.01_010,41] The man in white says again, ‘Well, dear friend, if you had a mortal sin upon you, our intercession might perhaps be of no avail. You know from your Church's teaching that with God there can be no mercy after death on account of His most perfect, strict and unchangeable justice. Moreover, even in the world you always set little store by the intercession of the saints and the sacrifice of the Mass, and in the end practically none at all. In this you indisputably acted as a heretic towards your Church and became one of the greatest sinners in her eyes. If we were now to plead for you before God, do you think our intercession could do you any good? Why did you set no store by the Church's litanies and Masses for the dead, as you yourself last confessed, teaching those you left behind that paid prayers are an abomination before God and that they should on no account pay for a Mass for you? Since all this is true of you, how are we to plead for you before God? What do you think of it now? Will it, or can it, profit you with God?’
[JS.01_010,42] The poor man, full of spirit and deeply composed, says, ‘Friends, whoever you may be, it is all the same to me. You are no more than God's creatures, and, eternal thanks and love to the Lord God, so am I. I believe I may speak as freely to you as you speak to me.
[JS.01_010,43] I was indeed very poor and wretched in the world, but I could read, write a little and do arithmetic fairly well. I generally spent Sundays and holy days reading and reflecting on Holy Scripture with the greatest attention. The better I came to understand it, the clearer it became to me that the Roman Catholic Church does, and would have others do, the stark opposite of all that Christ and the apostles, according to the four Gospels and the apostolic letters, taught and did themselves. In a letter of the apostle Paul I even found this thunderous passage: “And if an angel from the heavens were to come and teach you a gospel other than the one I proclaim to you, namely that of Jesus crucified, let him be accursed!” (Galatians 1:8)
[JS.01_010,44] This saying went through my whole soul like a thousand flashes of lightning. I thought and asked myself: in the light of such words of the apostle, how does the teaching of Rome stand, when it not only fails to teach the word of God and forbids all laypeople to read it, but teaches quite different things resembling the darkest paganism? Whom am I to believe now?
[JS.01_010,45] An innermost voice said to me, almost aloud, “Believe the word of God!” And I did as the innermost voice had said.
[JS.01_010,46] It grew clearer to me every day that I was doing right. For I understood in my heart and was convinced in spirit and in truth of all that I faithfully believed and did: that the teaching of Christ is the pure and only true word of God, in which alone all salvation and eternal life are to be sought and found!
[JS.01_010,47] God is unchangeable. As He was, so He will remain, the one, infinitely perfect, eternal Spirit of purest love. How could He have founded the Church in Rome, which preaches nothing but hatred and persecution, ruin, death and hell? “No, never!” said the voice within me. “Whoever judges and condemns his brothers is himself judged and condemned! So judge and condemn no one in your heart, and you will not be judged either!” That was what I heard and what I did. I saw ever more clearly that the priests of Rome treated the Lord in spirit a thousand times worse than those who once actually crucified Him in the flesh. Yet I never judged them, but always said in my heart, “Lord, forgive them, for they are all utterly blind and know not what they do!”
[JS.01_010,48] I saw and understood the Lord's boundless love more and more. My own love for Him therefore grew so powerfully within me that all my earthly sufferings could not lessen it in the least, but only made it stronger and stronger. So I now tell you quite freely and openly: Christ is my love and my life, even in hell, if it is you who are to condemn me there. Even hell will never rob me of Him!
[JS.01_010,49] I know well that I stand before God as a most unworthy sinner and am unworthy to lift my eyes towards the dwelling of Him who is most holy. But tell me, where in God's vast infinity does an angel or a human being dwell who could say as the Lord did, “Which of you can accuse me of sin?” Truly, I find greater joy in saying, “Lord, I am the most unworthy of all!” than, “I am the most worthy of Your grace!” I, and surely you too, can only say, even if we had done everything He commanded us to do, “Lord, we have all been Your most useless servants and have done nothing to make ourselves worthy of Your grace. O Lord, O Father! Be gracious and merciful to us, then, for the sake of Your own boundless merits on behalf of us who are most unworthy!”
[JS.01_010,50] We have the right only to say and ask this. Anything beyond it I regard as a mortal sin in the strictest sense, in time as in eternity. You will now, I hope, understand why I set no store by the litany or by paid prayers. But I have always favoured true intercession, when one brother prays for another in the truth and love of the heart. This is why I asked you for it too. You may do as you wish. In all things may the Lord's most holy will be done for ever!’
