The Role of Bishops and Priests

saint annibale maria di francia

Luisa Piccarreta’s extraordinary confessor for 17 years, appointed by the Church to be the censor of her writings, found nothing contrary to Catholic faith or morals and granted the “Nihil Obstat” to the first 19 of her Volumes in 1926, shortly before his death. Archbishop Joseph Leo granted the Imprimatur to those Volumes also in 1926.

“He [Jesus] calls [Luisa] the littlest one that He found on earth, the instrument of a Mission so sublime that no other can be compared to it – that is, the Triumph of the Divine Will upon the whole earth, in conformity with what is said in the ‘Our Father’: Fiat Voluntas Tua sicut in Caelo et in Terra.”

Excerpt from Letter 2 to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta
Messina, June 20, 1924

“These are writings that must now be made known to the world. I believe they will produce great good. For as sublime as this science of the Divine Will is, so do these writings of divine dictation present it, clearly and limpidly. In my opinion, no human intellect would have been able to form them.”

Another letter to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta
February 14, 1927

“You know that at this point I do not occupy myself with almost anything regarding my institutes, since I am completely dedicated to the great work of the Divine Will. I speak of it with spiritual persons. I raise the subject when I deem it best to do so. I promote it as much as possible, also within my institutes.”

Archbishop Giovanni Battista Picchierri
Archbishop of trani-barletta-bisceglie, titolare of nazareth

Dear Brother Bishops,
dear priests, dear brothers and sisters,

I greet you in the light and joy of the Risen Lord.

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta, I held the IV International Conference titled “The Church in the Divine Will.” It took place from April 23rd to 26th, 2015 at Corato (Bari) and about 650 participants came from Italy and from Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, France, Germany, Poland, Canada, the United States (California, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Wisconsin), Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Nigeria, Philippines, Korea, Australia. In the variety of cultures and languages, it was an intense experience of the Church’s mystery of missionary communio”!

I accepted with joy the pledge that the participants at the Conference solemnly declared of wanting to take in being more faithful to the Charisma of “Living in the Divine Will” following the example of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta “in the Church, through the Church and with the whole Church.”… I invoked, at the end of the meeting, my Blessing on all in the hope that everyone, individuals and groups, can find in the heart of the Pastors of the Church welcome and care in order to bring the Joy and the Merciful Love of the Risen Lord.

May Mary, Mother and Queen of the Divine Will, always guide and watch over us in Her Fiat.

Corato - Church of the Sacred Heart, April 26, 2015

✠ Giovan Battista Pichierri

Homily, Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Chiesa Matrice, Corato October 29, 2005
Closing of Diocesan phase of the Cause of Beatification of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta

“… We give thanks that there are here today so many brothers and sisters from churches in Italy and from churches abroad, all gathered together in this holy Mass to give thanks and praise to the Holy Trinity for the gift of our Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta, daughter of this blessed land of Corato and daughter of the Church of Trani-Barletta-Bisceglie, she who in the years of her terrestrial life (April 23, 1865—March 4, 1947), radiated the light of the risen Christ in her permanent state of suffering. As St. Paul said, ‘I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). We also pray to the Holy Trinity that her glorification in the role as Servant of God as proclaimed by the supreme authority of the Church, will make the idea of “living in the Will of God” well known to everybody; like Jesus said: ‘Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.” Praise be for the progress of a Christian life to the glory of God and His Kingdom.”

“…The holiness of Luisa in the Light of the ‘Divine Will’ can give to the Christians of our times such a driving power to their interior life that their external life, so engulfed by materialism and secularism that the true joy of the life has been taken away. The joy of life is the hope for Eternal Life, already alight in the soul that is looking for God as the deer yearns for the source of water (Ps 142:2).”

archbishop carmelo cassati
archbishop of trani-barletta-bisceglie
50th anniversary of the Transit to Heaven of the servant of god, Luisa Piccarreta: 1947-1997

“Fifty years after her death, the writings of Luisa are more than alive in the souls who follow her, from one end of the earth to the other. Souls who draw from the crystal clear doctrine of the Divine Will, a lesson of sanctity, that spreads its roots in the Will of God, as life in man, and as complete fulfillment of the prayer of the Our Father: ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’”

His Excellency Monsignor Cassati had this to say at the International Congress on Luisa Piccarreta held in Costa Rica:

“The Church proclaimed Fr. Annibale [di Francia] Blessed. Without doubt, part of the sanctity of Luisa reached his soul, conforming him to the Fiat and to the Divine Will which the Servant of God cultivated to tirelessly.”

