Gospel, John 19:31-37

 ³¹ It was the Day of Preparation, and to avoid the bodies’ remaining on the cross during the Sabbath — since that Sabbath was a day of special solemnity — the Jews asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken away.

³² Consequently the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with him and then of the other.

³³ When they came to Jesus, they saw he was already dead, and so instead of breaking his legs

³⁴ one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance; and immediately there came out blood and water.

³⁵ This is the evidence of one who saw it — true evidence, and he knows that what he says is true — and he gives it so that you may believe as well.

³⁶ Because all this happened to fulfil the words of scripture: Not one bone of his will be broken;

³⁷ and again, in another place scripture says: They will look to the one whom they have pierced.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

478      Jesus knew and loved us each and all during his life, his agony, and his Passion and gave himself up for each one of us: “The Son of God… loved me and gave himself for me.”¹¹⁶ He has loved us all with a human heart. For this reason, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by our sins and for our salvation,¹¹⁷ “is quite rightly considered the chief sign and symbol of that… love with which the divine Redeemer continually loves the eternal Father and all human beings” without exception.¹¹⁸ (487, 368, 2669, 766)

694   Water. The symbolism of water signifies the Holy Spirit’s action in Baptism, since after the invocation of the Holy Spirit it becomes the efficacious sacramental sign of new birth: just as the gestation of our first birth took place in water, so the water of Baptism truly signifies that our birth into the divine life is given to us in the Holy Spirit. As “by one Spirit we were all baptized,” so we are also “made to drink of one Spirit.”²⁷ Thus the Spirit is also personally the living water welling up from Christ crucified²⁸ as its source and welling up in us to eternal life.²⁹ (1218, 2652)

766   The Church is born primarily of Christ’s total self–giving for our salvation, anticipated in the institution of the Eucharist and fulfilled on the cross. “The origin and growth of the Church are symbolized by the blood and water which flowed from the open side of the crucified Jesus.”¹⁷¹ “For it was from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death upon the cross that there came forth the ‘wondrous sacrament of the whole Church.’”¹⁷² As Eve was formed from the sleeping Adam’s side, so the Church was born from the pierced heart of Christ hanging dead on the cross.¹⁷³ (813, 860, 1340, 617, 478)

1225    In his Passover Christ opened to all men the fountain of Baptism. He had already spoken of his Passion, which he was about to suffer in Jerusalem, as a “Baptism” with which he had to be baptized.²² The blood and water that flowed from the pierced side of the crucified Jesus are types of Baptism and the Eucharist, the sacraments of new life.²³ From then on, it is possible “to be born of water and the Spirit”²⁴ in order to enter the Kingdom of God. (766)

2669    The prayer of the Church venerates and honors the Heart of Jesus just as it invokes his most holy name. It adores the incarnate Word and his Heart which, out of love for men, he allowed to be pierced by our sins. Christian prayer loves to follow the way of the cross in the Savior’s steps. The stations from the Praetorium to Golgotha and the tomb trace the way of Jesus, who by his holy Cross has redeemed the world. (478, 1674)

608      After agreeing to baptize him along with the sinners, John the Baptist looked at Jesus and pointed him out as the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”⁴²² By doing so, he reveals that Jesus is at the same time the suffering Servant who silently allows himself to be led to the slaughter and who bears the sin of the multitudes, and also the Paschal Lamb, the symbol of Israel’s redemption at the first Passover.⁴²³ Christ’s whole life expresses his mission: “to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”⁴²⁴ (523, 517)

1432    The human heart is heavy and hardened. God must give man a new heart.²⁵ Conversion is first of all a work of the grace of God who makes our hearts return to him: “Restore us to thyself, O LORD, that we may be restored!”²⁶ God gives us the strength to begin anew. It is in discovering the greatness of God’s love that our heart is shaken by the horror and weight of sin and begins to fear offending God by sin and being separated from him. The human heart is converted by looking upon him whom our sins have pierced:²⁷ (1989)

The Twenty- Four Hours of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ

From the Writings of Luisa Piccarreta,  The Little Daughter of the Divine Will

Twenty-third Hour:  From 3 to 4 PM Jesus, Dead, is Pierced by the Thrust of a Lance. The Deposition from the Cross.

