Discover the experiences shared by our readers
These detailed testimonies reveal the profound impact of Maria Valtorta's work on the spiritual lives of its readers. Each account witnesses the graces received and conversions experienced.
163
testimonies collected
These detailed testimonies have been collected according to a structured methodology, allowing precise documentation of the impact of Maria Valtorta's work on readers' spiritual lives. Each testimony addresses the discovery of the work, its impact on faith, the graces received, and recommendations for other potential readers.
Esteban Vargas (23 years old)
A friend whom I admire greatly spoke to me about it as a treasure. I paid little attention to it, then one day I listened to it being read on YouTube. I immediately recognized the voice of my Shepherd.
I was already sensitive to Love. I sometimes felt strong inner movements, especially at mass. Reading the Work has multiplied them both in number and intensity. Being able to contemplate the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus so abundantly is an unimaginable grace. Everything has been multiplied in me: the love of Jesus, of His Church, of His Most Holy Eucharist, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of the Holy Father, everything, everything, everything!
I am a convert. I was already practicing when I discovered the Work. Yet, I feel like I have been converted a second time, and in a much more powerful way. I find such luminous answers there! I thought I had great faith before. It was tiny.
Nothing to lose. Everything to gain. If it's false, it doesn't matter. If it's true, it's a Treasure. I believe it with all my being.
Derek Owens (80 years old)
Father Gino Violini received a copy from an Italian lady in Calgary. Father Violini asked me to read it to him. His reaction was, “I wish I had all this when I was a seminarian.” When I finished the last page, he asked me to start reading it again from page one.
As I read on, I knew—or something in my soul assured me—that this was an authentic record of the life of Christ. An overwhelming conviction, full of love, came over me, assuring me beyond the shadow of a doubt that this was a true exposition of Gospel events. Its penetrating wisdom filled me with awe.
It was a rich medicine for me, more effective than any spiritual retreat I had ever attended, and it compelled me to correct many things within myself and expel sleeping faults from my system. It was like a sieve, removing clumps of imperfections previously unnoticed by my conscience. The revelation was a radical reformer. It inspired justice and love in matters I had not considered before. It showed me my imperfections and steered me in the right direction. It gave me a picture of the perfect personality of Jesus, an example I wanted to copy.
It is a miracle almost impossible to imagine. It is Christianity from the Fountainhead. You will see the Gospel unfold before your eyes in bright colors. The day the Work was published, crowds should have lined up around the block to get their first copy.
If I were a priest instead of a bookbinder, I would tell my congregation to study every lesson given to us in the Valtorta revelations. It would make them all saints.
Jean-Pierre Gressin (79 years old)
About 30 years ago, a Catholic friend gave me several volumes of the first edition of the work. While reading a few chapters, I found Jesus too human and too severe and did not continue my reading. I also found this friend a bit excessive in her faith. Ten years later, the video by J-F Lavère convinced me of the authenticity of Maria Valtorta's writings. I resumed my reading and purchased all the published works, listened to videos on the web, USB key, etc...
Nothing else interests me today, except Jesus, who grants us such grace through the gift of this work to humanity. I understand the immense path I must now travel. I try to attend Mass almost every day, adore the Most Blessed Sacrament, participate fervently in my prayer group, the daily rosary, apostolate on the web and around me, and frequent confession. When one is retired, there is so much time to pray. Health trials are offered with love. Maria is also our model. The goal is to do God's will in everything and at every moment. "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not my will but yours."
The graces... Because it is speaking to Jesus, always happy to thank him for all the graces he has already given us. Because he speaks to us with these writings but also deep in our hearts. "If he calls upon me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him, with long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation" PS 90.
Difficult when one sees the reluctance of some Catholics. For me, the scientific evidence is indisputable. I don't know how to speak to someone who lacks common sense. One must know how to set aside prejudices, demonstrate a certain holiness, a lot of love, encourage the person to read conversion testimonies, show the urgency of proclaiming the Gospel to the whole world, which is heading towards its downfall.
I would like to say that even if it was not the writings of Maria Valtorta that were the source of my initial conversion, since I owe my conversion to the Holy Shroud of Turin at the age of 33, after a life perhaps worse or at least as disordered as that of Mary Magdalene; it is undoubtedly by the immense grace of the work that I have been able to hold firm through the trials I have faced since then until today. May God be blessed.
Anonymous (41 years old)
I discovered the work through Jean Francois Lavère's video on the scientific authenticity of the gospel as it was revealed to me.