It was the same Luisa who called Saint Annibale the First Apostle of the Divine Fiat and its Herald in her writings.

Archbishop Guiseppe Carata
Archbishop Emeritus of Trani-Barletta-Bisceglie & co-founder of the canonically approved “association Luisa Piccarreta”

“Dear friends,

“What a joy it is to have arrived at the best years of life and to reflect on so many years of having lived in the land of the Saints, as our beautiful Apulia is often called. One of my greatest joys has been able to work so close with the Association which I co-founded in Corato, together with Sister Assunta Marigliano, and to now see that, we are ever closer to having a new Saint. For us here in Corato she will never be “Saint Luisa,” but will always be “Luisa the Saint.” As a seminarian in the late 1930’s, our spiritual director shared Luisa’s Writings with us students on a daily basis, and we were awed that a soul so intimate with God resided in our very midst.

“… During my many years of ministry in the Archdiocese I have seen Luisa loved, crucified, risen, and I know my days will not end until I see her exalted to the honor of the altar as, without any shadow of doubt, she deserves. The theology of her spirituality brings confusion to the intelligent, wonder and hope to the simple, and now brings a depth of understanding to the Church which, as I have always held, could well be a new heavens and a new earth for all the faithful. The praises which I offer do not come from having served as rector of our pontifical seminary for fifteen years, but from many years of meditating our Lord’s own prayer—let Your Will be done on earth as it is in heaven!

“Be gentle with our Luisa, for she is our pride and joy. Honor the inheritance she has passed on to the world in her writings. Pray for her intercession before the Trinity for your sanctification in God’s very own Spirit, for this is the reason why we were created. It is a matter of glory—given, and shared—which will shepherd us through eternity. ‘If you only knew what it means not to live in the Divine Fiat you would rather die than give life to your own will.’ These words, often spoken by our Lord to Luisa, have led me through my own episcopacy, and now that I may rest in my aged reflections, I can see that it is a wine in which I greatly delight…”

cardinal JOSÉ saraiva martins, prefect of the congregation for the causes of saints

IV International Congress on the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta on the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of Her Birth
”The Church in the Divine Will”

“I have been impressed by two elements which characterize this first day in the life of Luisa. The first element is that precisely in this place, with the sacred washing, Luisa has received the gift of divine life. Here has been sowed the precious seed of the very holiness of Jesus, given to her so that it would germinate in her life conformity to the Divine Volition of Jesus in her daily acts, made of prayer, work, and so many encounters. Luisa has lived the ordinariness of her life in the continuous tension of asking even in the smallest of her acts the presence of Jesus, to give the Father the glory, the praise, and the adoration that all men should give Him and that Luisa has done always and for all.

“The second element I pick from the fact that the calendar, that 23rd of April, 1865, marked the Sunday in albis. We know that Saint John Paul II would consecrate this Sunday to Divine Mercy. This fact also seems to me like an anticipating sign in the life of Luisa.

“… Luisa Piccarreta shows us this typical dynamism of God’s mercy that attracts to the most profound unity with Him for transforming the heart in a spring of gushing water for the benefit of all. … Living like that, even the smallest act of our life participates in the dynamism of mercy, concurring with Jesus in bringing His light to all hearts and to God the praise and adoration that everyone should give Him.

“The small lady of southern Italy, who has known the alternation of various epidemics, two wars, and has collected so many tears due to the hard conditions of life of contemporaries, transforms her own heart in a place totally inhabited by God. Those who have met her have felt themselves attracted from the reality of heaven and driven to live a holy life, totally spent in the ordinary occupations under the model of the family of Nazareth. And it is properly in the quotidian that God’s mercy looks for men in order to restore them to the innocence of Eden, to a life weaved with joy and to an existence guided by the certainty of being loved children.