[JS.01_010,51] The man clad in white speaks again, inwardly delighted with this splendid new brother. ‘Dear brother, we see how sincerely, courageously and zealously you stand up for the Lord, firm as a rock. But ask your heart whether you would dare speak like this in the Lord's own presence.’
[JS.01_010,52] The poor man says, ‘Only my immense love for Him could perhaps paralyse my tongue then, but never my courage. And truly it takes little courage to confess before God Himself that, in the plainest truth, one is a most useless servant before Him and therefore in the greatest need of His grace and mercy. Oh, I have never been afraid of Christ in the real sense, for I loved Him too dearly to be afraid of Him. Only tell me whether I shall stay here much longer. I should very much like to know for certain where I am to go.’
[JS.01_010,53] The man clad in white says, ‘A little more patience. We still have to wait for someone on your account. As soon as he comes, bringing your judgement from the Lord, you will be released from this place and will go wherever the will of God directs. Look, he is already coming from the east. He will be here soon. Are you not afraid of him who comes in the name of the Lord?’
[JS.01_010,54] The poor man says, ‘Oh no! If I love the Lord Himself above all things, why should I fear the one He sends to me?’
[JS.01_010,55] The man clad in white says, ‘But do you know, dear brother, that even the most righteous sins seven times a day without knowing that he sins? If you count up all the days since you reached the age of accountability and multiply them by seven, you could arrive at a considerable number of mortal sins, especially if, according to Ignatius of Loyola, four small ones make one great one. If the messenger were to come with such a reckoning, would you still not be afraid of the Lord's messenger?’
[JS.01_010,56] The poor man says, ‘No, and once again, absolutely not! I must confess openly, my dear friends, that I should be positively glad to be found a very great sinner! For sin does not raise me up. It humbles me, and that is good and right. I felt this very often on earth. When for a while, a short while to be sure, I was conscious of no sin, as happened especially after confession, I was inwardly quite proud of what I took for spotless moral innocence. If I came across a thoroughly disreputable man, I would say secretly to myself, “Thank God I am not like this fellow who has forgotten God and every human right!”
[JS.01_010,57] But when soon afterwards I fell into some sin myself, then, if I met another sinner, I thought in all contrition of heart, “Look, this man you consider a bad fellow may be far purer than you before God. Be gracious and merciful, then, O God, to me, a poor sinner! For I do not even feel worthy now to raise my eyes to Your heavens!” That, friends, was surely a better thought and worthier of a lifelong sinner than to think and say to oneself, “Lord, I am pure and have kept all the laws from childhood, and therefore with every right I now expect from You the promised reward!”
[JS.01_010,58] Friends, I know that I am a sinful man before God. Therefore I can only be humble and hope for nothing from Him on account of any merit, but for everything from His grace and mercy alone.
[JS.01_010,59] I really do not know what merits worthy of reward creatures could have amassed before the almighty God, who alone can do all things and has never needed our help. Did they help the Lord God create heaven and earth or accomplish redemption? Did anyone do any good to God, who alone is holy, by observing more or less, for his own good, the laws given by the Lord? I think God would be as perfectly God without us as He is now. We are destined only to receive His boundless grace, mercy and love within us, and not to render Him other services for which He will never have any need.
[JS.01_010,60] Look, this is how I have always thought, how I think now and how I will think for ever, provided that eternal existence is now granted me. For this reason I cannot see why I should be afraid of the Lord's messenger now, since I can find no reason to be afraid of the Lord Himself. Yes, I do fear the Lord, but not as a criminal. I fear Him as one who loves Him and feels far too sinful and unworthy to love the Lord with his impure heart and with all the strength of his life! What do you think now, dear friends? Am I right or wrong?’
[JS.01_010,61] The man clad in white says, ‘We see quite clearly now that you will never let us turn you from your convictions. So we will give you no further trouble and leave everything to the one who is coming. Look, he is here already!’
[JS.01_010,62] With an exceedingly friendly face, the messenger goes straight up to the poor man, warmly extends his hand and says, ‘Rise above your mortal remains, dear brother, and rise to eternal life in your God and Lord, whom you have always loved so dearly in Jesus Christ!’
[JS.01_010,63] The poor man immediately rises as if entirely free and filled with great strength and vigour. He says to the messenger, who looks very plain and simple, ‘Exalted envoy of the great almighty God! An incomprehensible feeling of bliss shot through my whole being when you gave me your hand. I take that as the surest proof that you truly are a messenger from the Most High, sent to me, a poor sinner. I know you are one, not only from what these three brothers told me beforehand when they tried to make me terribly afraid of you, but from my own unerring feeling now. So please tell me kindly what I have to expect from God's most just judgement seat. I have no merits, and I never will have any. But because I feel that before God I am surely a grave and great sinner, tell me whether I may hope for grace and mercy.’
