Summary:
Ward realizes that, throughout his life, he had never been truly alone. And he will never be, too!
Comments are greatly appreciated: please, let me know what you think!
Chapter:
God continued:
"You will see that realizing My Will is the best way, and the only, to transform your life in a masterpiece.
And remember: I will always be with you!
So do not be afraid of not being up to the task!"
"But I have been so evil… I am a murderer!"
"The majority of the killings you committed were under Garrett or Shield or Malick's orders, so they are to blame the most. The ones who command are the ones who take the bigger part of the responsibility.
Men always forget this and try to become powerful and important, not keeping in mind that, when they will be facing Me, they will be made accountable to Me for all the people that were posed under their control.
It would have been better for most of them if they had minded their own souls, instead of seizing power!
Moreover, anytime you had the possibility to spare a life, you did that, trying to avoid spilling unnecessary blood or inflict unnecessary pain.
For the rest, yes, you were a murderer.
But this is going to change, because I will be with you.
To be true, I have always been with you, but now you are aware of the fact."
At that point God's voice became sweet:
"I was with you in those woods, under that rain and those thunders, in that solitude that detached you from so many bad things, that purified you from the rage and the aggressiveness and the violence that have been your constant companions for years.
I gave you Buddy as an alternative companion, instead of the Beast: it was loyal, trustworthy and it loved you.
Often I can achieve this with you, men: to transform the bad in good, the misfortune in fortune, the cruelty in blessing...
That isolation, that profound contact with the perfection of nature, was like a cure for you. It made you more meditative, calm, serene, almost at peace.
Do you remember the silence, the quiet, and the serenity, there? The birds singing, the sun peeking through the tree leaves, the gentle breeze perfumed of flowers and musk?
I loved you there, and you felt it, didn't you?"
"Yes, I felt it. I remember it, now, and the memory is sweet in me. Thank you so much!"
"I was with you on the Bus when you were driving towards L.A. alone with Skye, over a sea of clouds, and the sun was shining directly on you.
I was with you after you were defeated by May, put in shackles in front of Coulson, with you larynx broken, unable to speak; I was with you when Coulson told you that Garrett was dead and you ferociously wished to die, too; I was with you when he told you that Fitz and Simmons were safe - and you silently thanked Me - but Fitz would never be the same, and remorse bit your heart.
I was with you when, after weeks of tortures at Talbot's base, you cut your wrist with that button; when you did the same with that piece of paper, feeling the sharpness of it penetrating your flesh and then the blood warming your arm, reddening the white paper, filling your nostrils of its smell; I was with you when you where hurling yourself against the walls… and I always tried to make you feel wanted, loved!
I always said: - Stop! Stop! Don't do that! You are precious to Me! Don't throw away this life I gave you! Your heart remained soft despite everything you went through, because there's still so much good in you! Don't waste it! You are not doomed! –
But you couldn't hear me. You were too furious, too desperate.
But then, after sedation, I cleared up your mind, making you accept what you were, what you did, and why."
Ward felt recognition enlight his mind.
So that had been the origin of his strength, in that horrible moment of his life!
"I was with you when you held Kara's dying body in your arms and you felt so terribly in fault, so lost for having dragged her in such madness! There you felt My words:
- You were so cruel you wanted to kill a husband in front of her wife only to punish her. Doing so, you bound yourself to the same destiny! Leave this wrong way! It will only drag you lower and lower! -
And for an instant you thought this would be the right thing to do.
But then the Beast in you bit back:
- No! It isn't your fault. It is May's, that framed you! It is Shield's, as it always has been! It is Coulson's! They destroyed each and every occasion fate presented you to be happy. They deserve to be punished for this! - and you let the Beast take possess of your heart, you nourished it, pushing Me away.
And that was the beginning of the end, for you: when you decided to push Me away, because whenever a man dislodges Me, the Other finds a free field… and He is much stronger than any of you.
You cannot beat Him without My help."
Ward understood perfectly.
But then he found the courage to formulate a question that was gnawing him for some time.
"Can I ask You something?"
"Of course."
"Don't you think Hell is a too heavy punishment? Especially its eternity?"
"Hell's eternity is bond to the eternity of the sinner's will to sin.
If I have let them, all Hell's inhabitants would have continued to kill and rob and rape and brutalize others for all eternity.
In the same way, for all eternity their punishment will stick with them.
Besides… you interpret eternity in the wrong way, but it is normal: after all, you are three-dimensional creatures.
Time simply IS. It is the fourth dimension, but you cannot see it in its entirety, so you interpret it like a flow of instants.