“It is my wish that this Congress will signal for you a milestone in your journey to sanctity in the desire to become always more missionaries of that Fiat which has brought heaven on earth and earth in heaven. May the Virgin Mary, our loved Protectress, take us throughout the paths of time and guard us in her maternal heart.”

vicar general of trani, monsignor savino giannotti

Inaugural Lecture, Closing of the Diocesan Phase of the Cause of Beatification of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta
Corato, BA, Italy — October 27, 2005

“Luisa is completely singular.”

“Luisa shows us something significant: to live the life of the Kingdom following Jesus, taking up the Cross; to live in total and perfect obedience; to always realize, in each instant of life, in a humble and docile way, the Divine Volition, rather, to be of the Eucharist, at the same time sacrificial victim and Communion.”

“…she loves Eucharistic Jesus in a way completely extraordinary”

“She manifests a particular pedagogy of holiness: The Fiat and total and radical obedience to Jesus Christ and to the Church, availability to life in the Divine Volition, ‘to be, (I add) “instrument” and Epiphany of the Divine Will, that is to say, of the Most Holy Trinity, in the world.’”

“Monsignor Addazi calls her: ‘Herald of the Kingdom of the Divine Will’, ‘Angel of Reparation,’ ‘Victim of Love,’ ‘Your little daughter of the Divine Will.’
Luisa, favorite daughter of God, has been followed by the local Church. She lives a pedagogy of holiness that is called ‘Living in the Divine Volition,’ and ‘she has attracted the attention of the same Ecclesiastical Authorities.’”

fr. ludwig beda, german benedictine scholar

Around early 1930, Maria de Regibus from Turin asked Don Calvi to send copies of The Treatise on the Divine Will and The Hours of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ to well-known German Benedictine scholar, Fr. Ludwig Beda.

Fr. Beda was a well-known publisher of numerous books in several languages. Shortly after reading The Treatise on the Divine Will, Fr. Beda wrote to Don Calvi asking permission to translate it into German. He called the Treatise the greatest that has ever been written on this theme of the Divine Will.

Fr. Beda devoted himself primarily to the teachings on the Divine Will. It is reported he told Maria de Regibus:
”To be linked with such a soul as this [Luisa] is more precious to me than possessing half the world, because she communicates to me what is divine, with such abundance. … I have set aside my great work on stigmatics, and humanly speaking I don’t think it will be published anymore … even though the editor wants to publish my work, I have not been able to persuade myself to set aside the Kingdom of the Divine Will … It seems to me that God wanted to put me to the test, to see what I would prefer. But the Kingdom of the Divine Will is over everything else. I remain faithful to the work to which I have consecrated myself with a vow.”

Fr. Beda wrote to Luisa:

“The Kingdom of the Divine Will keeps me busy day and night. It is the most important thing in my life, and I would like this Divine Will to be my own life… The deeper we penetrate into this Treatise, the more we discover the divine, which absorbs us and penetrates us so gently and sweetly that to follow it and live it is everything.”

father bernardino bucci, ofm, co-founder of the Association of the Divine Will
Fr. Bucci spent many years as spiritual advisor of the Association which was canonically erected on March 4, 1987 in Corato, Italy, where Luisa lived; he was a member of the Tribunal for the Cause for Beatification of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta.

“Because Mary was so privileged, possessing all possible graces, unique in the mind of God, unique in history, the Lord did not want to leave her without the assistance of Priestly authority until her dying breath. This had never been provided to any other creature because none had ever had such fullness of grace, therefore such custody had not been necessary. Only to one other creature had this Priestly assistance been given, one chosen in our time, Luisa Piccarreta. These are the words of the Lord to Luisa: “Now, My daughter, you too are unique in My Mind, and will also be unique in history; and there will not be, either before or after you, another creature for whom I will dispose, as though forced by necessity, the assistance of My Priests. Having chosen you in order to deposit in you the Sanctity, the Goods, the Effects, the Attitude, of My Supreme Will, it was appropriate, just, decorous, for the very sanctity that My Will contains, that a Priest of Mine should assist you and be the first depository of the Goods which My Will contains, so as to let them pass from his lap into the whole body of the Church. What great attention is required of you, and of them.” Volume 15 — 7.11.23 

more priestly communications affirming the servant of God Luisa Piccarreta
as recorded by Mother Gabrielle Marie of the Annunciation
Mother Superior of the Benedictine Daughters of Divine Will

“In April 2015 I attended the Divine Will conference in Corato. When I attended a meeting with the Bishop of Corato, he told everyone present that we’ve always been able to read all the Divine Will Volumes that Our Lord gave to Luisa…

“On June 2nd and December 18th, 1997 Rev. Antonio Resta and Rev. Cosimo Reho (theologians), respectively, submitted evaluations of Luisa’s writings to the Diocesan tribunal, affirming nothing contained therein contrary to Catholic faith or morals.