[JS.01_010,64] The messenger says, ‘Dear brother, how can you ask such a thing? Your heart is full of love for the Lord. That is already the Lord Jesus within you, who alone is God from eternity to eternity! How could anyone who has Jesus in his heart ask whether he may hope for grace and mercy from Him? I tell you, you are already blessed, and you will never have any judgement to perceive in yourself! Come with me now before your God, your most loving holy Father, and receive what is prepared in all its fullness for those who, like you, truly love Him above all things!’
[JS.01_010,65] The poor man says, ‘O exalted messenger of God! Forgive me, but I cannot follow you there. I shall never be worthy of such grace! Take me instead to some quiet little place where the least of the blessed dwell, people like me who have no merit and hope to see the Lord Jesus from a distance once in every hundred earthly years. I shall be as blessed there as the purest and most perfect angels! I could not bear it if the Lord Jesus came too close to me, for my love for Him is so great and powerful that it would tear me apart if I came to Him. So do what I have asked you out of the deepest contrition of my heart.’
[JS.01_010,66] The messenger says, ‘My dearest brother, that cannot be. Look, the Lord wills it so! And if I can bear to be at all times in the Lord's immediate presence, you will be able to bear it too. So come with me and do not be in the least afraid! I tell you, we shall both manage very well before the Lord.’
[JS.01_010,67] The poor man says, ‘Well, then, in God's name, if that is what you think, I will dare it! But tell me, why are these three brothers clad in white looking at the two of us now as though they were moved to the depths of their being and enraptured? Do they already see the Lord somewhere?’
[JS.01_010,68] The messenger says, ‘It may be so. But secretly they also feel immense joy over you, as they do over everyone who comes here with such love as yours. Look eastwards, where a gentle range of mountains rises and a glorious dawn glows above it. That is our way, and we shall cover it quite easily and very soon. From that height you will at once see before you the new holy Jerusalem, the eternal city of God, in which you will live for ever!’
[JS.01_010,69] The poor man says, ‘Oh brother, how gloriously, how divinely pure this wonderful morning light shines! What glorious clouds, and look at the lovely meadows and little trees! O heaven, you incomprehensibly beautiful world! What is all the splendour of the earth beside it? But now I see great companies coming to meet us, and I hear songs of a glory beyond heaven itself! Oh, what harmony! Who can fathom its immeasurable beauty of sound? How brilliantly those coming towards us shine! How will I look among them in these clothes of mine, which still seem so earthly?
[JS.01_010,70] O God, O God! It is truly almost more than I can bear! Look, they are already quite close to us, and now, now, what is this? They seem to fall to their knees and faces before us, as though deeply contrite. Perhaps the Lord Himself is already coming up behind this company somewhere? Oh, tell me what it means!’
[JS.01_010,71] The messenger says, ‘It may well be something of the kind. We shall see for ourselves in a moment what is happening. Just a little more patience. In a few steps we shall be at the top and will see what there is to see.’
[JS.01_010,72] The poor man says, ‘O my most exalted friend, I feel quite strange now! Just think how a man like me must fare and how he must feel on seeing for the first time the Lord of heaven and earth, the Lord over all life and all death! O friend, I tremble with fear and longing and with joyful, anxious expectation of what is about to come to meet us. Truly, only a few more steps and we shall have reached the height! Oh, oh, what will I see?
[JS.01_010,73] O friend, are you not afraid of God when He perhaps comes to meet you more often on occasions like these? Has it become such a habit with you that you think little of it when such things happen to you? Yet I can see from these companies, and from the three brothers following us, that they are no less deeply moved than I. You alone are quite unconcerned and look as though everything happening here were of no importance at all. Oh, tell me how I am to understand it and take it. Should I perhaps behave as you do, though that would be quite impossible for me?’
[JS.01_010,74] The messenger says, ‘My dearest brother, you will soon understand why I am not afraid of God and why I do not act like our three companions, or like you, or like these companies. It would be better for you to behave as I do now, for you will soon see for yourself that your fear is quite groundless. I tell you, the Lord does not require any of this. But when the children show their deepest love and humility before the Father in this way, they are hardly doing wrong either.
[JS.01_010,75] But I know that you were quite fearless and undaunted earlier before the three who first greeted you, which pleased me very much, although they were at great pains to put a little fear into you. How is it that you are growing so afraid now?’