My dead Jesus, all nature has sent out a cry of sorrow at Your last Breath, and has cried over Your sorrowful death, recognizing You as its Creator.  The Angels, thousands upon thousands, hover around the Cross, and cry over Your death.  They adore You as our True God, and accompany You to Limbo, where You go to beatify many souls who have been ardently longing for You for centuries upon centuries.  My dead Jesus, I cannot pull myself away from Your Cross, nor can I be satiated of kissing and kissing again Your Most Holy Wounds, which eloquently speak to me of how much You have Loved me.  In seeing the horrendous tearings, the depth of Your Wounds, to the point of uncovering Your bones—ah, I feel I am dying!  I would like to cry so much over these Wounds as to wash them with my tears.  I would like to love You so much as to heal You completely with my love, and restore the natural Beauty of Your unrecognizable Humanity.  I would like to open my veins to fill Your empty veins with my blood and call You back to Life.

O my Jesus, what can love not do?  Love is life, and with my love I want to give You life; and if mine is not enough, give me Your Love.  And with Your Love, I will be able to do anything—yes, I will be able to give life to Your Most Holy Humanity.  O my Jesus, even after Your death You want to show me that You Love me, prove Your Love for me, and give me a refuge, a shelter, in Your Sacred Heart.  Therefore, pushed by a Supreme Force, to be assured of Your death, a soldier rips Your Heart open with a lance, opening a profound Wound.  And You, my Love, shed the last drops of Blood and water contained in Your Enflamed Heart.

Ah, how many things does this Wound, opened by Love, tell me!  And if Your mouth is mute, Your Heart speaks to me, and I hear It say, “My child, after I gave everything, I wanted this lance to open a shelter for all souls inside this Heart of Mine.  Opened, It will cry out to all, continuously:  Come into Me if you want to be saved.  In this Heart you will find Sanctity and you will make yourselves saints; you will find relief in afflictions, Strength in weakness, Peace in doubts, company in abandonments.  O souls who love Me, if you really want to love Me, come to dwell in this Heart forever.  Here you will find True Love in order to Love Me, and ardent Flames for you to be Burned and Consumed completely in Love.  Everything is centered in this Heart:  here are the Sacraments contained, here My Church, here the Life of My Church and the Life of all souls.  In It I also feel the profanations made against My Church, the plots of the enemies, the arrows they send, and My oppressed children—there is no offense that My Heart does not feel.  Therefore, My child, may your life be in this Heart—defend Me, repair Me, bring Me everyone into It.”

My Love, if a lance has wounded Your Heart for me, I pray that You too, with Your own Hands, wound my heart, my affections, my desires—all of myself.  Let there be nothing in me that is not wounded by Your Love.  I unite everything to the harrowing pains of our Dear Mama, who, for the pain of seeing Your Heart being ripped open, falls into a swoon of sorrow and Love; and like a dove, She flies in It to take the first place—to be the First Repairer, the Queen of Your very Heart, the Mediatrix between You and the creatures.  I too, with my Mama, want to fly into Your Heart, to hear how She makes reparation to You, and to repeat Her reparations for all the offenses You receive.  O my Jesus, in this Wounded Heart of Yours, I will find my Life again; therefore, anything I may be about to do, I will always draw from It.  I will no longer give life to my thoughts; but if these want life, I will take Yours.  My will will no longer have life; but if it wants life, I will take Your Most Holy Will.  My love will no longer have life; if it wants life, I will take Your Love.  O my Jesus, all of Your Life is mine—this is Your Will, this is my will.

 Volume 20 – December 8, 1926

From The Book of Heaven

How these writings come from the Heart of Our Lord.  The works of Our Lord are veils which hide the noble Queen of the Divine Will.