“July 24th, 2010, both Theological Censors (whose identities are secret) appointed by the Holy See gave their approval to Luisa’s writings, asserting that nothing contained therein is opposed to Faith or Morals. 

“November 1, 2012, the Archbishop of Trani wrote a formal notice containing a rebuke of those who claim that these writings contain doctrinal errors, stating that such people scandalize the faithful and preempt judgment reserved to the Holy See.

“April 27, 2015, the Archbishop of Trani wrote ‘I wish to let you know that the Cause of Beatification is proceeding positively... I have recommended to all that they deepen the life and the teachings of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta...’”

Epilogue from “I Bring You Tidings of Great Joy” by Reverend Pablo Martin

Saint Paul prayed that we would have a full knowledge of the Divine Will with every knowledge and spiritual intelligence.  And Our Lord, at the Last Supper, said: “Many things I have yet to say to you, but for the moment you are not capable of bearing the weight of them.  But when the Spirit of Truth will come, He will guide you in the Truth, whole, all entire, because He will not speak of Himself but will say all that He has heard and will announce to you future things” (John 16, 12-13).  And to that end He prayed to the Father, saying: “I have made known your name to them and I will make it known, so that the Love with which You have loved Me may be in them and I in them” (John 17, 26).

It is evident how important is the Knowledge.  In the measure that we know a thing, we appreciate it, desire it, love it and therefore possess it.

A precious stone that a man possesses—and this is an example that Jesus gives to Luisa—becomes “precious” in the measure in which this man comes to know how high is the price that he is offered for it.  The gem does not change; the knowledge is changed.

You are presented with a marvelous machine with some unimaginable performance qualities; it is yours; you look at it, admire it; but you do not know how to operate it; you are completely ignorant in this regard; it is as if you did not have anything.  You begin to use it, to become possessor in fact.  Little by little you learn how many things you can do with it and how to use it or drive it.

So it is with the Divine Will. Of It we can know in the measure that God deigns to reveal It.  In that same measure that the just, the saints have appreciated It, loved and possessed It, so have they sanctified themselves.  Blessed are the last—even in the temporal order—because they can be the first.

Let us say immediately: the Divine Will is the great unknown, notwithstanding the eloquent hints—that, even though being hints, are of maximum importance—that we find in Sacred Scripture.

But, we must eliminate any misunderstandings and point out a few things clearly:

• About the Divine Will as an idea. About It a very vague and reduced knowledge is held, be it at the theological level, be it at the level of the common people. For example:

  • that the Will of God is a kind of faculty in Him, in the same manner as it considered in man. Almost secondary to the Intelligence and both are things relative to the Divine Nature, to the “substance” of the Being of God. Almost as one of the attributes… In the Theological treatises it occupies scarcely an appendix.

  • or, when one speaks of the Will of God, one thinks always of what God wants or does not want or what He permits…

• About the Divine Will, from the emotive point of view, we point, for example, a subtle reaction of relief when someone uses the argument of the Love of God with us. (We set out in great depth with a certain cleverness if we have something to do for some compelling motive.) But if there is said: “This is so because it is Will of God,” we feel a very light reaction of dismay and impotence; we do not have a means of escape; they have given us a “checkmate”… Why will it be?

• About the Divine Will as problem. The greater part of good souls are not capable of perceiving of the “Will of God” anything other than this: “And how can I know if a thing is Will of God?” Which means, the problem of these persons ends in themselves. They are always at the center of the vital problem; God is in service to them. They are the protagonists of their life.

