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DIVINE WILL SNIPPET
(Extracts from the Book of Heaven by Luisa Piccarreta)
Compiled by Ann Ellison
August 4, 2020
RECIPE FOR LIVING IN THE DIVINE WILL
Dear Divine Will Family,
This is the fourth ingredient, but maybe one more ingredient will help some of us make this recipe a little more perfect. So, I will be adding a fifth ingredient. Almost like adding a tiny bit more salt and then the recipe is perfect! This fifth ingredient will come to you on August 6th.
Obedience is the fourth and one of the most important. I found some things that Tom Fahy wrote about obedience and there is no way I could ever explain it the way he did. He always could put words together that were very understandable and very beautiful and a joy to read. So without further ado, please study and consume the information on how to live even deeper in the Divine Will from the words of Thomas Fahy!
We love you all so much and keep each of you in our daily prayers! Please keep us in your prayers. May God continue to bring you deeper into the beauty and blessedness of living in His Holy Will!
Ann
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4. Obedience must be connected with my Will, for if this virtue regards superiors, whom I have provided for you on earth, my Will is also that obedience which regards Me directly. Therefore, one can say that both one and the other are the virtue of obedience with this one difference: one regards God whereas the other regards men. Both have the same value, and there cannot exist the one without the other; wherefore equally must you love both.”
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Some particulars on the Virtue of Obedience “Obedience is the quintessence of love” As one who aspires to live in the Divine Will he must strive for perfect obedience in all things, for one cannot live in the Divine Will if he does not do the Divine Will. And how is the Will of God known? The Will of God is expressed with certainty through God’s Commandments, the teachings of the Church, just laws of the State, and the just commands of those in authority. It is also expressed through inspirations of grace.
Once tested to determine if the inspiration is of God, it too must be obeyed. Finally, for a child of the Divine Will, the Will of God is expressed in those particular practices Jesus has given for living in the Divine Will. Therefore, to make progress in your life in the Divine Will, it goes without saying that here, too, obedience will be imperative.
Attentiveness, abandonment, mortification, modesty, making good Communions, etc., all must be practiced. If you excuse yourself from one thing or the other on some pretext, this lack of obedience will surely hinder Jesus from fulfilling his ardent desire of forming his Life in your soul, and reigning there. Living under obedience to another is certainly the fastest way to kill one’s own will. Humanly speaking it is often difficult, but at the same time it is very effective. For this reason, religious can be considered to have a certain advantage over the laity, and wives too over their husbands. Even so, it must be noted that obedience that is only external is of little value: The basis of obedience is the authority of the superior, received directly or indirectly from God. Actually, it is God whom one obeys in the person of the lawful superior because, as St. Paul says, all power comes from God. If one externally performs the act which has been commanded by a superior, but does so with internal rebellion, the obedience is purely material and is not a virtue in the strict sense of the word. But when one obeys both internally and externally precisely because something has been commanded by a superior, the obedience is then called formal obedience and is an excellent act of virtue. It follows from this that there are many acts which seem to be acts of obedience but actually are not so in the sight of God.
Whenever a person performs the external act which has been commanded, but at the same time complains, or criticizes, or rebels, the action has lost its essence as an act of the virtue of obedience. The same thing is true if one obeys exclusively out of an attachment or affection for the superior as a particular person, or because the command seems reasonable to us or suits our particular taste and liking, etc. In all of these cases the formal motive of obedience — the authority of the superior as representing God — is lacking, and for that reason, as the Angelic Doctor points out, there is no act of the supernatural virtue of obedience. St. Thomas teaches that not even martyrdom would have any value if it were not directed to the fulfillment of the Divine Will. Therefore, to make your obedience both meritorious and effective in killing your will, you must overlook the faults and weaknesses in the one you obey. Instead you must learn to see in him only Jesus, or the Blessed Virgin acting. When your superior is sweet and kind, it is Jesus who is consoling you. When your superior is difficult, it is Jesus again, privileging you with the Cross. Become completely convinced of this truth.
Some excerpts from Luisa’s Writings on Obedience:
Jesus to Luisa: “I want you to make creatures totally disappear so that when they tell you to do something, you will do it as if I myself had told you. This way, with your eyes fixed on Me, you will not judge anyone, and you will not look to see if the thing is painful or distasteful, easy or hard to do. Close your eyes to the things you are told to do, and open them in Me alone, knowing that I am above you to watch whatever you do.” (Vol. 1: Chapter 9).
“The Will of God makes one take possession of the Divine, but obedience is the key to open the door and enter this possession. (Vol. 8: October 3, 1907). “Would you like to know what obedience is? Obedience is the quintessence of love. Obedience is the finest, purest, most perfect love taken from the most painful sacrifice, which is, the destruction of one’s own self in order to take life again in God. Obedience does not admit anything human into the soul, or that does not belong to her, since she is the most noble and divine. So, all her attention is on destroying anything in the soul which does not belong to her divine nobility, which is love itself. When this is done, there is little else to take care of since she only works at what pertains to the soul and so she lets the soul rest. Lastly, I Myself am obedience.” (Vol. 2: October 3, 1899).
“[Obedience] gives death to all the vices, and naturally when one has to make another die, it has to be strong and valiant; and if it does not arrive to do this, it uses impertinent and whimsical ways. Now if this is necessary to kill the body which is so fragile, it takes even more then to kill the vices and one’s passions. This is so difficult that at times when they appear dead, they begin to come back to life. That’s why this diligent Lady is always on the move and continually spying. If she sees that the soul has the slightest difficulty with what it has been commanded, fearing that some vice may come alive again in its heart, she wages such a war and does not give the soul peace until the soul prostrates itself at her feet and adores in mute silence what she wants. That is why she is so impertinent and almost whimsical as you say. Yes, there is no true peace without obedience, and if there seems to be peace, it is a false peace because it goes in accord with one’s passions, but never with the virtues, and the soul ends in ruin, because separated from obedience, they separate from Me Who am King of this noble virtue. Obedience, then, kills one’s will and pours out the Divine in great streams so much so that it can be said that the obedient soul does not live by its own will but by the Divine.
“And can there be a more beautiful, holier life than living by the Will of God Itself? So with the other virtues, even the most sublime, there can be self-love, but with obedience never.” (Vol. 2: August 17, 1899).
“…man gets merit not for the deeds, but only for obedience. All merits are born of the Divine Will, so that all I suffered in my Life was born of the Will of the Father; therefore, my merits are innumerable, because of being consumed by the Divine Will. I don’t look to the number and magnitude of the deeds but to how they relate to the obedience to the Divine Will, or indirectly to the obedience of those who represent Me.” (Vol. 6: August 9, 1904).
“…obedience is the space of my dwelling within the soul. Where there isn’t this space of obedience, I could say that there is no place for Me inside of that soul; and I am forced to remain outside.” (Vol.8: 7-26-08)
Written by Thomas Fahy
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