Transcription
Um, well then, that's it. The divine will is like a son that is within the humanity of our Lord, and He is the one who is going to communicate it to us. He is the one who is going to communicate it to us. Therefore, our attention must be focused on looking at Jesus. He is our central point.
Speaking interiorly, that is the work that Jesus did in Louisa in the first volumes. Our goal is to make Jesus the very center of our lives because sometimes in the Christian life, we can receive good from other people, and it seems like we are following those people, but no, that is not the case. Those are merely the ways to reach Jesus. We have to learn to set our attention on Jesus. And well, that is the way to learn to live in the divine will by noticing what Jesus does, how Jesus does it, asking Him to come and act in us, and little by little to gradually learn more about His divine ways.
But up to this point, we might ask, what about the Blessed Virgin? Well, she remains together with Jesus. By which will did she live? By the divine will, as we know. That was the meaning of her immaculate conception. She was not only conceived without original sin, but with her will united to God's. And she made the conscious and deliberate choice to stay exactly as she was for the rest of time, always. She never separated herself. She never committed any sin. So her entire life was lived in that harmony with the divine will.
The first stage of her life was dedicated to preparing herself to be the Mother of God. Even though she did not know this clearly at the time, rather it was revealed to her when the angel appeared to her, but she was fully and thoroughly prepared for that specific mission ahead. And willingly, freely, she pronounced her fiat. That is to say, she once again accepted to keep her will united with God's, to be united in the work of redemption as well.
And from that very first moment of the incarnation of the Son of God, at the very moment when she first began to be the Blessed Mother of our Lord, by having the same will as Jesus incarnate, as the incarnate Word, everything that Jesus did was reflected in her. She perceived it from a spiritual point of view. If the Lord Jesus suffered even while he was still within her holy womb, she clearly saw that he was deeply suffering, and she saw that he suffered for all our sins from that very moment. And she endured deep agony together with Jesus as she witnessed His immense suffering because she was His mother, and it pained her to see Jesus suffer.
And it did not stop at just that union of suffering with Him. Instead of that, she successfully carried out her sacred mission as a mother, and she offered Him deep consolation, bestowed her love upon Him on behalf of every living creature in existence. She accompanied Him in all those sufferings, responding to Him, and by receiving that suffering within herself and keeping it deep within her heart as a precious treasure. Because every act of Jesus, every suffering, every prayer is truly considered to be a sacred and divine treasure of infinite value which benefits everyone. In other words, they have a divine, incalculable value. And not a single one of them was ever lost because His mother knew each of them. And she tenderly cherished and cared for them deep within her heart.
In this way, by living in the divine will, and in doing so, we can say that they live the same life, Jesus and Mary, but each one fulfilling their mission, their task, one as Redeemer and the other as the Mother of the Redeemer, and of all the redeemed, and of all the redeemed, and of all the redeemed. The acts of the Most Holy Virgin were united to those of Jesus, and we can find her in all the acts of Jesus as the Mother of Jesus and our Mother. And so it was throughout her entire life, up to His passion, death, and resurrection.
And when Jesus ascends to heaven, what does the Most Holy Virgin do then, if she still had to live here longer? Well, she continued the work of Jesus. That is, she continued being the Mother of the whole Church and of all humanity. And all of this of hers also remained within her. We can say in her immaculate heart, which possesses the Son of the divine will. And those acts exist together with those of Jesus and are alive. They are always in the act of being accomplished.
What my brother Bernardo was saying yesterday about the acts of Jesus, that they have not remained in the past, but they are definitely present, like the sun which God created thousands of years ago, but it remains in a continuous act of giving light. It is not something of the past. It is something that, although it began in the past, continues always in act in the present.
So when one first begins to truly hear and learn about the concept of the divine will, and we gradually begin to learn this essential and valuable knowledge, we also discover the greatness of the Most Holy Virgin. Because her greatness is interior. Exactly. It lies in how she performed her acts in the divine will. Her greatness was not external. Outwardly, she was an ordinary woman who fulfilled the duties of a wife, of a mother, in a perfectly virtuous way. That's true. But without anything extraordinary, because all her greatness was interior.
And so in the life of Louisa, we can always find that beautiful and constant maternal presence of the Virgin Mary, from volume one to the last chapter of volume 36. Along with that special and unique role as a beloved mother also to Louisa, who also communicates the divine will to her together with Jesus, who teaches her as a mother to fully live in that sacred and divine will with a love full of tenderness.