Instead, the Divine Will—that which Jesus in the Gospel calls “The Will of the Father”—is the reality most intimate, vital, essential of God.  To say it in perhaps a more intuitive manner: His Will is the substantive (the term that expresses the substance), while, on the other hand, all the divine attributes: Omnipotence, All-Seemingness, Wisdom, Love, Immutability, Immensity, Eternity, Goodness, Justice, Mercy, Sanctity, etc. are his attributes.

The Divine Will is therefore the “beyond,” the “above” of all that It does, of that which God wants or does not want or permits.  It is the fountain and the supreme cause of all that God is, of the ineffable Life of the Most Holy Trinity and of Their Works of Eternal Love.

But why is this mostly unknown among men, being the greatest and most marvelous thing?  Because, before It one notices the discomfort of having to do with another’s decision, which is ineluctable power, against which there is no possibility of escape.

That is the problem, the only one in the end that exists, is that of the relationship between the Will of God and ours.

Both were already represented in the two mysterious and symbolic plants of the terrestrial Paradise: The Tree of Life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  The blessed fruit of the first is Life, the fruit of the second, of which man must not eat, is death.  The Divine Will had “descended” for love in Its work of Creation.  It is present in each created thing, in which It gives existence, energy and life, the life of Its infinite qualities, by which “the Heavens and the earth are full of Its Glory.”

Also in the man, Adam, created perfect and immaculate, the Divine Will was present and alive, so much more glorious for how much as man surpassed in dignity and beauty all other created beings.  The other beings, in fact, are works, creatures of God; but the man, Adam, was created in the capacity of son of God.  In Adam God established all other future men, all called to be sons of God.  But Adam and all his progeny were invited to be sons of God on account of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, “the First-born” among all creatures (Col 1, 15-17) “the Head of every man” (1 Cor. 11, 3), “the Heir” of all Creation (Luke 20, 14).

In Adam, son of God (Luke 3, 38), the Divine Will wanted to form, not only his life, since Adam was made a “living soul” (1 Cor. 15, 45), but the very supernatural Life of God; and thus was a gift of grace.  For this, the Tree of Life was “in the middle of the garden” (Gen, 2, 9).

But it was necessary that the Gift be accepted freely and for love as God offered it freely and for love.  There is the precise significance of the test.  Without the test, free, total acceptance of the Divine Will, God would have had servants, indeed, slaves, but not sons, a thing unworthy of His Love.  Man would have had his human will “as if he did not have it;” therefore, he would have had to sacrifice it, that is to consecrate it, which is to offer it in gift of love to God, to take in its place the Gift of the Divine Will.

But what does it mean that man would have had this will “as if he did not have it?”  In sum, should he or should he not have it?

It is the same problem of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  It must be there, in the Garden of Eden; but he must not eat of its fruit, in order not to die.  What does all this mean?  In that “terrestrial Paradise,” that is human nature cannot absolutely lack the human will, which is the native decisional human faculty, which has the characteristic to be free, having “free will.”  This is clearly a divine endowment, which alone shows how man was made “to the image” of God.  In fact, to be able to decide without constriction is a most noble thing, proper to God; but, in the creature it is also a tremendous risk: to be able to refuse God to affirm one’s self.  It is exactly what Lucifer did and is that which in lesser measure man does when he sins.

To human nature (“spirit, soul and body,” 1 Thes. 5,23), in which man was and is “to the image” of God, God adds a divine gift, in the manner of a royal crown, a supernatural gift: The Gift of His Most Adorable Will, which makes man “to His Likeness.”  God made man to His image, so that man would live and act to His likeness, as a little created God, whom God could love and from whom He would be reloved.

But, at the moment of the response to the test, man said “No” to God.  He disobeyed and with greatest ingratitude ignored the Giver of the Gift: he wanted to do his own will.  In this was sin.  He lost the Divine Will; the royal crown fell from his head and he was no longer like God.  The Divine Will could no longer live and reign in man.  It found Itself banished and became as hidden in Creation, ignored by man.  It became as a most tender mother, deprived of Her children because they no longer recognize Her. They ignore Her and offend Her in a dreadful manner; but She, meanwhile, continues to care for them, to serve them by means of all created things, to give them that little that She can, due to their blindness and distance, waiting for the day in which Her Light will make its way in their darkened minds; and, finally they will receive Her and let Her reign as their Life.

