What is the Divine Will

Jesus’ private revelations to Luisa about the gift of Living in the Divine Will show how the Divine Will relates to the Holy Trinity and the Human Will. It is helpful to understand each concept in the same light.

What is the Divine Will?

The Divine Will of God is the Divine Life of God

To understand what God’s Life and Divine Will is, let us recall what we know about the Holy Trinity. Just as we have a human will, the Holy Trinity has Their Divine Will.  The Divine Will is the source of the Divine Life and the source and life of all created things.

There are Three distinct Divine Persons in ONE GOD: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Trinity have one INSEPARABLE Will: the Divine Will of God.

Jesus speaks of the Supreme Fiat: this is synonymous with the Supreme (Divine) Will. God begins His great works with the Fiat, and He has willed into existence each era of man’s salvation history.

Sharing in the Divine Life of the Holy Trinity

We know from the Catechism of the Catholic Church that “The Trinity is One. We do not confess three gods but one God in three persons, the consubstantial Trinity” ( CCC 253). These divine persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit have ONE WILL, have only one action – to love. The Father begets the Son in love – and the Son looks at the Father in love – and the love between Father and Son – is so real, the Holy Spirit proceeds. And this is what is called the eternal exchange of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Paragraph 221 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) says that:

CCC 221 “God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.”

God wants us to share in this blessed and eternal exchange of love. This is our destiny and His intention in creating man. So, look around you – is this happening? No, there is so much evil in the world, and evil inside us.  Man was never created to be separate from the Will of God.

God wants us to be part of this eternal exchange of love – and this is our destiny from all Eternity. Our true Predestination was to live IN the Divine Will as adopted children of God, through Jesus Christ

Jesus explains how important living in the Divine Will is for us and for Himself:

(Jesus to Luisa) …Therefore, the living in my Will is the prodigy of prodigies, because everything is in the will, both for God and for the creature.  …  So, Our Will holds supremacy – dominion over Our Being, and It is the ruler of all Our attributes.  This is why the greatest thing We could give to the creature was Our Will, and in It We centralized Our whole Being.  Could there be a love more intense, a miracle more sensational than this?..(Book of Heaven, Volume 19 – May 3, 1926)

The human will is meant to belong to God

We know that God created man in his own image and likeness (Genesis 1:26) and that it is in man’s soul, intellect and free human will that he is an “outstanding manifestation of the divine image” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1705). Likewise, Jesus expounds on this further as he reveals to Luisa that it is in man’s Free Human Will originally one with the Divine Will that he acquires God’s divine image.

[Jesus to Luisa] How can those words spoken by Me in creating man, ‘Let Us make man in Our Image and Likeness’, be explained?  How could the creature, so incapable, ever resemble Me and be my image?  Only in my Will could he arrive at this, because by making It his own, he comes to operate in a divine manner; and through the repetition of these divine acts, he comes to resemble Me – to become my perfect image….So, the only thing that makes the creature be like Me is my Will. (Book of Heaven, Volume 11 – August 24, 1915)

Jesus also reveals that the free human will was never meant to operate on its own but was meant to rely on the Divine Will as its primary source of life and sanctity.

[Jesus to Luisa] “My daughter, the human will on its own is nauseating, but united with Mine is the most beautiful thing I created. More so, since the Divinity could never issue anything created by Us which would be nauseating. United with Ours, the human will would have the continuous motion of good, of light, of sanctity, of beauty; and through Our continuous motion, which never ceases, it would have been the greatest prodigy of Creation” (Book of Heaven, Volume 23 – January 31, 1928)

[Jesus to Luisa] One who does my Will and lives in It has lost the fount, the seed, the origin of evil, because my Will contains the fount of sanctity, the seed of all goods, the eternal origin, immutable and inviolable.  So, one who lives in this fount is holy, and evil has no more contact with her; and if evil seems to appear in anything, the origin, the seed, is holy; evil does not take root. … Only the human will is fount which contains the seed of all evils; and if it seems to do some good, that good is infected, and whoever touches that good will remain infected and poisoned.” (Book of Heaven, Volume 12 – December 15, 1919)

Thus man, before original sin, fully partakes of the gift of living in the Divine Will. In man’s original state of holiness and justice, his intellect, memory and human free will were all ordered to and abandoned completely to God’s Divine Will.