And so we too must also, who will find her. I imagine that many of you are Marian, that you love the Blessed Virgin very much. So what is going to happen here? We are going to find a much more intimate and developed relationship with our Blessed Mother. We are going to get to know her more deeply, her inner self, her secrets. I see that sometimes people go looking for places where the Blessed Virgin appears to see what she tells us. Then, in some places, she only calls us to conversion. In other places, she teaches us a little about how to draw closer to God, taking the very first steps of a devoted Christian life. But that's not everything. That's just a relationship that is, how shall we say, just beginning, initial. Initial, exactly. Initial. Yes.
But we need to develop that relationship with our Blessed Mother even more. It's like with children and their mother, isn't it? At first, the mother teaches them the most basic things about human life. But as the children continue to learn and grow every day, she is able to share more things with them about herself, about her life, about her feelings, not so much about what they should or shouldn't do, but about herself. And this is what happens with Louisa in many chapters, and especially in the 31 meditations from the book of the Virgin, the Queen of Heaven. She speaks to us about her life, about her actions carried out in the divine will, and about the life of Jesus, her Son. That is, she tells us about things that are intimate and interior to her. Exactly. And specifically what she holds deep in her heart. Not just to teach us, but because she trusts us deeply, and she shares her most intimate secrets with us. But it is because she deeply desires to share and communicate that very same life to us, so that we may live our lives just as she once did within the holy and divine will, and truly become like her. And she gives us far more help than we could ever imagine.
So it can be said that this book of the 31 meditations is the greatest Marian revelation that has ever existed in the history of humanity. Here, it's not just that she announces the triumph of her immaculate conception. Here, she teaches us to live like her immaculate heart, and that is her triumph. So all the other things, the other teachings of the Virgin elsewhere, have surely already made their way into us, one thing here, another there. But now we must focus on this, which is the culmination of her teachings, and it is where she will form us as a mother in the kingdom of the divine will.
Today, the first day of the month of May, we can start our journey through this book day by day, but now with a much deeper and more profound realization that what she comes to teach us is extraordinarily vast and truly immense, with this extraordinary vision and this gift. So here in the divine will, we will find the fullness of Mary's divine motherhood toward us, because she will be able to transmit to us that same divine life. This is what she wants to give us, not just one grace or another, but all that divine life which she herself possessed. And this always united with Jesus.
So here, there is absolutely no inherent danger of distancing or separating her from Jesus and sort of leaving the person of Jesus Christ aside in any way. Rather, we will always find her united with Jesus, and ourselves united with both of them as well. And this also resolves the fact that sometimes there is a misunderstanding where people think that Louisa is putting herself as if at the level of the Blessed Virgin, or above her, or something wrong. Well, that is incorrect, because Louisa was always the daughter, and the Blessed Virgin, the mother. That specific role remains completely unchanged, as it should be. Wouldn't you agree? So, in a sense, to say that I should imitate my mother or try to be like my mother. Well, it is essentially the same as when Jesus said, "You must be perfect, just as my heavenly Father is perfect." And yet we know that no one actually becomes God because of that, isn't that right, Father? Louisa did not become like the Blessed Virgin. She was always the little daughter who received everything from her heavenly Mother, along with Jesus. And so we will learn to have that same relationship that is just and full of love toward her.
Mary, according to Christian tradition, was consistently and in various ways deeply connected to and distinctly contrasted against Eve. In that sense, stronger. In Christian tradition, Mary was always united to and contrasted with Eve in the specific sense that Eve was, so to speak, the primary catalyst and instigator of the original sin committed by Adam. And Mary, as Christian tradition calls her, the new Eve, on the contrary, was the beginning that brought about new life in Christ Jesus, and truly of new life.
This is because there is a well-known spiritual maxim that proclaims to us: Absolutely everything that Jesus is by nature, Mary is so by grace. And we who are graciously invited to dwell and live in the holy divine will, we could say everything that Jesus experienced, all His acts, we simply cannot live by grace alone unless we unite ourselves to Him.
Now, we might sometimes find ourselves pausing to wonder, why exactly did God choose to wait for such a vast period of time following the moment of Adam's original sin before finally stepping in to fulfill His divine plan for humanity's redemption? Is He seeking to undo that original sin and descending with the specific purpose of offering redemption to all of humanity? Well, this was because a significant amount of time was necessary for God to carefully prepare that divine path and to fully prepare all of humanity for its ultimate redemption. And as St. Paul says, "And then, when the fullness of time had finally come." But the significant fullness of time is not merely a pivotal historical moment in our history, but rather the complete fullness of the divine and spiritual life within all of humanity. And it is in Mary that this fullness is fulfilled. She was full of grace. And that is the fullness of time. This is because she was precisely the holy one who, being truly immaculate, always lived and dwelt perfectly within the divine will of God. And she was even able to physically generate the humanity of the Eternal Word.