This is sin: the baby, who scarcely beginning to speak, her first word is not “Papa, Mamma,” but “Go away from my life, I do not recognize You, I do not love You.  I will not serve you!”  And, giving life to its own human volition, refuses the Divine Will.

So, it is necessary to state precisely that the Divine Will and the human will must live in such union of love as to not be able to say which would be the one or the other, as a drop of water thrown into the sea.  Therefore, more than union, they must live in the unity of a single act of volition, naturally the Divine Volition; as had happened precisely in Jesus, true God and true Man, with a Divine Will, the same one of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, and with a human will, most innocent, even immolated…  He had it as if He did not have it, so that both wills lived and acted in the unity of a Divine Volition alone.  Therefore, all the things done by Jesus with His human nature, even the most insignificant things, were “signed” by a Divine, Infinite, Eternal, Most Holy Volition…

And then glimpse is seen of the cross-sorrow: the two wills opposed, crossed, as two blades, as the trunks of two trees.  The vertical one is the Will of God; the horizontal one which says “I do not want” is the will of man.

Then Jesus, Who by His Incarnation has happily united the Divine Will and the human, has taken them as “He found them” in the form, that is of cross-sorrow, to cover them with His Cross-Love and so to destroy be it their opposition, be it their reciprocal sorrow.  And the Cross-Love of Jesus, upon which He has always lived, stretched out in placid abandonment of love, is none other than the loving arms of the Good Father that support Him, His most sweet and immense Will, His celestial food, His repose, His Life.

Do you not hear, therefore, the distant echo of a new song of victory, of Resurrection, of Love, truly in the same Cross-Love of Jesus, which is the heartbeat of all your life?

Why do we not hear it in us?  Because in us there is not the Cross-Love of Jesus, but only the cross-sorrow, the cross-forbearance, the cross carried by us, rather than the Cross that carries us…

Before the Will of God there can be for us diverse attitudes: by the rupture of every relationship of life and love with It (sin) to reconciliation with It (obedience): In this we find different degrees; resignation, submission for fear, for interest, for love, trustful abandonment…  In each case it is a question of two wills that do not pertain to one another, for however much the human seeks to bind itself to the Divine.  But for the love of God which can never be enough; Love wants unity.  The unity of one only Volition as between the Three Divine Persons.

Sacred Scripture presents us a pair: the servant and the son.  We recall the story of Abram.  His problem was the same as God’s (“I go on without children…  And all that I have, for whom will it be?” (Gen. 15).  We can quickly say that the just people of the Old Testament have been good and faithful servants, while those of the New, after the Redemption, are sons.  As with the Patriarch, Abram, so with God, the servant will not be the heir, because he, even though living with him in his house and enjoying his things, not sharing his supreme interests, his Love, his Life, the “heir” will be only the Son, because the Inheritance does not consist so much in the things of the Father, but the Father, Himself!

Jesus said to the Apostles at the Last Supper: “You are My friends if you do what I command you.  I no longer call you servants because the servant does not know what the master does, but I have called you friends because all that I have heard from the Father I have made known to you” (John 15, 14-15).  And soon after the Resurrection, appearing to Mary Magdalen, He says: “Go to My brothers and tell them: I rise to My Father and your Father, My God and your God” (John 20, 17).

And the Apostles offer themselves as another key to understand the diverse relationships with the Will of the Father.  Saint John exclaims: “What great Love the Father has given us to be called sons of God, and we really are! … Dearest ones, even now we are sons of God [certainly by Baptism!  But could more be asked?], but what we will be has not yet been revealed.  We know then that when He will have manifested Himself, we will be like to Him, because we will see Him as He is” (1 John 3, 1-2).

And St. Paul: “For all the time that the heir is a child, he is not for nothing different from a slave [that is, in the manner of being treated, in the mentality, in the manner of comporting one’s self], even though being owner of everything; but depends upon tutors and educators until the time established by the Father” (Gal 4, 1-2).  Therefore, there is the trio “servants, friends, brothers” in regard to Jesus: and that of “servants, minor sons” ( = slaves, really!), sons/grown Son (Son of full age), similar to the Father, worthy of Him.