I felt like I was among the apostles, with Jesus, and loving him more and more.
Not a day goes by without me thinking about Jesus and his teachings.
Read and you will understand.
Anonymous (55 years old)
I discovered the work at a dinner with friends. One of the volumes was present on the lower shelf of the coffee table and caught my eye. I asked my friends a few questions. In the following days, I visited many websites about the work, which led me to purchase the first volume, then the others, and finally the notebooks from 1943.
I found in the work, particularly the notebooks (from which I read a passage each day on the site "the word that gives eternal life"), many answers to my questions. This gave me valuable insights on how to pray and conform to the Gospel.
Although baptized at birth and a practicing Catholic (at least I thought I was), reading the work made me realize that I was more than a lukewarm Christian and that my behavior was not in line with the Gospel. I experienced a profound conversion in 2020. I went to confession, which I hadn't done for about 30 years. And from that confession, I immediately stopped visiting pornographic sites to which I was addicted (sometimes several hours a week). It has now been 6 years and, thanks to God, I have not relapsed despite the temptations. And since then, I confess regularly. I requested the imposition of the scapular of Mount Carmel a few years later and since then, I recite the rosary every day.
Start by reading a few pages from one of the volumes, or just the daily lesson from the notebooks on the site "the word that gives eternal life". Like the witnesses of Emmaus, your heart will not remain indifferent!
Benoit (50 years old)
In 2011, during a spiritual retreat at the charity home of Château Neuf de Gallore, I confided to God this cry: "My God, after my day of work, as a father, once the children are in bed, I am more inclined to watch a movie than to pray to You. Renew my thirst for You." After 5 days in silence, on the morning of the last day, at breakfast, as we had received permission to speak again, a young man sat across from me and spoke passionately about Maria Valtorta. I listened politely and said that I would buy the first volume to form my own opinion. Done.
If the canonical gospels contain the essentials of the Christian faith, they are like a black and white film. Maria Valtorta is like a 4K DVD with movement, smell... a total immersion, which reminded me of the Jesuit methods for meditating on passages of scripture. Imagining the place, the scene, the people and living as if we were there... many passages of the gospels seemed incomprehensible, mysterious to me: the writings of Maria make them holy and luminous. I think, for example, "why does Mary, after the angel's announcement, not share this news with her fiancé?", "how can a Matthew, who has devoted his whole life to making a lot of money by betraying his compatriots, suddenly follow Jesus, following his call?", "how could Judas, after seeing so many miracles of Jesus, betray him like that?" Etc etc...
These teachings continue to be a living source of faith for me. This nourishment has driven me, in order to share this treasure, to get involved in my parish to accompany young people in their first communion journeys, and then to supervise groups of high school students... I regret not being holier with such holy readings! But I trust that the Lord works in His time! Blessed be He who leads His people to fresh pastures!
Read to form your own opinion! I have never seen such a concentration of the Holy Spirit in a work!
Sabine (48 years old)
I discovered "The Gospel as Revealed to Me" by Maria Valtorta, through a very prayerful friend I met upon my return to faith and an evangelical life after a period of wandering. I gradually bought the 10 volumes.
Reading these lines was for me like a small Ignatian retreat because it allowed me to immerse myself in the landscapes, to become familiar with the apostles, so to speak, and this reading impressed many scenes from the Gospel upon me. It enriched my reading of the Gospels and brought certain insights, like when Jesus writes on the ground for the passage of the adulterous woman.
I would say that the work of Maria Valtorta, the writings, allow me movements of inner conversion at the heart of my life of faith. They help me to reform and nourish my prayer life. I find that they lead to humility.
I encourage the reading of these magnificent writings!
Flavia Nocerani (49 years old)
I discovered her thanks to my beloved father Giovanni, who, after hearing about her from a gentleman from the parish of the Legio Maria who came to visit us, wanted to buy the entire work and then continue with all the other writings. I was about 20 years old, and I was very moved when these books arrived; I felt an indescribable joy in my heart that I shared with my father. Every now and then, I would read passages with him, and then when I started working in a clinic, I would read them to a reading group of an "elderly gentleman." Gradually, I read the entire Work... then also on my own... an immense gift to my life...❤️
It has filled my heart with concrete truth towards the Church, the Gospel, the Sacraments, prayer...