Moreover, the concepts of time and space have sense only if there is materiality, so when you are detached from your body, loosing you material half, time and space cease to exist. In the moment of death, all your choices are made definitive; they freeze in that precise instant. And eternity is not really an infinite amount of time, like a never-ending flowing of instants, but the absence of time altogether.
About what happens there… what do you expect from Satan? To be sweet and delicate?
He is the inspirer of all the wars and hate and tortures and every evil on Earth! And mind that on Earth I put strong limits and barriers to his action!
Hell is his reign, instead!"
God paused for a moment, then started with a powerful speech:
"The men of this time no longer believe in the existence of Hell.
They, especially who commit unmentionable sins and therefore deserve great punishment, have invented an afterlife according to their taste, such as to be less terrorizing for their conscience. They know that their conscience would draw back from certain misdeeds if they really believed in Hell just the way Faith teaches it is; they know that their conscience, after committing the misdeed, would turn back upon itself and they would find repentance in remorse and, with repentance, the way to return to Me.
Instead their malice, instructed by Satan, does not want these acts of withdrawal and turning back. Their malice, thus, cancels out faith in Hell as it really is and manufactures another one - if it goes so far as to manufacture it: in this way, through this deception, they only pause, to make a dash for other, future elevations in evil.
Their malice pushes their false opinions on Hell to the point of believing that it doesn't exist, or that, if it exists, it is empty.
I said - I, the Triune God - that who enters Hell endures in it for all eternity, for people do not emerge from that death to a new resurrection.
I said that fire is eternal and that all the workers of iniquities and scandals shall be gathered together in it.
And do not think, either, that this will be until the moment of the End of the World.
No.
On the contrary, after the tremendous Universal Judgement, that dwelling of weeping and torment will become even more atrocious, since what is still granted to its lodgers for their amusement - to be able to harm the living and to see new damned ones plummeting into the abyss - will no longer exist, and the gate of Satan's iniquitous kingdom will be riveted shut, bolted by my Angels, forever, forever, forever - a forever whose number of years has no number and compared to which the grains of sand of all the earth's oceans, if they were to become years, would be less than a day of this immeasurable Eternity of Mine, made of light and glory in the Highs for the blessed, made of darkness and horror in the depths for the accursed."
God's voice was like thunder and His majesty unsustainable.
"It is always a matter of fire.
In Purgatory the fire is a fire of love.
In Hell fire is a fire of severity.
Purgatory is a place where, while thinking of Me, whose Essence has shone for you in the instant of the private judgment and has filled you with a wish to possess it, you expiate the acts caused by a lack of love for Me, the Lord your God. Through love you conquer Love, and, by degrees of increasingly inflamed charity, you wash your robes until they become white and glistening, ready to enter into the kingdom of Light, whose splendors are unimaginable for the human mind. Purgatory is a place where the thought of Me - the memory of Me glimpsed during the private judgment - is a holy desire, a grieved, but hope-filled longing, a hope full of tranquil expectation of secure peace which shall reach perfection when it becomes the conquest of Me, but which already gives the spirits being purged a cheerful activity in purgation, because every affliction, every instant of affliction, draws them closer to Me, their Love.
Hell, on the contrary, is a place where the thought of Me is remorse, anger, damnation, and hatred: hatred and terror for Satan, hatred for men, hatred for themselves.
After having adored Satan in life, in place of Me, now that they possess him and see his true appearance, no longer hidden behind the bewitching smile of flesh, behind the shining brightness of gold, behind the powerful sign of supremacy, they hate him since he is the cause of their torment.
After forgetting their dignity as children of God - having adored men to the point of becoming killers, thieves, swindlers, and merchants of filth for their sake, now that they re-encounter their bosses, for whom they have killed, robbed, deceived, and sold their honor and the honor of so many unfortunate, weak, defenseless creatures, making them instruments for the vice which beasts are not familiar with - for lust, the attribute of man poisoned by Satan - now they hate them since they are the cause of their torment.
After having adored themselves, giving flesh and blood all satisfactions, trampling on My Law and the law of morality, now they hate themselvessince they see themselves to be the cause of their torment.
The word "Hatred" covers that boundless kingdom; it roars in those flames; it howls in the cackling laughter of the demons; it sobs and barks in the laments of the damned; it rings and rings and rings like an eternal hammering bell; it blares like an eternal bugle of death; it fills the recesses of that jail; it is in itself torment because, with each of its strokes, it renews the memory of the lost forever Love, the remorse over having wanted to lose it, and the rage over never being able to see that infinite Love again.
Fire responds to fire.
In Paradise it is the fire of perfect Love. Since the elected loved to perfection, Love gives Itself to them in its Perfection.
In Purgatory it is the fire of purifying Love. Since those being purged loved in a lukewarm fashion, Love becomes a flame to take them to Perfection.