There is a chapter in volume 27. This event dates back to the period starting from October 27th, 1929. >> 27. On the 29th day of October, 1929. Later on, you should read it calmly and quietly because it is truly very beautiful. And in that specific chapter, it tells us in great detail how, with the same example we used yesterday of the growing tree, what exactly did Adam cause in this tree? Not only the, how do you say it, moth. Not only did he carefully inject the destructive moth deep into the very root of that ancient tree with the poison of sin, but he also meticulously grafted those corrupted branches into the living wood to ensure the decay would spread throughout the entire structure. Precisely. The human will, separated from the divine will, into that tree. Therefore, with this particular example and with that graft, everything that follows no longer has any relevance or significance to the outcome, let's say, the essential substance of the good tree and of the deep root, but rather it continued, let's say, a vibrant life, right? It truly persisted, which is no longer life, but rather malignant humor, so to speak, which is sin, precisely. That is what we call the fundamental concept of original sin, which precisely leads directly to the emergence of all the sins that will come afterward. But above all, the human will that wants to live, separated from the divine will?
In what specific ways did Jesus Christ choose to spend His earthly life during the profound process of human redemption? Well, once again, the goal is to carefully graft divine life onto that ancient tree. And so that tree of humanity, He will once again be able to keep walking forward and continue living His life, this time once again from the will of God, but so that the entire structure of the tree may become completely new again. Let's say, according to the benevolent will of God. A significant amount of time is required because that's exactly how it is when you graft a tree. It takes a great deal of time for it to flourish and grow strong once more. And so it is for this very reason that a significant amount of time was required for redemption to finally come to pass. Furthermore, more time is required so that an individual may truly come to live their life according to the abundant and holy fruits of that redemption, which are the very fruits of the sacred tree of life, which at this very moment is perfectly and completely the human will brought into a sacred union with the divine will. And so we could say that what God wanted for humanity from the very beginning is finally fulfilled in its fullness. Exactly what God had originally intended from the start for all of humanity, right at this moment.
So now we have this incredible and unique opportunity sitting right in front of us. A wonderful opportunity to be able to live in that divine will and to be able to live what Jesus in His humanity lived through His will, and the Blessed Virgin united with Jesus. So we too, by grace, united with them, can live this as well and attain our complete potential.
Actually, there is also another interesting chapter located in volume 19. On the 12th day of August in the year 1926, this specific record provides us with a much more detailed and concrete understanding of the situation at hand, the various things that we could potentially do or the specific ways in which we could work together moving forward. Each one of us personally helping us understand that God wanted man and created him in this way with his three distinct mental faculties, which are his vast intelligence, his enduring memory, and his powerful sense of will. It is a profound and essential method for each of us to truly understand and, let's say, to engage in the continuous process of working on our inner selves, carefully organizing and putting every single aspect of our lives back into its proper and rightful place. And these three distinct mental faculties serve as a profound reflection and image of the Most Holy and Blessed Trinity. And so what is said in Genesis is also fulfilled: "God created man in His own image."
According to the teachings of Louisa, these three distinct faculties of the human soul, the intellect, the memory, and the will, serve as the essential ways and the sacred paths through which we are able to gradually ascend toward a deeper union with God. They are doors to enter into God. They are like the foundational chambers where one is shaped and developed. It is a continual life in God. And it says this way: "The creature in God, and God in the creature." In the book of Revelation, as it is written in the scriptures, it says that "the Lord stands at the threshold and knocks persistently, doesn't it? He is waiting at the door, and if any person hears His voice and chooses to open the door to Him, He will surely enter, stay there, and partake in a meal and share in fellowship with the one who opens the door to Him, and He will abide with them forever." To put it simply, these are the fundamental gateways of our human intellect, our personal will, and our collective memory.