Doing vs Living in God’s Divine Will

Doing the Will of God is just the first step to living in His Divine Will. The Sun of My Will, the biography of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta, says that “…It should be understood that “doing” and “living in” the Divine Will are two dimensions that are not to be set up as rivals. Rather, they are progressive steps that fall under on Divine pedagogy of holiness…” (The Sun of My Will, p218).

God desires us to move from doing to living in His Will.  Our Lord Jesus tells Luisa that to do His Will is to live like a servant receiving orders that he may or may not choose to follow and is thus paid accordingly. But one who lives in His will is to live like a son who loves a father, possesses, and enjoys all the father owns, and nothing can remove or unbind his rights of sonship. He further explains the difference on the soul:

[Jesus to Luisa] “…. To live in my Will is to make my Will one’s own, as one’s own thing, it is to dispose of It; to do my Will is to hold It as Will of God, not as one’s own thing, nor can one dispose of It as one wants. To live in my Will is to live with one single Will – that of God; and since It is a Will all holy, all pure, all peace, and it is one single Will that reigns, there are no contrasts – everything is peace… It lays the divine order in the depth of the soul, emptying her of what is human – of tendencies, of passions, of inclinations and the like. On the other hand, to do my Will is to live with two wills, and when I give orders to do Mine, one feels the weight of one’s own will, which causes contrasts. And even if one follows the orders of my Will with faithfulness, one feels the weight of one’s rebellious nature, of one’s passions and inclinations …” (Book of Heaven, Volume 17 – September 18, 1924)

Doing Vs. Living in the Divine Will, words of a Saint

Perhaps one of the best ways to describe the difference between living in the Divine Will and what we’ve learned about doing God’s Will can be summed up from a quote from St. Annibale Maria Di Francia, who was appointed as ‘ecclesiastical censor’ by the Archbishop of Trani for Luisa’s writings:

“…All Saints, all Doctors, all Preachers, all the Scholars of Ascetic Theology, have sung the praises of the fulfillment of the Will of God as the highest perfection.  They have defined the three degrees of uniformity with the Divine Volition, of conformity to It, and of transformation – that is, of the annihilation of our will for the Divine…

…To the three degrees of uniformity of conformity and of transformation, this new doctrine adds a fourth quality which encompasses everything, which has not been expressed by any writer until now, but which somehow hovers in Sacred Books, especially in the Psalmist and in the Apostle of the gentiles.  And it is:  to operate completely IN the Divine Will. (Hours of the Passion, Overview of the Writings of the Pious Author)

[Jesus to Luisa]… “My daughter, the living in my Will is a gift that We give to the creature – great gift that surpasses in value, in sanctity, in beauty and in happiness all other gifts, in an infinite and unreachable way…(Book of Heaven, Volume 29 – September 29, 1931)

What are the benefits of living in the Divine Will?

This little-known spiritual gift has many profound effects on the soul, including:

Jesus wants man to have dominion over himself again, over His passions as Adam had before the fall.  He says this about the transformation that will happen to the soul when they live in the Divine Will:

[Jesus to Luisa] … “You must know that the living in Our Will is a gift which Our magnanimity wants to give to creatures; and with this gift the creature will feel transformed – from poor, rich, from weak, strong, from ignorant, learned, from slave to vile passions, sweet and voluntary prisoner of a Will all holy, which will not hold him prisoner, but king of himself, of the divine dominions and of all created things… (Book of Heaven, Volume 30 – April 25, 1932)

God’s Divine Will is the only nourishing food that contains all flavors and tastes together which are suitable for the soul.  The soul will find all her tastes and find her favorite food feeling fully satisfied by living in the Divine Will because the soul has left her own will, which formed her torment, and has found the Divine Will.

“…It is the sanctity not yet known, which I will make known, and which will place the last ornament, and the most beautiful, the most refulgent, among all other sanctities, and will be crown and fulfillment of all other sanctities…” (Book of Heaven, Volume 12 – April 8, 1918)