After this, I felt tired and I could not make up my mind to write what my adored Jesus had told me.  And Jesus, surprising me, to give me will and strength in order to do it, told me:  “My daughter, don’t you know that these writings come from the depth of my Heart, and I make the tenderness of my Heart flow in them, to move those who will read them, and the firmness of my divine speech, to strengthen them in the truths of my Will?  In all the sayings, truths, examples which I make you write on paper, I make flow the dignity of my celestial Wisdom, in such a way that those who read them, or will read them, if they are in grace, will feel in them my tenderness, the firmness of my speech and the light of my Wisdom, and as though in between magnets, they will be drawn into the knowledge of my Will.  Those who are not in grace, then, will not be able to deny that it is light; and light always does good, it never does harm; it illuminates, it warms, it allows one to discover the most hidden things and moves one to love them.  Who can say he does not receive good from the sun?  No one.  More than sun, I am releasing these writings from within my Heart, that they may do good to all.  This is why I have so much interest that you write – for the great good I want to do to the human family; so much so, that I look at them as my own writings, because it is always I the One who dictates, and you are the little secretary of the long story of my Will.”

Then, I was following, in the Divine Will, everything that Jesus had done while being on earth in His Humanity, and I asked in each one of His acts that His Fiat may be known, and that It may come triumphantly to reign in the midst of creatures.  And my highest and only Good, moving in my interior, told me:  “My daughter, just as all Creation is a veil which hides my Will, in the same way, my Humanity and all of my works, tears and pains are many veils which hide my Supreme Fiat.  It reigned in my acts, triumphant and dominating, and It laid the foundations in order to come to reign in the human acts of the creatures.  But do you know who tears these veils to let It come out to dominate in her own heart?  One who recognizes It in each one of my acts and invites It to come out.  She tears the veil of my works, she enters into them, she recognizes the noble Queen, and she prays It – she presses It to no longer remain hidden; and opening her heart to It, she invites It to enter.  She tears the veil of my tears, of my Blood, of my pains, the veil of the Sacraments, the veil of my Humanity, and giving her submission to It, she implores It to no longer remain veiled, but to make Itself known as Queen – which It is – in order to take Its dominion and form the children of Its Kingdom.  From here the necessity that you go around in Our Will and in all of Our works – to find the noble Queen of Our Will hidden in them, to pray It to unveil Itself, to come out of Its apartments, so that all may know It and let It reign.”

PETITION FOR THE RETURN OF LUISA’S ORIGINALS!

IV INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON THE SERVANT OF GOD

Prayer to the Celestial Queen for each day of the month of May

 Immaculate Queen, my Celestial Mother, I come onto your maternal knees to abandon myself in your arms as your dear child, and to ask of You, with the most ardent sighs – in this month consecrated to You – the greatest of graces: that You admit me to live in the Kingdom of the Divine Will.

Holy Mama, You who are the Queen of this Kingdom, admit me to live in It as your child, that It may no longer be deserted, but populated by your children. Therefore, Sovereign Queen, I entrust myself to You, that You may lead my steps into the Kingdom of the Divine Will; and clinging to your maternal hand, You will lead all of my being to live perennial life in the Divine Will. You will be my Mama, and to You, my Mama, do I give my will, that You may exchange it with the Divine Will, and so I may be sure I will not go out of Its Kingdom. Therefore I beg You to illumine me in order to make me comprehend what ‘Will of God’ means.

Hail Mary…

Little Sacrifice of the Month:

Each morning, midday and night – three times a day – let us go onto the knees of our Celestial Mama, and say to Her: “My Mama, I love You; and You – love me, and give a sip of Divine Will to my soul. Give me your blessing, that I may do all of my actions under your maternal gaze.

 Day Eleven

The Queen of Heaven in the Kingdom of the Divine Will, in the first Years of Her Life here, forms a most Refulgent Daybreak, to make the longed for Day of Light and of Grace rise within the Hearts.

