Volume 20: 1/1/27

(I was meditating on the old year which was setting, and the new one which was rising.)

My state continues in the flight of the light of the Divine Will, and I was praying the pretty little Baby that, just as the old year was dying never to be born again, so He would make my will die and live no more; and as present for the new year, He would give me His Will, just as I gave Him the gift of mine, so as to place it as footstool at His tender little feet, that it might have no other life but His Will alone.  Now, while I was saying this and other things, my sweet Jesus came out from within my interior, and told me:  “Daughter of my Will, how I love, want – yearn that your will may end in you.  Oh, how I accept your present!  How pleasing it will be for Me to keep it as soft footstool at my feet.  In fact, as long as it remains in the creature, outside of its center which is God, the human will is hard; but when it enters again into the center from which it came, serving as footstool at the feet of your little Baby Jesus, it becomes soft, and I use it to amuse Myself.  Is it not right that, little as I am, I have an amusement?  And that in the midst of so many sorrows, privations and tears, I have your will to make Me smile?

“Now, you must know that one who puts an end to her will, returns into the origin from which she came, and the new life, the life of light, the perennial life of my Will, begins in her.” …

V34 – 5.31.36 – “And My return to Nazareth – how well it symbolizes My Divine Will. I Lived in It hidden, Its Reigning was in Full Vigor within the Holy Family; I was the Word, the Divine Will in Person, Veiled by My Humanity; and that same Divine Will that Reigned in Me Diffused to all, Embraced all, It was Motion and Life of each one; I felt within Me the motion and life of each one, as My Fiat was the Actor. What Pain, what Sorrow – not to be recognized, nor receive a ‘thank You’, an ‘I love You’, an act of gratitude, either from the entire world, or even from the very Nazareth, where not only My Will, but also My Holy Humanity Lived in their midst, never ceasing to give Light to whomever could see Me and approach Me, in order to make Myself Known; while in My Sorrow I remained always the Hidden God.”

Letter #16 from the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta                                                              

In Voluntate Dei!

My good and Reverend Mother General,

Thank you for your wishes; I return them to you from the heart.  Forgive me if I delayed in answering you, as it was convenient for me to play with my Little Baby Jesus, and then to think of my duty of answering Your Maternity.  And you know that many times one loses the game and remains upset, and tries to repeat the game in order to win; therefore it takes time and patience (I am joking).

Now, my most dear Mother, I send you my best wishes:  Christmas has gone, Jesus is born, and as my wishes, I send you little Jesus shivering with cold, His face wet with graceful tears, carrying His present in His little hands.  But do you know what that is?  His Divine Fiat.  What a beautiful present He wants to give you!  The gift is great, but He doesn’t want to be with nothing in His little hands.  My Mother, He is little, and wants to hold something to play with; He wants your will as gift, so He will find something to amuse Himself with.  Aren’t you happy?  Therefore, my wish is great:  I send you a most delicate task – to make the little Infant not be born, but grow with your love, to calm His crying and make Him smile by telling Him that you gladly accept the present of His Will, giving Him yours.  In sum, you will make Him grow so much that you yourself will become the veil that covers Jesus.

My Mother, it is true that my wishes come from a little ignorant one, but you must know that it is the delirium, the fever, that devours me, as I yearn that the Divine Will reign in the hearts, and that we be the repeaters of the life of the Little Baby.

Now I pass on to send my wishes to the whole community and to the little orphans, by sending the greetings, the kiss, the present which Baby Jesus wants to give to all of them.  And I beg all of them not to send Him back, otherwise they will make Him cry; and then how much will it take to soothe His tears.

In a special way I send my most heartfelt wishes to my good Mother Nazarena; tell her that I always remember her, I will never forget her, and I wish that dear little Jesus will keep her company, and make her a saint – a great saint; and to pray for me.

I finish here, because dear Little Baby is in a hurry to come to you, to give you His present and receive yours.  So I leave you in the place of honor of the Divine Will, in which Jesus wants you.  I kiss your right hand with sincere respect, and I ask you to bless me.

