There is an English Translation of the Life and Selected Translations of the writings of Birgitta of Sweden¹; i.e., Saint Bridget of Sweden, under The Classics of Western Spirituality, Paulist Press, that I highly recommend to all to read.  Within this book, there are two content areas which are both of most interest and importance to me and to all of humanity.  They are The Fifth Book of Revelations or Book of Questions and The Seventh Book of Revelations*; passages in the latter actually being the catapult, so to speak, spring boarding me into this work, igniting a desire to do what I can to make this known; to coach and lead where possible, as seen on this website, and as grace and God will allow.  These writings contain heavenly revelations from Christ the Lord to Birgitta through vision, hearing and seeing in “ecstasy of mental contemplation²” as it states in the Prologue of the Fifth Book, and that “all was in her mind in a single instant” and “remained fixed in her heart and her memory as if carved on a marble tablet.” But that “she herself immediately wrote it out in her own language.”  To know why I do this work, it’s important to read in entirety.

And what are the passages that so effectively got my attention; that caused me to have a holy fear not only for myself but for my fellow man and all the nations throughout the earth, and compelled me to action in this work?  It is none other than these words spoken by He who sits in judgement on the heavenly throne because He speaks it (as you will read) to the world:

*  “Hearken, all you my enemies who live in the world; for to my friends who follow my will, I am not speaking.  Hearken, all you clerics: archbishops and bishops and all of lower rank in the Church!  Hearken, all you religious, of whatever order you are!  Hearken, you kings and princes and judges of the earth and all you who serve!  Hearken, you women: princesses and all ladies and maidservants!  All you inhabitants of the world, of whatever condition or rank you are, whether great or small, hearken to these words that I myself, who created you now speak to you!  I complain because you have withdrawn from me and have put faith in the devil, my enemy.  You have abandoned my commandments and you follow the will of the devil, and you obey his suggestions.  You do not attend to the fact that I, the unchanging and eternal God, your Creator, came down from heaven to a Virgin and took flesh from her and lived with you.  Through my own self, I opened the way for you and showed the counsels by which you might go to heaven.  I was stripped and scourged and crowned with thorns and so forcefully extended on the cross that, as it were, all the sinews and joints of my body were being undone.  I heard all insults and endured a most contemptable death and most bitter heartache for the sake of your salvation.  To all these things, O my enemies, you are not attentive because you have been deceived.  Therefore, you bear the yoke and burden of the devil with false sweetness and neither know nor feel them before the approach of sorrow over the interminable burden.  Nor is this enough for you; for your pride is so great that if you could ascend above me, you would gladly do it.  And the pleasure of the flesh is so important to you that you would more gladly forfeit me than give up your inordinate delight.  Moreover, your greed is as insatiable as a sack with a hole in it; for there is nothing that can satisfy your greed.  Therefore, I swear by my Godhead that if you are to die in the state I which you now are, you shall never see my face; but for your pride you shall sink so deeply into hell that all the devils will be above you, afflicting you beyond all consolation.  Indeed, for your lust you shall be filled with horrible diabolic venom; and for your greed you shall be filled with sorrow and anguish’ and you shall be partakers of all the evil that there is in hell.  O my enemies – abominable and ungrateful and degenerate – I seem to you, as it were, a worm dead in winter.  Therefore, you do whatever things you will, and you prosper. Therefore, I will arise in summer and then you shall be silent, and you shall not escape my hand.  But nevertheless, O my enemies, because I have redeemed you with my blood and because I am in quest of naught but your souls, therefore return to me even now with humility and I will gladly receive you as my children.  Shake off from you the devil’s heavy yoke and recall my charity and you shall see in your conscience that I a sweet and meek. ” ¹ (pgs. 216 – 217). 

Our Lord then says to Birgitta:  “Among the very last words of revelations made to you, put that common and universal revelation that I gave to you in Naples.  For my judgement shall be carried out on all the nations who do not humbly return to me, as it has there been shown to you.” ¹ (pg.218).

Of course, I immediately go to find what Our Lord said to Birgitta in Naples and find the passage.  Notice that as He begins speaking to her, He directs that “in my behalf, you will announce to the nations.”  He imparts this to her in answer to specific prayers of some Neapolitan citizens.  For what they ask for, His response made to them (at that time), is also to the world, which relates to those he called out in the above Hearken all you . . . . Passages.  He speaks to Birgitta as follows ¹ (pgs. 207-211):

*  “Hear, O you to whom it has been given to hear and see spiritual things; and be diligently attentive; and in your mind beware in regard to those things that you now will hear and that in my behalf you will announce to the nations, lest you speak them to acquire for yourself honor or human praise.  Nor indeed are you to be silent about these things from any fear of human reproach and contempt; for these things that you are now going to hear are being shown to you not only for your own sake, but also because of the prayers of my friends.  For some of my chosen friends in the Neapolitan citizenry have for many years asked me with their whole heart – in their prayers and in their labors on behalf of my enemies living in the same city – to show them some grace through which they could be withdrawn and savingly recalled from their sins and abuses.  Swayed by their prayers, I give to you now these words of mine; and therefore diligently hear the things that I speak.”

