Father Iannuzzi Answers Questions Regarding the Gift of Living in the Divine Will!
Question: What is the difference between “doing” and “living in” the Divine Will?
Answer: In considering the Divine Will model of prayer and action, Luisa uses the expressions, “doing the Divine Will” and “Living in the Divine Will” to emphasize the soul’s operation respectively before and after the Divine Will model.
She affirms that “Living in the Divine Will” is the model that is “closest to the blessed in heaven” and as distant from “doing the Divine Will” “as that of heaven from earth”. Jesus reveals to Luisa: “To live in My Will is to reign in it and with it, while to do My Will is to be submitted to My orders. The first state is to possess; the second is to receive dispositions and execute commands. To live in My Will is to make My Will one’s own, as one’s own property, and for them to administer it as they intend; to do My Will is to regard the Will of God as My Will, and not [also] as one’s own property that they are able to administer as they intend. To live in My Will is to live with one single Will […] And since My Will is all holy, all pure and all peaceful, and because it is one single Will that reigns [in the soul], no contrasts exist [between us] […] On the other hand, to do My Will is to live with two wills in such a way that, when I give orders to follow My Will, the soul feels the weight of its own will which causes contrasts. And even though the soul faithfully carries out My Will’s orders, it feels the weight of its rebellious human nature, of its passions and inclinations. How many saints, although they may have reached the heights of perfection, felt their own will waging war on them, keeping them oppressed? Whence many were compelled to cry out: ‘who will free me from this body of death?’ so that is, ‘from this will of mine so that wants to give death to the good I want to do […]?’ My daughter, living in My Will is the life that most closely resembles the [life of the] blessed in heaven. It is so distant from one who is simply conformed to My Will and does it, faithfully executing its orders. The distance between the two is as far as that of heaven from earth, as far as that of a son from a servant, and a king from his subject” 1 . On the one hand, Luisa describes the reality of doing the Divine Will as that of being “resigned” 2 and “conformed” 3 to God’s Will, and of submitting oneself to his “orders” 4 . On the other hand, she describes the reality of Living in the Divine Will as that of submitting to its “dominion” 5 . The former represents the soul that is perfectly “resigned” to the Divine Will, “rooted in love” and that “blossoms in Jesus’ humanity”, whereas the latter represents the soul who is “rooted in the sun of My [Jesus’] Will”, who “grows and blossoms in the very sun of My [Jesus’] Will” 6 , and who continuously cooperates with God’s one eternal operation that impacts the lives of all creatures “in every instant” 7 .
Question: When the bible speaks of New Heavens and a new Earth, is it to be taken as physical, material?
Can this be taken also as spiritual, meaning our souls and bodies. Is it to be understood
as taking place after the Last Judgment? Or can this happen following the coming
Chastisement?
Answer: The New Heavens and New Earth are primarily a spiritual reality, whereby the Holy
Trinity establishes its holy abode within the human soul; secondarily, it is a physical
reality. Unlike the New Jerusalem, the “New Heavens and New Earth” is not just the planet
earth, but the entire cosmos with all its galactic systems transformed by God for
mankind’s new modality of existence that, according to Peter occurs 4x, i.e., before the deluge
(1st heavens and earth: 2 Pt. 3:5), after the deluge (2nd heavens and earth: 2 Pt. 3:6) and after the
fiery chastisement (3rd heavens and earth: 2 Pt. 3:7), and – along with Isaiah 65:17-18, Rev.
21:1-2, CCC 1045 and 1047 and Lactantius – 4th time after last judgment (the 4th heavens and
earth: 2 Pt. 3:10-13).
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