 The soul to the Little Baby Queen:

Here I am again near your cradle, little Celestial Mama. My little heart feels charmed by your beauty and I cannot remove my gaze from a beauty so rare. How sweet is your gaze! The motion of your little hands calls me to embrace You and to cling to your Heart, which is drowned in love. Little holy Mama, give me your flames, that they may burn away my human will, and so that I may make You content, living of Divine Will together with You.

Lesson of the Queen of Heaven:

My child, if you knew how my maternal little Heart rejoices in seeing you close to my cradle to listen to Me! I feel, in fact, Queen and Mother, because in having you near Me, I am not a sterile Mother or a Queen without people, but I have my dear child who loves Me very much, and who wants Me to do for her my office of Mother and Queen. Therefore, you are bearer of joy to your Mama; more so, since you come onto my lap to be taught by Me how to live in the Kingdom of the Divine Will. To have a child who wants to live with Me in this Kingdom so holy, is the greatest glory, honor and feast for your Mama. Therefore, pay attention to Me, my dear child, and I will continue to narrate to you the wonders of my birth.

My cradle was surrounded by Angels, who competed among themselves to sing Me lullabies, as to their sovereign Queen. And since I was endowed with reason and science, which had been infused in Me by my Creator, I fulfilled my first duty to adore the Most Holy adorable Trinity with my intelligence and also with my babbling voice of a child. And the ardor of my love for a Majesty so holy was so great that, languishing, I felt delirious with the desire of being in the arms of the Divinity, to receive Their embraces, and to give Them my own. And the Angels, for whom my desires were commands, picked Me up, and carrying Me on their wings, brought Me into the loving arms of my Celestial Father. Oh, with how much love the Divine Persons awaited Me! I was coming from the exile, and the brief pauses of separation between Me and Them were the cause of new fires of love; they were new gifts that They prepared for Me, while I would find new devices to ask for pity and mercy for my children, who, living in exile, were under the lashes of divine Justice. And dissolving all of Myself in love, I said to Them: “Adorable Trinity, I feel happy – I feel a Queen, nor do I know what unhappiness and slavery is. On the contrary, because of your Will reigning in Me, the joys and the happinesses are so great and so many that, little as I am, I cannot embrace them all. But in so much happiness, there is a vein of intense bitterness in my little Heart: I feel in It my unhappy children – slave to their own rebellious will. Have pity, holy Father – have pity! O please! Make my happiness whole – make happy these unhappy children, whom I carry, more than Mother, within my maternal Heart. Let the Divine Word descend upon the earth, and everything will be granted! I will not come down off of your paternal knees if You do not give Me the deed of grace, that I may bring to my children the good news of their Redemption.”

The Divinity was moved at my prayers, and filling Me with new gifts, said to Me: “Return to the exile and continue your prayers. Extend the Kingdom of Our Will in all of your acts, and at the appropriate time We will make You content.” But They did not tell Me either when or where He would descend.

So I departed from Heaven only to do the Divine Will. This was the most heroic sacrifice for Me, but I did it gladly, so that the Divine Will alone might have dominion over Me.

Now, listen to Me, my child. How much did your soul cost Me, to the point of embittering the immense sea of my joys and happinesses! Every time you do your will, you render yourself a slave, and you feel your unhappiness; and I, being your Mama, feel the unhappiness of my child within my Heart. Oh, how sorrowful it is to have unhappy children! How you should take to heart doing the Divine Will, in seeing that I reached the point of departing from Heaven so that my will might have no life in Me.

Now, my child, continue to listen to Me. In each one of your acts, may your first duty be to adore your Creator, to know Him and to love Him. This places you in the order of creation, and you come to recognize the One who created you. This is the holiest duty of each creature: to recognize her origin.