[JS.01_010,76] The poor man says, ‘Well, then I had no inkling of the boundless majesty of God and His holy heavens. But now I have before my eyes what I scarcely dared imagine before. It is quite different now! What must God look like, that they bow down trembling so, surely from the deepest holy awe before God the Infinite, God the Almighty! Will my eye, still so dim and unaccustomed to the light, be able to look upon God's face?’
[JS.01_010,77] The messenger says, ‘Now, now, dearest brother, all will be well. If you have not been blinded on the way here, you will manage what comes next as well. Just be calm. Look, we are already on the height. Over there, as if on the horizon, above which you see that sun of God whose light illuminates all the heavens and the hearts of all people and angels, you can already see God's holy city. In it you will dwell for ever, with Me indeed! Let us make straight for it now, and we shall soon be there!’
[JS.01_010,78] The poor man opens his eyes wide and hardly knows what to do for wonder. He still does not understand why he can see no reason for the companies to rise in such contrition and now follow us, along with the three, singing the most glorious psalms to the honour of God without ceasing and with the sweetest sound.
[JS.01_010,79] After a time of silently and blissfully contemplating this heavenly region, which can be compared with nothing earthly, he asks again, ‘O dearest friend and brother! Tell me, where do those following us see the Lord God? They sing just as though He were in their midst. I look left and right, ahead and behind, but I cannot see anything that would remind me of God. Are my eyes still too dim, or still too unworthy to see God's most holy face? The latter will probably be the case for ever. To speak honestly, I prefer it that way deep down, for I feel, and God will know and see it best, that I could not bear His most holy face. Oh, I am already more than blessed to see all these heavenly things by your side and to know that God sees me. Still, you know, I should like to see Him just once, Him whom I love so mightily. And, to speak the truth, above all in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, if I could see dear, dearest, most beloved Lord Jesus only once, I would be the most blessed and happiest person in all the heavens!’
[JS.01_010,80] The messenger says, ‘I tell you, just be calm. You will soon see for yourself that you will see Jesus sooner than you think. Yes, I tell you, you are already looking at Him, only you do not yet recognise Him! So be calm.’
[JS.01_010,81] The poor man now looks diligently about him on every side again to see where he might catch sight of Jesus. He sees no one he could take for Jesus. So he turns once more to the messenger and says, ‘How strange! You said that I already see Him, only I do not yet recognise Him. I have looked closely at everyone who follows us, but He cannot be among them. They all seem contrite to the depths of their being and moved by the deepest reverence, and all praise and glorify Jesus, the Lord from eternity, as with one voice. The three men clad in white are doing the same. It seems difficult to suppose that the Lord Jesus Jehovah is visibly among them. Yet you said I see Him! Oh, I beg you, tell me exactly how and where I am seeing Him!’
[JS.01_010,82] The messenger says, ‘Look towards God's city, which we are already very near. In it everything will become clear to you. We are already walking towards the outer walls and shall soon be in the holy city itself. Only then will your eyes be opened fully, much as happened to the two disciples walking to Emmaus. So just be calm. Everything here must be and happen as it does, lest anyone's salvation, life or freedom suffer harm. How do you like this city we are entering now?’
[JS.01_010,83] The poor man says, ‘O friend, where would I find words to describe the boundless splendour and majesty of this city? What a countless multitude of the greatest and most glorious palaces, and they all seem fully inhabited! O God, what radiance, what splendour, what infinite majesty! Its beauty is truly beyond words. No human mind could take it in and comprehend it! But now that we are in the city, I ask this one thing: where is Emmaus, and where is the Lord Jesus, who still does not wish to show Himself to my eyes?’
[JS.01_010,84] The messenger says, ‘Look at the great house before which we are standing, from whose radiant windows and outer galleries countless brothers and sisters greet us. This is the true, eternal Emmaus! In it you will dwell from now on for ever. And as we now stand before Emmaus, which you see quite clearly, turn to Me and look at Me. Then you will recognise Him for whom you carry such a great longing and love in your heart!’
[JS.01_010,85] The poor man looks steadily at the messenger, who am I Myself, and instantly recognises Me Myself in the messenger. He falls at once to his knees and says, ‘O my Lord and my God! Then You Yourself were the messenger? O You most boundless, eternal Love! How, how, how could You Yourself stoop so low as to show such grace to me, a most wretched sinner?’
[JS.01_010,86] After these words he falls silent in the greatest bliss and rapture, and is thus led into the dwelling of My house.
[JS.01_010,87] You can easily imagine for yourselves the further blessed state of this man and his eternal calling to be active in love. So we will end this scene here and go on to another. Amen.