A Glass of Water
Maria says: (Maria Mother and Teacher, Vol. 1)
“My children, here I am with you. I am the Virgin who gives relief from suffering. I go about the world, I go around the hospitals, I enter into the homes where the infirm, the agonizing, the suffering groan in their bed of pain and to all I give comfort and help. I enter the jails and the penitentiaries, I encourage the good and I admonish the less good and the evil.
It is still for me a very pleasing work to give relief to the souls in Purgatory. They are friends of God, they feel his loss and they wait impatiently for the moment in which that will be able to see Him face to face and enjoy his happiness.
Not that in Purgatory there is not the presence of God, since He is in every place, but they, though perceiving his presence, do not have the grace to catch sight of it, and they desire it like the thirsty man desires the spring of water that will quench his thirst, like the hungry man desires food and like the sick man desires the oxygen that will give him breath.
I give comfort to these souls by means of your prayers and your sacrifices. I do not descend personally into Purgatory, bit the souls feel refreshment even only with my shadow. It is as if a beneficial shower were to fall upon an arid soil and burned by the sun.
I send my angels to do this beneficial work to give relief, and they comfort with their presence and with the freshness of their wings those souls desirous of love and sorrow. Yes, desirous also of sorrow, because they know that through its means they will be able to testify to God that they desire to be purified in order to be worthy to appear in his presence.
Now, children, I give you an invitation. You will one day present yourselves before God the judge and you will need lawyers who will defend you and friends who will take your side and demonstrate their affection for you.
Two are the ways in which you can procure for yourselves many friends. With the charity practiced towards the poor, the sick, the miserable in soul and body, you make for yourselves many friends on earth. It won’t be the friends that praise you, who procure fun and amusements for you who will defend you before the eternal Judge, but it shall be exactly those Lazarus’s to whom you will have given even only a little of your free time, a good word, a little help and perhaps with it, faith, joy and patience in order to be able to live, suffer and love.
Therefore, may your merciful visits be blessed, may your thoughts of love be blessed and may your hands be blessed which go out of their way to console and help the brethren in suffering. Nothing is lost of what you do and He who repays even one only glass of water given in his name shall give you a big reward.
You can, however, make yourselves many very powerful friends by helping me to lift up the souls that suffer in the place of purgation. This is a charity very pleasing to the heart of God and mine.
Courage, children, in the commemoration of the dead may faith be strengthened and charity enkindled; may the hope of being able one day to reach those whom you have loved, animate you to do with humility and trust the great works o f God.
Children, I bless you and I love you.”