Transcription
Thanks for tuning in to another video here. In this clip, I'm sharing with you in this video is from my recent interview with Father Iannuzzi. And during the interview, I asked him this question: How do we die to our human will? So, if you have the time, please listen to this.
The Blessed Virgin Mary, in the book entitled *The Blessed Virgin Mary in the Kingdom of the Divine Will*, which is approved by the church with several seals of approval, explains in the course of 31 days plus six additional lessons how we are to live in God's divine will. That's the purpose of the book. She gives us daily lessons, daily exercises, prayers to do so that we become habituated in her exhortations, her instructions.
Um, also, we have the example of Luisa. Luisa Piccarreta was instructed by the Blessed Mother, was instructed by the Holy Trinity. And she was taught by Mary during this month of May how to no longer give life to her human will. And Jesus gives her an instruction on this as well. You know, Jesus gives her many instructions on this because this is really the theme of her writings. And I'm going to refer you to one of the works, one of the volumes of Luisa, where Jesus talks to her about how to die to her own will. And number one is to give her upright intention and firm resolve to God to do His will. In other words, we cannot sacrifice or deny our human will when it is contrary to the will of God unless we can direct its activity to something else. In other words, we cannot just say, "I don't want, I want to die to my human will" without having something to die for. And what we die for is God's divine will.
And then Jesus goes on to explain, as the Blessed Mother, that the virtues are very important when it comes to dying to our human will. The exercise of the virtues, in particular, humility, obedience, courage, fearlessness, stoutheartedness. So, Jesus tells her in volume 3 on June 20th, 1900. She's around 35 years old here. He tells her, "The most perfect, the most sublime humility is that of losing one's way of reasoning. Not on discoursing of the why and the how, but of abandoning oneself to God in one's own nothingness, and in so doing, the soul, without realizing it, finds itself immersed in God. This, in turn, produces in the soul the most intimate union, the most perfect love toward its highest good."
Now, when Jesus is talking to Louisa here about losing your own reasoning, He's not telling her not to use the gift of reason that God gives us, but the way of reasoning that is human, not divine, meaning assessing a situation without the light of faith, only by pure reason. This is known as rationalism. When you divorce reason from faith, it becomes rationalism. When you only use reason without faith. So, Louisa was instructed for many years by both the Holy Trinity as well as Mary on how to abandon her human way of reasoning. And this, of course, requires the exercise of the virtues of humility, meaning that she doesn't know everything. We don't know everything. We need someone to instruct us. And God has His own chain of command on how we are to be instructed, that is, the Trinity revealing itself to mankind through human instruments, namely the prophets in the Old Testament and in the New, still through the prophets, but also because Christ instituted the sacraments, through the sacrament of Holy Orders, the priesthood, which includes the papacy, the episcopacy, the presbyterate, who are the teachers, the educators, the formators, so that those who are willing to listen to Christ's representatives may be confident that in so doing they gain grace and lose no merit. But, it requires humility. And this is a free will decision each person has to make for him or herself.
So, the exercise of the virtues of docility, humility, stoutheartedness, courage, as I mentioned earlier, as well as obedience. And this is a key virtue in the life of Luisa. Because nothing would have been written by her had she not obeyed the priest who told her to write. She didn't want to write. But, the priest told her to do so and she obeyed. And Jesus told her, "I want you to obey your priest." And this is the case, you know, in the life of all the saints, all the prophets. So, the way of dying to our own will is exercising the virtues, in particular, obedience. And obedience doesn't mean blind obedience, meaning you don't use reason. We use reason, but in the light of faith. We use reason with faith, knowing that if our intention is to serve God by obeying the church that He shed His blood for, and the authorities whom He has given us, whom He has anointed, and let's suppose they tell us to do something wrong and we're not aware of it, we lose no merit. We gain merit because our intention is good. And Jesus tells St. Faustina in the entries, I think 800 and 820 of the *Diary of Divine Mercy*, that whenever, well, Faustina is the one writing here, and she says, "Whenever we have a good intention after we have sought counsel, after we have reflected, after we have prayed, and realize what we did is wrong, God is not in any way offended because we did our best to inform our conscience of what is God's will. And let's suppose we did something contrary to the will of God, though we intended to do it, He is pleased," she said. "He is no less pleased than you having done His will because you went out of your way to inform your conscience, the church, to reflect and to pray. And better than that, we cannot do. All right."
And that is all for the video this time. Thank you so much for taking a little bit of your time to be here, and I hope all of you have learned quite a lot from this one. Anyway, thanks again for listening, and may God bless you.