The servant “does not know” what the Lord does; the friend “knows,” but the son “does it” together with Him.  What does he do?  HIS DIVINE WILL.  Together with Him as He does it: “AS IN HEAVEN SO ON EARTH.”

That which is the Divine Will for the Father is for the Son; that which is for God in Heaven, is for the sons/Son already now on the earth.

This “already now” has arrived.  It has begun!  But still it must come; that is it must “manifest itself,” it must explode, it must triumph!  It must sweep away the rival kingdom, the kingdom of the human volition, over which Satan domineers, the kingdom of sin, of unhappiness, of falsehood, of death!  “Kingdom against kingdom.”

Is God perhaps resigned to His Will?  Is He perhaps submitted?  Is He at least abandoned to His own Will?  Obviously no.  And then, what is for the Three Divine Persons their Most Sacred Will?  It is Their Life, the Substance of Their Being and of Their Happiness; It is Their All!

This is the Supreme Gift that They Want to Give to Their Children!  That is to those who are not only capable, good and obedient to Their orders (in order to have corresponding reward), but that it might be their Inheritance, their Will: that they have everything in common with God as Jesus had everything in common with the Father.  (“All my things are yours and all your things are mine” (John 17, 10).)

By means of the Redemption, Jesus remade in man the Divine Image, broken in pieces by sin.  In His coming or glorious manifestation as King (“Parousia”) He will revive to man the lost Likeness With God.

It is a matter of the grandest Gift of Himself that God can make: “the Gift of gifts,” His Divine Will as Heredity and Life of his creature.

Adam had been immaculate, but not only that, even divinized.  God had added to the so many gifts of nature this gift of grace, His own Will.  He asks only a simple act of acceptance, by not doing his own will; but man refused.  He reduced Himself to the condition of miserable sinner and penitent, he could be servant, but no longer son.  To return to being son, man must first be redeemed.  The Son of God by nature made Himself Man, only He could restitute to man his royal condition of son of God by grace.

Jesus Christ, the Man God, alone has the Divine Will by nature, it is He that can give It to whom He wants, when He wants.

With Him, His Most Holy Mother had by grace the Divine Will in all Its fullness of possession and of Life; and this, even from the first instant of her Immaculate Conception.  Living in this Most Adorable Will had made Mary capable of obtaining from the Divine Justice that Heaven be opened to let the Word of God descend and incarnate Himself in her virginal womb.  This Divine Will did not ask of Mary only an affirmative reply, but that She, Herself, express It with her “FIAT,” to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit together.  This Divine Will had given Mary the Divine Fecundity of the Father, virginal and creative Fecundity, his Paternity.  In Her is the Divine Maternity.

And now She wants to give It to whoever is disposed and wants It provided that one consigns to God every right and use of its human will.

The Gift of the Divine Will carries with Itself another mysterious gift: that of the news on the part of God, that of Its revelation an of Its promulgation.  And this He has already done in his Church by means of the creature that He wished to call to this most high mission: Luisa Piccarreta of Corato (Bari) Italy (1865-1947) to whom He gave the name of “The Little Daughter of the Divine Will.”  And He wanted to give absolute guarantee of it with the double seal of the Cross and Obedience.

Now as then Jesus speaks and says:  “MY DOCTRINE IS NOT MINE, BUT OF THE WHO HAS SENT ME.  WHO WANTS TO DO HIS WILL WILL KNOW IF THIS DOCTRINE COMES FROM GOD OR IF I SPEAK BY MYSELF.  Who speaks on his own, seeks his own glory; but who seeks the glory of He that has sent him is truthful and in him there is no injustice” (John 7, 16-18).

The foregoing selection of passages drawn from chapters of her 36 volumes and letters, are intended to be scarcely a sample for knowing the proclamation of the Gift of the Divine Will, “THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF A GREAT JOY” (Luke 2, 10).

And in this precise moment Jesus exults in the Holy Spirit and says: “I give You praise, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and the prudent and have revealed them to the little ones.  Yes, Father, because it has so pleased you.  All things were given to Me by My Father and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, nor who the Father is except the Son and he to whom the Son wishes to reveal Him” (Luke 10, 21-22).