“I am Creator of all and Lord over the devils as well as over all the angels, and no one will escape my judgment.  The devil, in fact, sinned in a threefold manner against me:  namely, through pride; through envy; and through arrogance, i.e., through love of his own will. He was so proud indeed that he wished to be lord over me and that I should be subject to him.  He also envied me so much that if it were possible, he would gladly have killed me in order to be lord himself and sit on my throne.  Indeed, his own will was so dear to him that he cared nothing at all about my will so long as he could perform his own will.  Because of this, he fell from heaven; and, no longer an angel, he became a devil in the depth of hell.  Afterward, however, I, seeing his malice and the great envy that he had toward humankind, showed my will and gave my commandments to human beings that by doing them they could please me and displease the devil.  Finally, because of the charity that I have toward human beings, I came into the world and took flesh of a virgin.  Indeed, I personally taught them the true way of salvation by work and by word; and to show them perfect charity and love, I opened heaven for them by my own blood.”

“But what are those human beings who are my enemies doing to me now?  In truth, they have contempt for my precepts; they cast me out of their hearts like a loathsome poison; indeed, they spit me out of their mouths like something rotten; and they abhor the sight of me as if I were a leper with the worst of stenches.  But the devil, and his works they embrace in their every affection and deed.  For they bring him into their hearts, doing his will with delight and gladness and following his evil suggestions.  Therefore, by my just judgment they shall have their reward in hell with the devil eternally without end.  For in place of the pride that they practice, they will have confusion and eternal shame to such a degree that angels and demons will say of them: ‘They are filled with confusion to the very utmost!’  And for their insatiable greed, each devil in hell will so fill them with his deadly venom that in their souls there will remain no place that is not filled with diabolic venom.  And for the lust with which they burn like senseless animals, they will never be admitted to the sight of my face but will be separated from me and deprived of their inordinate will.”

“Moreover, know that just as all mortal sins are very serious, so too a venial sin is made mortal if a human being delights in it with the intention of persevering.  Wherefore, know that two sins, which I now name to you, are being practiced and that they draw after them other sins that all seem as if venial.  But because the people delight in them with the intention of persevering, they are therefore made mortal.  And the people in the city of Naples commit many other abominable sins that I do not wish to name to you.”

“The first of the two sins is that the faces of rational human creatures are being painted with the various colors with which insensible images and statues of idols are colored so that to others, these faces may seem more beautiful than I made them.”

“The second sin is that the bodies of men and women are being deformed from their natural state by the unseemly forms of clothing that the people are using.  And the people are doing this because of pride and so that in their bodies they may seem more beautiful and more lascivious than I, God, created them.  And indeed, they do this so that those who thus see them may be more quickly provoked and inflamed toward carnal desire.”  

“Therefore, know for very certain that as often as they daub their faces with antimony and other extraneous coloring, some of the infusion of the Holy Spirit is diminished in them and the devil draws nearer to them.  In fact, as often as they adorn themselves in disorderly and indecent clothing and so deform their bodies, the adornment of their souls is diminished, and the devil’s power is increased.”

“O my enemies, who do such things and with effrontery commit other sins contrary to my will, why have you neglected my passion; and why do you not attend in your hearts to how I stood naked at the pillar, bound and cruelly scourged with hard whips, and to how I stood naked on the cross and cried out, full of wounds and clothed in blood?  And when you paint and anoint your faces, why do you not look at my face and see how it was full of blood?  You are not even attentive to my eyes and how they grew dark and were covered with blood and tears, and how my eyelids turned blue.  Why too do you not look at my mouth or gaze at my ears and my beard and see how they were aggrieved and were stained with blood?  You do not look at the rest of my limbs, monstrously wounded by various punishments, and see how I hung black and blue on the cross and dead for your sake.  And there, derided and rejected, I was despised by all in order that, by recalling these things and attentively remembering them, you might love me, your God, and thus escape the devil’s snares, in which you have been horribly bound.  However, in your eyes and hearts, all these things have been forgotten and neglected.  And so you behave like prostitutes, who love the pleasure and delight of the flesh, but not its offspring.  For when they feel a living infant in their womb, at once they procure and abortion by means of herbs and other things so that without losing their fleshly pleasure and further wicked delight, they may thus be always absorbed in their lust and their foul carnal intercourse.  This is how you behave.  For I, God, your Creator and Redeemer, visit all with my grace, knocking, namely, at your hearts, because I love all.  But when you feel, in your hearts, any knock of an inpouring – namely of my Spirit – or any compunction; or when, through hearing my words, you conceive any good intention, at once you procure spiritually, as it were, an abortion, namely, by excusing your sins and by delighting in them and even by damnably willing to persevere in them. For that reason, you do the devil’s will, enclosing him in your hearts and expelling me in this contemptible way.  Therefore, you are without me, and I am not in you.  And you are not in me but in the devil, for it is his will and his suggestion that you obey.”