So within our human intellect, our vast memory, and our individual will, sin completely disordered all of them. On the other hand, it is essential that we carefully organize and arrange these elements in such a specific way that they can truly become genuine spiritual pathways leading toward the divine. It's easier to think of the intellect, the mind, as something that can be elevated to God, to think about the things of God, to know the things of God, and to be able to build a person's life in God, in the will of God, that is, to think more and more in God's way each time, to slowly and steadily distance themselves from traditional human ways of living. And the same goes for the will, which is the part that allows us to love, make decisions, and feel desire. In this, then, we elevate ourselves as a way, as a path toward God, in order that we can grow deeper and deeper in our love, just as God loves us, to desire not only what God wants, but to desire as God desires, and as a result, to do what God wants He wants us to do. And memory, which is essentially that profound capacity to hold every single thing together in a state of perfect unity deep within our own individual person. We could say it is the unitive power. It unites not only in the present what we think and desire, but it unites our whole life from the beginning to the end. So that we truly come to understand, and we begin to deeply conceive that our life is a singularly united and interconnected life. Wouldn't you agree? Day by day, it is our one and only self who lives.
When the system memory is not properly balanced, it is entirely possible for an individual to reach absolute extremes where there are moments when we simply do not. Do we accept it or not? We want to accept what we did yesterday or what we said yesterday, but instead, we disconnect everything, our whole self. And by this process of separating ourselves, we can easily fall into a state of double personality, schizophrenia, and other similar psychological conditions. When we examine the field of psychological disorders in psychology, it is very common for us to discuss the continuous flow of consciousness and that intricate web of memory. Well, let us consider this further.
Everything that we do, every single time we walk forward in our spiritual life, that is to say, in the holy life of the divine will, is truly significant. Our deep inner sense of self will be gradually purified and more perfectly balanced with each passing moment. That is exactly why it is very important that we move forward little by little, step by step, without wanting to take more steps than we should. But in any case, always keep moving forward so that inwardly we may be more spiritually balanced and exactly as God intends for us to be.
This is not the same. Well, not only is it necessary that we must reach that fullness completely inwardly, but we will eventually be able to attain that absolute sense of spiritual fullness if we are in complete and perfect unity with God and with the sacred divine will of the Creator. And in the infinite divine will, we find absolutely everything and every single soul. And as a direct consequence of this, we shall certainly have the capability to establish a sense of complete unity and structured form, a single life in the divine will.
There is a chapter from volume 22 on the 12th of June, back in the year 1927, specifically in the section where it clearly states and describes the following information. Volume 22, June 12th, 1927. This one. Yes. Let's read a little bit of it. "My daughter, whoever wants to know all the relationships that exist between the Creator and the creature and keep those relationships alive must let my divine will reign within them with absolute dominion. My divine will, because existing and being fully present throughout the entirety of all creation, her life will eventually become one unified and singular life with all created things. And since life is all one, she will understand their language and the deep relationships they have with their Creator. Every created thing speaks of its Creator. It possesses legible characters of my divine fiat. But do you know who is capable of hearing its voice, of understanding its heavenly speech, and of reading the divine characters that each created thing has imprinted? Whoever possesses my will has the ear to hear its voice, the intelligence to understand them, the eyes to read the divine characters that the Creator with so much love imprinted on every created thing. On the other hand, whoever does not let my will reign finds themselves in the condition of one who is deaf and does not hear, of one who is foolish and does not understand, of one who has not studied the diversity of languages and no matter how much is spoken, understands nothing."
Now, it is truly wonderful and beautiful to hear this kind of thing, that within the whole of creation, we find the very life of the divine will, because absolutely everything has been carefully created by God. Wouldn't you agree with that truth? Everything depends on God. That is precisely why it is so essential for us to maintain a deeply thoughtful and contemplative attitude regarding the divine creation, the magnificent creation of God. Because even though we see only the exterior, the appearances, in that place, we could truly find within it that sacred will of God, that eternal and most holy divine will. And what is this for? Well, let us understand that everything has been created by God for us, out of love for the creature, for each one of us. In fact, absolutely everything in existence has been created not only for everyone but specifically for each and every one of us. So in such a way that whenever we observe, when we quietly contemplate the wonders of creation, we can reciprocate the gesture with all of our deepest love and our profound gratitude to God. We are finding in that magnificent creation the holy will of God and making our humble act in the divine will of love, of sincere gratitude, and of eternal adoration through creation and in creation.
