Mary and Joseph's painful trial before their marriage (1/2)

In Maria Valtorta's The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me (1), the Blessed Virgin recalls how she and Joseph lived through the days of her early pregnancy before Joseph learned the truth from an angel: 

“My Joseph suffered his passion. It began in Jerusalem when he noticed My condition. And it lasted several days, exactly as it had happened to Jesus and to Me. Neither was it less painful for his soul. And only because of the holiness of My just spouse, it was contained in such a dignified and secret form, that it has been hardly noticed throughout centuries.

Oh! Our first Passion! Who can feel its intimate and silent intensity? Who can describe My pain when I realized that Heaven had not yet heard My prayer by revealing the mystery to Joseph?

I understood that he was not aware of it when I saw that he was respectful to Me as usual. If he had known that I bore in Me the Word of God, he would have adored that Word enclosed in My womb, with the acts of veneration which are due to God and which he would not have failed to accomplish, as I would not have refused to receive, not for My own sake, but for Him Who was within Me and that I bore, as the Ark of the Alliance carried the stone code and the vases of manna. 

Who can measure My struggle against the dismay that endeavored to overwhelm Me in order to convince Me that I had hoped in vain in the Lord? Oh! I think it was the furious rage of Satan! I perceived doubt rising behind My back, and stretching its icy claws to imprison My soul and prevent it from praying. Doubt is so dangerous and lethal to the spirit. It is lethal because it is the first agent of the deadly disease called “despair”, against which we must react with all our strength, so that our souls may not perish, and we may not lose God.”

Maria Valtorta, The Gospel as Was Revealed to Me, Vol. 1, 25

(1) Maria Valtorta was a 20th -century visionary and victim soul, a Franciscan tertiary and a lay member of the Servants of Mary who wrote thousands of handwritten pages, without modification, recording events throughout Christ’s life. Together these visions are called the “Poem of the Man-God” – also known as “The Gospel as Was Revealed to Me”. Biblical scholars, through theological analysis, agree the writings are consistent with biblical teachings, and actually answer long-standing questions about biblical accounts.