“And so, because I have just spoken my judgement, I shall also now speak my mercy.  My mercy, however, is this:  namely, that none of my very enemies is so thorough or so great a sinner that my mercy would be denied him if he were to ask for it humbly and wholeheartedly.”  

“Wherefore, my enemies must do three things if they wish to reconcile themselves to my grace and friendship.

The first is that with all their heart they repent and have contrition because they have offended me, their Creator and Redeemer.

The second thing is confession – clean, frequent, and humble – which they must make before their confessor.  And thus let them amend all their sins by doing penance and making satisfaction in accord with that same confessor’s counsel and discretion.  For then I shall draw close to them, and the devil will be kept far away from them.

The third thing is that after they have thus performed these things with devotion and perfect charity, they are to go to communion and receive and consume my Body with the intention of never falling back into former sins but of persevering in good even to the end.” 

“If anyone, therefore, amends his life in this manner, at once I will run out to meet him as a loving father runs to meet his wayward son; and I will receive him into my grace more gladly that he himself could have asked or thought.  And then I will be in him, and he in me; and he shall live with me and rejoice forever.”  But upon him who perseveres in his sins and malice my justice shall indubitably come.  For when the fisherman sees the fish in the water playing in their delight and merriment, even then he drops his hook into the sea and draws it out, catching the fish in turn and then putting them to death – not all at once, but a few at a time – until he has taken them all.  This is indeed what I shall do to my enemies who persevere in sin.  For I shall bring them a few at a time to the consummation of the worldly life of this age in which they take temporal and carnal delight.  And at an hour they do not believe and are living in even greater delight, I shall then snatch them away from earthly life and put them to eternal death in a place where they will nevermore see my face because they loved to do and accomplish their inordinate and corrupted will rather than perform my will and my commandments.” ¹(pgs. 207-211)

I feel the Lord is very specific and clear in these, what I call, KEY statements.
And the following are what I call Key Scripture passages – Some being Directives actually spoken by our Lord:

Obedience & Disobedience: John 3:36
The Lord’s relentlessness when aroused: Job 41
Founding of His (The) Church: Matt 16: 13-19
Returning – One Flock: John 10:16
One Gate in which to enter, Jesus:  John 10: 7,9
Defiled & Unbelieving re: good deeds: Titus 1: 15-16
Eating flesh & blood directive: John 6: 53-58
Testimony of Holy Spirit, the water and the blood – all of one accord: 1st John 5:6
Belief in the Son being a testimony: 1st John 5:10 
Eating – possessing the Son: 1st John 5:12
Being Lukewarm:  Revelations 3:16
Having no other Gods before Him – God is a jealous God: Exodus 20:4

As you can understand, obedience to God is paramount / Obedience is an absolute condition.

I, Michelle Tobit, of Consider Today! encourage you to obtain and read this book.  We all, at some point in our lives have asked God for answers to things we want to understand better.  You may find answers to some of your questions in the section called “The Fifth Book of Revelations or Book of Questions” that begins on page 99.  For example, what Our Lord, Jesus, says about frequent confession on page 132: “When there is a fire in the house, it is necessary to have a venthole through which the smoke can go out so that the inhabitant may enjoy the warmth.  Thus, for everyone who desires to keep my Spirit and my divine grace, frequent confession is useful so that through it, the smoke of sin may escape.  For although my divine Spirit is in itself unchangeable, nevertheless it quickly withdraws from the heart that is not guarded by humble confession.”  See for yourself on page 135 what Our Lord says about why some have greater tribulation, or in the “Seventh Book of Revelation” beginning on page 177 what Our Lord says to the bishop and includes speaking of the prelates of the church and dignity of their office.  See page 169 about what to “answer to those who say that the pope is not the true pope” or page 172 (beginning at the top of the page) about why priests should not marry.

 

Permission to use these passages in their entirety, and others in this book, is sought after by Paulist Press.

¹ Birgitta of Sweden; Life and Selected Revelations.  By The Classics of Western Spirituality.  A Library of the Great Spiritual Masters.  Paulist Press. Mahwah, New Jersey 1990.