The little daughter of the Divine Will

Corato, December 27, 1934

St. John, Apostle and Evangelist

To St. John we owe a Gosple, three Epistles and the Apocalypse, with the most beautiful pages on the Divinity of the Word made flesh; for this reason he is symbolized by the eagle which soars in the heights.  On the Cross Our Lord Jesus Christ entrusted His Most Holy Mother Mary to St. John:  “Woman, behold thy son.”

St. John only escaped a violent death by the special protection of God, and which made many believe that the beloved disciple would not die.  Actually he did not depart this life until all the other apostles had passed away.

The following selections are from the EWTN website on St. John the Apostle and Evangelist:

The great love which St. John bore to his God and Redeemer, and which he kindled from his Master’s Divine breast, inspired him with the most vehement and generous charity for his neighbor.  Without the sovereign love of God no one can please Him. “He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is charity.” [I John 4: 8] “Let us therefore love God, because God first hath loved us.” [I John 4: 19] This is the first maxim in a spiritual life, which this apostle most tenderly inculcates. The second is that our fidelity in shunning all sin, and in keeping all God’s commandments, is the proof of our love for God, [I John 3, 4, etc.] but especially a sincere love for our neighbour is its great test. “For he that loveth not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love God whom he seeth not?” says St. John. [I John 4: 20]

St. John teaches us that to attain to this heavenly and Christian disposition, to this twofold charity towards God and towards our neighbour for His sake, we must subdue our passions and die to the inordinate love of the world and ourselves. St. John’s hatred and contempt of the world was equal to his love of God, and he cries out to us, “My little children, love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If anyone loves the world the charity of the Father is not in him.”

Little Daughter of the Divine Will, Luisa Piccarreta

In the last Supper Jesus gave Luisa the place of honor between Himself and St. John. He gave Himself as food to all, in order to receive food from all. The will of man is that which makes him more like His Creator. The human will is the depository of all the works of man.

Book of Heaven
10/9/21 – Vol. 13

I was thinking about the act in which Jesus had the Last Supper with His disciples, and my lovable Jesus told me in my interior: “My daughter (Luisa), while I was having supper with My disciples, I was surrounded not only by them, but by the whole human family. I had all creatures near Me, one by one; I knew them all, and I called them by name. I (Jesus) also called you (Luisa), and I (Jesus) gave you the place of honor between Me and John, constituting you (Luis) the little secretary of My Will. And as I divided the lamb, in offering it to My Apostles, I gave it to all and to each one. That lamb, bled dry, roasted, cut to pieces, spoke about Me; it was the symbol of My Life and of how I was to reduce Myself for Love of all. And I wanted to give it to all as delicious food, which represented My Passion, because everything I did, said and suffered was converted by My Love into food for man. But do you know why I called everyone and gave the lamb to all? Because I too wanted food from them. I wanted everything they would do to be food for Me. I wanted the food of their love, of their works, of their words – of everything.”

And I: ‘My Love, how can it be that our works become food for You?’

And Jesus: “It is not on bread alone that one can live, but on everything to which My Will gives virtue of making one live. If bread nourishes man, it is because I want it so. Now, whatever the creature disposes with her will to make of her work – that is the form which it assumes. If with her work she wants to form food for Me, she forms food for Me; if Love, she gives Me Love; if reparation, she forms reparation. And if in her will she wants to offend Me, she makes of her work the knife to wound Me, and maybe even to kill Me.”

Then He added: “The will of man is that which makes him more like His Creator. In the human will I placed part of my Immensity and of my Power, and giving it the place of honor, I constituted it queen of the whole of man and depository of all of his works. Just as creatures have chests in which they keep their things to maintain them secured, the soul has her will in which to keep and secure all that she thinks, says and does. Not even one thought will be lost. What she cannot do with her eyes, with her mouth, with her works, she can do with her will – in one instant she can will a thousand goods and a thousand evils. The will makes her thought fly up to Heaven, to the farthest places and deep into the abysses. She might be prevented from working, from seeing, from speaking, but she can do all this in her will. Whatever she does and wants, forms an act which remains deposited in her own will. Oh, how the will can be expanded! How much good and how much evil can it not contain? This is why, among all things, I want the will of man: because if I have this, I have everything – the fortress is conquered.”