So then, it is precisely because of the fact that it is a complete unity. There are no separations. And when we then see this creation, even out here, when we contemplate, we could say, "All of this is mine." Even though this tree is planted here, it is mine. It is yours. It is yours. It belongs to everyone. And so it is with every created thing. It's not because we have to take it home with us. That's the human way, isn't it? "I have what is mine." It belongs to everyone. And because of that, through that, we can praise God, thank Him, and love Him for myself and for everyone, of course. Yes, this matter of created things, seeing the divine will in created things is also something you learn little by little. In Louisa's volumes, this is already volume 22, but even in the earlier volumes, little by little, He has been giving her lessons about how to discover what God's will does in created things, how we can receive it, what acts we can perform. We come back to the same point. The key is to keep reading the writings, because all the knowledge needed to live in the divine will and to have this relationship with God the Creator is found there, just as it was in the beginning, before original sin.
As a matter of fact, please notice that the Almighty Creator did not bestow upon the first man and woman any other inheritance, any other specific place to live, or any other source of food, except for the entirety of His magnificent creation, which was more than sufficient for their physical bodily life as well as for their eternal spiritual life. Adam was not going to have the sacraments. He was not going to have all those spiritual things that we now have for our spiritual life. It was back then a unity. Just as man is body and soul united in one person, so in all of creation, God placed what was necessary for both body and soul. It was God's will that His will would become the nourishment of the human being through all created things. So this is something we are only just beginning to discover. >> The sacraments help us to unite ourselves with God after original sin, afterwards. But what I'm saying is >> Adam was already united to God. But after original sin, we need those means, of course. Anyway, now those means are available to us. Exactly. >> Continue. The chapter.
So, as well, the chapter continues on June 12th, 1927. "In the same way, in order to properly know and effectively maintain, to truly understand the profound relationship between Redeemer and redeemed, it is essential that one must carefully study the details of my life. In the same way, to know and maintain the relationship between Redeemer and redeemed, one must study my life. Every single word that I have spoken, every action I took, every step, heartbeat, and sorrow, all of these things served as the sacred bonds with which I came to bind together all those who have been redeemed. But who is truly bound to me and who stays deeply connected in spirit? It is the one who devotes themselves to studying my life and tries to follow and imitate my example. As they imitate me, so they become bound to my words, deeds, steps, and so on, and they receive life from them and will have the ears to hear all my teachings, a mind to understand them, and eyes to read all the characters imprinted on me when I came to redeem the human race. And if the living creature does not actively choose to do this, the characters of redemption will be completely and utterly unreadable to them. It will be like a complex foreign language to them, and the relationships and bonds of redemption will have absolutely no strength or lasting power. This particular creature will always be the one completely born blind to every single one of the goods with which we had always wanted to generously enrich their lives."
So shall we continue? However, right now we can clearly see moving on to the second step in the process. How do we go about achieving that? Well, we also have to have that capacity for contemplation, meditation, and reflection on the life of Jesus. Everything He did, everything He lived is the Gospel. In the Gospel, we can discover everything we truly need. We have a profound duty to know it deeply. We ought to study its teachings with great care, and we must immerse ourselves fully into the heart of the Gospel, precisely in order to be able to live the life of Jesus, to be able to imitate His life, and in this way, we will be able to unite our life with that of Jesus. And of course, all the profound teachings that we find within the 36 extensive volumes regarding the earthly life of Jesus and the miraculous acts of Jesus are an essential part of what we could learn in order to truly live the very life of Jesus ourselves in our daily walk. But we must diligently examine and study, as it is clearly stated in the scriptures: "Study the life of Jesus and sincerely desire to imitate His holy example."
Last, in this specific paragraph, it says the following information: "And for those who want to know and receive all the relationships and bonds of holiness, they must love the Sanctifier. The Holy Spirit sets His flames in motion toward those who love the truth and binds them with the relationships of His holiness. For without the presence of love, there is no true sense of holiness, because the sacred bonds of true holiness are already broken." So the third, let's say, the third part of the process is to desire, to understand, and to cherish and to love what the Holy Spirit does in sanctification, in the work of sanctification. In order to successfully reach that beautiful curve, we must realize that everything that constitutes the profound work of sanctification, starting from the earthly life of Jesus, from His glorious resurrection, His triumphant ascension, and from the outpouring of Pentecost until this very day, is exactly what the Holy Spirit has manifested and generously given to us. This has been done so that we may eventually come to live fully and completely within the eternal divine will. And even in this, we can unite ourselves, we could say, with the acts of the Holy Spirit through the transformative action of the Holy Spirit, and with unconditional love, so that we can truly love others just as God loves us. Without love, there is no holiness. And it is only in this specific way that the divine action of God is truly made complete, which in us is diversified: creation, redemption, sanctification. However, when we consider God, everything is seen as one single unified thing, because He is one God. That is the singular act of God.