In Hell it is the fire of offended Love. Since the accursed burned in lifetime with all fires - except with My fire - My fire burns them eternally.
And in the fire there is ice.
The damned burned with all human fires, having only spiritual iciness for Me, so sidereal cold is mixed with the unbearable burning. Ice awaits them to freeze them, after fire has salted them like fish set upon a flame to roast: a torment in the torment is this passing from the burning which dissolves to the cold which condenses.
Material and spiritual darkness is a torment in Hell, too: it is a torment to be in the embrace of darkness forever after having seen the Light that I am, to writhe in that dark horror where, in the glare of the burnt spirits, only the name of the sin for which they are nailed to that horror forever is illuminated!
But what's the worst, in Hell? In that continuous agitation of spirits hating and harming each other, they can find no other support but desperation, that makes them crazed and increasingly accursed: to feed on it, base themselves on it, and kill themselves with it.
It is said that death will nourish death.
Despair is death and will nourish those dead souls in eternity.
You, Grant, have seen and felt what Hell is!
Explain that to your fellow men!
You men do not know and do not believe, but in truth I tell you that it would be better for you to undergo all the torments of My Martyrs rather than one hour of those infernal tortures.
And Hell's inhabitants WANT to go there!
Meditate, my children, on these words of Mine.
The duration of life is not these few days on Earth.
Life begins when it seems to you to be ending, and then no longer has an end.
Have it flow on for you in the place where My light and joy make eternity inexplicably beautiful, and NOT where Satan is the Eternal Torturer!"
Ward remained speechless at those words.
Then, after a while, he dared asking one more question:
"And what about all those monsters? Why humans were turned in so horrible creatures?"
"Humans became monsters, because in Hell what's inside is revealed outside, and monstrosity is the real appearance of sin: it's like in that story of yours "The picture of Dorian Gray", where the picture becomes uglier and uglier as the protagonist falls in a downward spiral of horrible sins, leaving his appearance handsome and young. But at the end, when the protagonist dies, his body inherits the picture's monstrosity, returning to the picture its primeval beauty.
The Hell's inhabitants' basic sin is pride, like their father's Satan, which made them believe to be gods and prevented them from asking Me to help them.
They live their lives worshipping themselves or their idols - behind whose Satan is always hidden - filling the time I gave them with horrible sins and scandals.
But they, deep down, are ashamed of them. They know they committed evil things.
During all their lives they try in every way to silence their conscience, but in vain.
When they die and finally face Me, all their horrors, that they tried to hide in darkness, are revealed by My light, because there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed, and hid, that shall not be known. Every man should bear in mind this simple concept and act in such a way that any of his action could be watched by anyone without shame.
In that crucial moment they see themselves for what they really have become and, instead of asking Me to heal them, they hate Me because My light reveals their lowness. And they flee from Me and throw themselves into the fiery furnace, filling the air with their hate, insults and blasphemies.
And I have to witness all that: My sons and daughters preferring a monster instead of Me!
You have no idea how much my Heart bleeds at that, every time!
But they condemn themselves, Satan makes them choose Hell for themselves, because they belong to him and he fights not to let any of his slaves go.
Of course, I could free them, if only they wanted, but they don't want, because of their pride, that is their father's most distinctive feature: in fact, it is obvious that, after having served Satan for a lifetime they ended up resembling him and, in the crucial moment of their death, they, like him, end up hating Me.
They choose Satan and reject Me.
And when somebody chooses against Me, I simply respect his freedom and walk away.
Once I am gone, all that remains is Satan…"
Ward replied, his voice trembling:
"But a lot of men choose evil..."
God answered:
"Yes, because it is more appealing.
But it is necessary, for every man, to hone the ability to see beyond appearances and to live in the perspective of eternity."
Ward was feeling his time there was winding down.
God continued:
"One last thing, before you go: Garrett tried to beat this lesson into you: that care and love and attachments are weaknesses, and you had to fight those weaknesses in you.
On the contrary, I say that these exact things will be your greatest strengths; so be as much caring and loving and attached as you can!
You have been in the darkness; I'll make you bring light!
You have been enslaved; I'll make you bring freedom!"
"Yes, sir!"
Ward has never been so happy to follow an order!
"Now, concentrate on your task.
Be sure that I will always be with you.
Don't you worry! I'm greater and much more powerful than your sins, than Hive, than Satan! And I see farer.
Steel yourself and be strong, stronger than ever, because what you'll face is terrifying.
Now go."
"Yes, Sir!
Thy Will be done, not mine!"
Notes:
02/08/2018:
I added a powerful piece taken from "Maria Valtorta: The Notebooks".