The grace that has come to me is that of feeling strongly true everything that Jesus revealed in the Canonical Gospels in an even more real and vivid way. A feeling of the heart burning during the reading, recognizing the same Jesus of the Gospels made even more familiar, being able to read the words and gestures described by Maria Valtorta in such detailed a way that it seems as if one is present there in that time...
If you who are reading are hesitating, I tell you... welcome... believe... and see... let yourself be carried, open your heart... and the heart will be filled with Him... It is truly Him who reveals Himself to us once more... and fills with Peace.
From Heaven, I continue to perceive the presence that has not been interrupted... that of my dad and Maria Valtorta... A closeness through providential events that connect them and have happened to me... True, delicate, and profound signs that have accompanied and illuminated my life... When I read then... I find them all... my dad in the small, discreet but present signs left among those pages dear to me... Maria Valtorta, humble and faithful... life offered and given that was entirely spent to describe... and Jesus, so alive in His word... so alive in my heart...
silvia caneparo (76 years old)
Waiting for my turn for Latin and Greek recitation... 63 years ago.
I understood that they are alive!!!
Increase in prayer and ability to "savor" the Holy Mass. Test.
Test, test, test!!! Do not stop even if the descriptions (which are beautiful, by the way) bore you. It is, in any case, a literary masterpiece. It enriches you nonetheless!
THE WORK speaks for itself. And also the other writings, the dictations, etc. But first The Gospel... mine is still The Poem of the Man-God edition from the '60s/'70s.
Padre Marco Lusuardi Carmelitano Scalzo (61 years old)
A friend had introduced me to an episode; it had left me doubtful. Later, while at the library of the Seminary of Reggio Emilia, I suddenly felt compelled to search the catalogs to see if the Work was there. I found it, and I borrowed the first volume, and subsequently the following ones. Then I purchased all the volumes, and I also had them purchased by the Municipal Library of Reggio Emilia. The discovery was thrilling. The first time (I was about 23 years old) I read the entire Work in six months. Then I reread it six or seven times in the following years, up to today.
The Gospel helped me discover Jesus and Mary, to better understand their feelings, their way of speaking, their behavior down to the smallest things. It was what I had long desired. Everything interested me, even the details, about the persons of Jesus and Mary. For example, in Volume V, Chapter 359.9: Jesus extends his hand and says, "I accept for the poor. But I do not accept the carriage. I am the Poor among the poor. Do not insist." [...] "Why didn't you take the carriage?" "Because it is good to go on foot." These few words always make me reflect deeply. I add that every time I reread the Work, I always found new insights, new points to delve into and meditate on, new encouragements to intensely practice my Christian, religious, and priestly life. It is a Work that does not age.
The Gospel has made me meditate a lot. I have highlighted numerous passages, and recently I copied them on the computer to reread them often and strive to understand them more and more and put them into practice. The "Notebooks" of Valtorta have also helped me a lot; I invite those who have already read the Gospel to read those as well. Maria Valtorta's Autobiography had disappointed me. I can't define what I expected to read. Perhaps I didn't find anything particularly useful for my faith journey. But in the following years, with each rereading, the exceptional virtues of the Author became increasingly clear to me, virtues that she humbly tried to keep in the background. For example: on page 300 of the III edition, she writes: "I had lunch as usual: a little but with relish." On page 301: "I never ate in the evening." But what strikes me most is her offering herself as a "Victim to God" for the Church and sinners, and her enduring incredible physical pains without complaints and without second thoughts. I am convinced of the heroism of her virtues. I hope that her Beatification Process begins as soon as possible.
Pius XII had said: “Publish this Work as it is; those who read will understand.” Some may be discouraged by the vastness of the Work. I invite them to read at least the X volume, on the Passion and Glorification of the Lord Jesus. Then they will certainly feel the desire to read all the rest. Some are disturbed by the Author's style, very descriptive; but for many, this is an aid to meditation.
When I became a priest, I often used the Work to better understand certain difficult passages of the canonical Gospels and the Old Testament, and to write clearer and more beneficial homilies for the faithful. The Work has also helped me to understand and avoid the theological errors that are widespread in the Church today, so that I can contribute to defending the flock of Christ. I have spoken about the Gospel with more than two thousand faithful (an approximate estimate), recommending the purchase of the Work, which allows even people with little education to receive a very pure and profound doctrinal and spiritual formation. The Gospel continues to be incredibly opposed by various ecclesiastics, even very authoritative ones. I believe that this also involves the action of the evil one, who certainly hates this Work for the great good it does to souls free from prejudice.
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