The future ruler of Israel, will be born in Bethlehem,
a name that means “House of Bread”

St. Stephen, First Martyr

St. Stephen is the first of the witnesses of Christ; it is only right that he could appear first in the glorious processions of Saints who surround the cradle of the Savior.

Yesterday, the Lord of the universe filled us with wonder, whereas today the disciple of the Lord fills us with wonder.  In what manner the former, and in what manner the latter?  The former (i.e. Christ), for our sakes assumed human nature, while the latter (i.e., St. Stephen) for the sake of the Lord rid himself of human nature.  The martyr’s death of St. Stephen is truly singular, as is his cult, which is enjoyed in the Church of Christ since apostolic times.

St. John Chrysostom numbers St. Stephen among the apostles:  “Tell me truthfully,” he says, “what did he lack to be equal to the Apostles?  Did he not also work miracles?  Did he not also manifest fortitude?” (Sermon 15)

Accused before the Synhedrion – the Jewish Council – by false witnesses, St. Stephen bravely professed the Holy Faith.  For this they led him out of the city and stoned him to death.  This occurred in the year 34 or 35 (A.D.) after Christ.  Like Christ, St. Stephen too prayed for his enemies at his death.  Saul, a young man who later became the Apostle Paul, took part in his martyrdom.  St. Agustine ascribes the conversion of Saul to the martyrdom of St. Stephen.  “If Stephen had not prayed,” he says, “the Chruch would not now have Paul.”  St. Stephen was the first to shed his blood and give up his life after the Ascension of Our Lord.

St. John Chrysostom begins his sermon on St. Stephen with the words:  “All the Martyrs are given glory, and the heroic deeds of the Just are everywhere an object of admiration; but at the meniton of the most famous heroic deed of the first-martyr Stephen, even the mute tongue begins to praise him.  Whom is Blessed Stephen not able to invite to praise (him)?  His very name, which in Greek means “crown”, already indicates his merits.  His very name suggests that he received the honor of victory!  Here the name of the Martyr already implies struggle, victory, and honor!”

Another sermon on St. Stephen says:  “We crown Stephen with flowers of praise, and we shower upon him roses of laudatory songs.  He already crowned himself with victorious prizes . . . .  Who among mortals can give worthy praise to the fighter?  Who of us is able to weave a wreath fitting his heroic deed?  What tongue is able to expound the glory of the victor?  What lips shall speak in praise of the heroic deeds of St. Stephen?  What mouth is able to express the fortitude of the first Martyr?”

St. Stephen was first among the seven deacons chosen to take care of the poor.  He is the first-martyr and prototype of all martyrs and so his cult is the oldest of all the martyrs.  The Holy Church linked his memory with the feast of the Nativity of Our Lord for, as the first-martyr of Christ, he bore a very close relation with Christ.

The Feast of St. Stephen was already generally known in the fourth century and was celebrated on an equal footing with those of the Apostles.  The Apostolic Constitutions of the fourth century say:  “Let them celebrate on the day of the first-martyr Stephen.”  The Holy Fathers of the fourth century, such as St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine, preached sermons in honor of St. Stephen.  In the fourth and fifth centuries, churches were built in his honor.

A further mote for the cult of St. Stephen was the finding of his relics in 415.  It was then that according to tradition the teacher of the Apostle Paul, who died believing in Christ, appeared three times to a priest of Jerusalem, Lucianus.  He told Lucianus that, after the stoning of Stephen, he buried Stephen’s body in his own tomb, where it now rests together with the remains of his son, Avivus, and near them Nicodemus – the secret disciple of Christ.  The discovered relics of St. Stephen were transferred to the church on Sion, in Jerusalem.  Sometime afterwards they were again transferred to the Church of the Stoning, north of Jerusalem.  The wife of Emperor Theodosius the Younger, Eudokia, in the year 460, at the place of the original Church of the Stoning, built a beautiful basilica which was later destroyed.  The ruins of this basilica were discovered in 1812, and upon the old foundation the present day church of St. Stephen was erected.

In the year 560 part of the relics of St. Stephen were transferred to Constantinople and deposited, first in the church of St. Lawrence, and later in the newly built church of St. Stephen.  Just as at the finding, so too, at the translate of the relics of St. Stephen, various miracles took place.  St. Augustine, the great venerator of St. Stephen, speaks of these miracles.