Creating custom messages

I’m intercepting the email being sent using $abort = true; I want to display a custom message for that abort message.

The related code looks like this…

add_action('wpcf7_before_send_mail', 'wpcf7ev_verify_email_address', 10, 2);

add_filter('wpcf7_display_message', function ($message, $status)
{
    $submission = WPCF7_Submission::get_instance();
    if ($submission->is('abort'))
    {
        $message = __('Please check your email to verify your email address.', '');
    }

    return $message;
}
, 10, 2);

function wpcf7ev_verify_email_address($wpcf7_form, &$abort)
{
    // first prevent the emails being sent as per usual
    $abort = true;

The email does get aborted, but the message is still ‘Sending mail has been aborted.’. I’m not sure if that filter is being called?

What am I doing wrong with the wpcf7_display_message filter?