«How did He rise? you ask each other. I reply: He has risen with His true Body and with His Divine Spirit that dwells in it, as in every mortal body there dwells the soul as queen of the heart.»
– Jesus, while still unknown to the Emmaus disciples
621. «Oh! how foolish you are and hard to understand! And how slow you are in believing the words of the prophets! And had all that not already been said? The error of Israel is this: they have misinterpreted the regality of the Christ. That is why He was not believed. That is why He was feared. That is why you are now in doubt. In high places, in low ones, in the Temple, in villages, everywhere people thought of a king according to human nature. The reconstruction of the Kingdom of Israel was not limited, in the mind of God, in time, in space and in means, as it was in you
Not in time: no royalty, even the most powerful one, is eternal. Remember the mighty Pharaohs who oppressed the Jews in the days of Moses. How many dynasties have come to an end, and only soulless mummies remain of them at the bottom of secret hypogea! And a remembrance remains, if even that still remains, of their power of one hour, and even less, if we measure their centuries by the eternal Time. This Kingdom is eternal.
In space. It was called: Kingdom of Israel. Because the stock of the human race came from Israel; because in Israel there is, so to say, the seed of God; and therefore, by saying Israel, it was meant: the kingdom of those created by God. But the regality of the King Messiah is not limited to the small space of Palestine, but it stretches from north to south, from east to west, wherever there is a being with a spirit in its body, that is, wherever there is a man. How could one person alone gather under him all the peoples, hostile to one another, and form only one kingdom, without shedding rivers of blood and subjecting them all by means of cruel oppressions of armed men? So, how could He have been the peaceful king mentioned by the prophets?
In means: the human means, I said, is oppression. The superhuman means is love. The former is always limited, because peoples rebel against the oppressor. The latter is unlimited, because love is loved or, if it is not loved, it is derided. But as it is spiritual, it cannot be attacked directly. And God, the Infinite, wants means to be like Himself. He wants what is not finite, because He is eternal: the spirit; what belongs to the spirit; what leads to the Spirit. That has been the error: that men conceived in their minds a Messianic idea that is wrong in means and form.
Which is the highest regality? God’s. Is it not so? Therefore, this Admirable, this Immanuel, this Holy, this sublime Germ, this Strong, this Father of the future century, this Prince of peace, this God like Him from Whom He comes, because so is He named and so is the Messiah, will He not have a regality like that of Him Who generated Him? Of course, He will! A regality which is completely spiritual and eternal, immune from violence and blood, unaware of betrayals and abuse of power. His Regality! That which the Eternal Goodness bestows also on poor men, to give honour and joy to His Word.
But did David not say that this powerful King had all things placed under His feet as a footstool? Did Isaiah not narrate all His Passion, and did David not count, one might say, also His tortures? And is it not said that He is the Saviour and Redeemer, Who with His holocaust will save sinful mankind? And is it not stated, and Jonah is the sign, that for three days He would be swallowed by the insatiable stomach of the Earth, and then He would be ejected as the prophet was by the whale? And was it not said by Him: “My Temple, that is My Body, the third day after being destroyed, will be rebuilt by Me (that is, by God)?” And what did you think? That by magic He would raise the walls of the Temple again? No. Not the walls. But Himself. And God only could make Himself rise from the dead. He has raised the true Temple: His Body of the Lamb. Sacrificed, as Moses received the order and the prophecy, to prepare the “passage” from death to Life, from slavery to freedom, of men, the children of God and slaves of Satan.
How did He rise? you ask each other. I reply: He has risen with His true Body and with His Divine Spirit that dwells in it, as in every mortal body there dwells the soul as queen of the heart. That is how He has risen after suffering everything to expiate everything, and make amends for the primitive Offence and for the countless ones that every day are committed by Mankind. He has risen as it had been said under the veil of the prophecies. He had come at His time, I remind you of Daniel, at His time He was sacrificed. And listen and remember, at the time predicted after His death the deicide town will be destroyed.
I advise you to do this: read the prophets with your souls, not with proud minds, from the beginning of the Book to the words of the Sacrificed Word; remember the Precursor who indicated Him as the Lamb; recall which was the destiny of the symbolic Mosaic lamb. The first-born of Israel was saved through that blood. Through this Blood the first-born of God will be saved, that is, those who with good will have made themselves sacred to the Lord. Remember and understand the Messianic psalm of David and the Messianic prophet Isaiah. Remember Daniel, recall to your minds, but raising these from the filth of the earth to the celestial blue, recall every word on the regality of the Saint of God, and you will understand that no other more just or more strong sign could be given to you than this victory over Death, than this Resurrection accomplished by Himself. Remember that it would have been contrary to His mercy and to His mission to punish from the height of His Cross those who had put Him on it. He was still the Saviour, even if He was the Crucified scoffed at and nailed to a scaffold! His limbs were crucified, but His spirit and will were free. And with the latter He wanted to wait, to give the sinners time to believe and to invoke His Blood on themselves, not with blasphemous cries, but with groans of contrition.
Now He is risen. He has accomplished everything. Glorious He was before His incarnation. Three times glorious He is now that, having humbled Himself in a body for so many years, He sacrificed Himself, elevating Obedience to the perfection of being able to die on the Cross to do God’s Will. Most glorious, with His glorified Body, now that He ascends to Heaven, and enters into the eternal Glory, beginning the Kingdom that Israel has not understood. To this Kingdom, in a more and more pressing manner, through the love and the authority of which He is full, He calls the tribes of the world. As foreseen and predicted by the just of Israel and by the prophets, all peoples will come to the Saviour. And there will no longer be Judaeans or Romans, Scythians or Africans, Iberians or Celts, Egyptians or Phrygians. The land beyond the Euphrates will join the springs of the perennial River. The Hyperborians beside the Numidians will come to His Kingdom, and races and languages will fall away. There will no longer be different customs and different colours of skins and hair, but there will be an immense bright pure people, one language only and one love. It will be the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of Heaven. And eternal Monarch: the Sacrificed Lord Who has risen again from the dead. The eternal subjects: the believers in His Faith. Do believe, in order to belong to it.
Here is Emmaus, My friends. I am going farther. No stop is granted to the Wayfarer Who has to travel so far. »
