Aglae

"Aglaé à la maison de Marie" by Lorenzo Ferri, as directed by Maria Valtorta. Excerpt from the book "Valtorta and Ferri".

Aglaé is a provocative 26-year-old woman, very beautiful, undulating gait and fine hands whom Jesus meets in Hebron in the house that was once that of John the Baptist.

She is the mistress of Sciammaï, a Herodian, occupant of the premises. Daughter the only child of the steward of a great lord Roman of Syracuse (Sicily), she went imperceptibly from her taste for dance to prostitution, from the age of 14, before ending up in Hebron.

But her encounter with Jesus gives her the courage to react: she runs away from Sciammai and radically changes her life. The valuable jewels, which she gives to Jesus, once monetized by Judas, are used to bribe the jailer of the Baptist, arrested once and locked up in Macheronte.

Constantly veiled and very discreet, she follows Jesus and hides to listen to his teachings at the Belle Eau, going so far as to sleep in a hut of branches in the rain and cold.

At the end of a preaching on purity, without naming her, Jesus addresses her directly:

"Make yourself a new name with God (Aglaé means "radiant with beauty"). Here's what's of value. You are the vice. Become honesty. Become the sacrifice. Become the martyrdom of your repentance. You knew how to martyr your heart to make the chair enjoy. Now, know how to martyrize your flesh to give eternal peace to your heart."

Wandering, she finds welcome with the Virgin Mary, entrusts to her in cry her past trouble and implores her pity. Her house being too busy for Aglaé's safety, Mary entrusts her temporarily to Suzanne, the young married of Cana, one of women disciples. But harassed by the Pharisees, she must take refuge, at Jesus's request, in a deserted place where she will complete her short life:

"You will join me without delay where I will be after my sacrifice and yours. In the solitude where you will be and where Satan will assail you with hateful violence as you belong more and more to Heaven, you will find one of my apostles once sinner, then redeemed (no doubt Matthew).

- So it wasn't the blessed apostle who was telling me about You (André)? He's too honest to have been a sinner.

- Not this one, another. He'll join you at the right time. He will tell you what you cannot yet know."

Jesus gives her as an model to his disciples:

"I gave her back life, not in her womb but in her soul dried up by paganism and by sin, and I made her fruitful in justice, delivering her from what was holding her back, helped by her good will. And I give her to you as a model. Do not be scandalized. In truth I tell you that she deserves to be cited as an exemple and imitated, for there are few in Israel who have come as far as this pagan sinner to reach the sources of God.

- And where is she now?

- God alone knows. In a hard penitence, certainly. Pray for the support..."

His name

This name means, in her own words, "vice". But it is, in fact, a moral mockery of its Greek etymology: "aglaïa = radiant with beauty".

Where is it mentioned in the work?

EMV 77 EMV 79

EMV 81 EMV 82

EMV 112 EMV 116 EMV 118 EMV 119 EMV 121 EMV 122 EMV 123 EMV 124 EMV 127 EMV 129 EMV 130 EMV 132 EMV 133 EMV 137 EMV 138 EMV 156 EMV 168 EMV 198

EMV 200 EMV 211 EMV 242 EMV 243 EMV 262

EMV 346 EMV 398

EMV 437 EMV 442 EMV 468

EMV 596

EMV 647

Learn more about this character

Extracts from Dictionnaire des personnages de l'Évangile, selon Maria Valtorta (Mgr René Laurentin, François-Michel Debroise, Jean-François Lavère, Éditions Salvator, 2012):

In a vision of February 25, 1946, Aglaé appears to Maria Valtorta. She informs her of the end of her life:

"I endured in spirit the reminiscences of chair, her howls of madness.... My soul was higher, and would not consent. Below, my flesh howled like a she-wolf. Its cries sometimes even prevented me from praying. I offered the Lord the prayer of my patience. I fixed the eyes of my soul on the Savior and repeated his words to myself in spirit."

In the same vision, Maria Valtorta's "inner counselor" informs her that Aglaé is among the saints:

"she is cited, but no longer very well known today". Indeed, the sanctoral now only knows a fourth-century namesake, celebrated on May 14.

In the Osservatore Romano article commenting on the Index

The anonymous author denounces "Some pages are rather scabrous and, by certain descriptions and scenes, remind one of modern novels, thus, to give just a few examples, the confession made to Marie of a certain Aglaé, a woman of bad life'".