Now you must know that bringing myself to Heaven, my descending, my praying – formed the daybreak around Me, which, spreading through the whole world, surrounded the hearts of my children, so that the daybreak might follow the dawn, to make arise the serene day of expectation for the divine Word upon earth.

The soul:

Little Celestial Mama, in seeing You, just newly born, giving me lessons so holy, I feel enraptured and I understand how much You love me, to the point of becoming unhappy because of me. O please! Holy Mama, You who love me so much, let the power, the love and the joys which inundate You descend into my heart, so that, being filled with them, my will may find no room to live in me, and may freely give up its place to the dominion of the Divine Will.

Little Sacrifice:

Today, to honor Me, you will do three acts of adoration to your Creator, reciting three Glory Be’s to thank Him for the many times I received the grace to be admitted to Their presence.

Ejaculatory Prayer:

Celestial Mama, let the daybreak of the Divine Will rise within my soul.

Prayer to the Celestial Queen for each day of the month of May

 Immaculate Queen, my Celestial Mother, I come onto your maternal knees to abandon myself in your arms as your dear child, and to ask of You, with the most ardent sighs – in this month consecrated to You – the greatest of graces: that You admit me to live in the Kingdom of the Divine Will.

Holy Mama, You who are the Queen of this Kingdom, admit me to live in It as your child, that It may no longer be deserted, but populated by your children. Therefore, Sovereign Queen, I entrust myself to You, that You may lead my steps into the Kingdom of the Divine Will; and clinging to your maternal hand, You will lead all of my being to live perennial life in the Divine Will. You will be my Mama, and to You, my Mama, do I give my will, that You may exchange it with the Divine Will, and so I may be sure I will not go out of Its Kingdom. Therefore I beg You to illumine me in order to make me comprehend w

‘Will of God’ means.

Hail Mary…

Little Sacrifice of the Month:

Each morning, midday and night – three times a day – let us go onto the knees of our Celestial Mama, and say to Her: “My Mama, I love You; and You – love me, and give a sip of Divine Will to my soul. Give me your blessing, that I may do all of my actions under your maternal gaze.

 Day Ten

The Queen of Heaven in the Kingdom of the Divine Will.

The Dawn that rises to put to Flight the Night of the Human Will:  Her Glorious Birth

The soul to the Queen of Heaven:

Here I am, O holy Mama, near your cradle, to be spectator of your prodigious birth. The heavens are stupefied, the Sun is fixed upon You with its light, the earth exults with joy and feels honored to be inhabited by its little newborn Queen, and the Angels compete among themselves to be around your cradle, to honor You and to be ready for your every wish. Everyone honors You and wants to celebrate your birth. I too unite myself with all, and prostrate before your cradle – where I see, as though enraptured, your mother Anne and your father Joachim – I want to tell You my first word; I want to entrust to You my first secret. I want to empty my heart into yours, and say to You: “My Mama, You who are the dawn, herald of the Divine Fiat upon the earth, O please, put to flight the gloomy night of the human will within my soul and in the whole world! Ah, yes, may your birth be our hope which, like a new dawn of grace, regenerates us in the Kingdom of the Divine Will!”

Lesson of the Newborn Queen:

Child of my Heart, my birth was prodigious; no other birth can be said to be similar to mine. I enclosed in Myself the heaven, the Sun of the Divine Will, and also the earth of my humanity – a blessed and holy earth, which enclosed the most beautiful flowerings. And even though I was just newly born, I enclosed the prodigy of the greatest prodigies: the Divine Will reigning in Me, which enclosed within Me a heaven more beautiful, a Sun more refulgent than those of Creation, of which I was also Queen, as well as a sea of graces without boundaries, which constantly murmured: “Love, love to my Creator…” My birth was the true dawn that puts to flight the night of the human will; and as I kept growing, I formed the daybreak and called for the brightest daylight, to make the Sun of the Eternal Word rise over the earth.

My child, come to my cradle to listen to your little Mama. As soon as I was born, I opened my eyes to see this low world, to go in search of all my children so as to enclose them within my Heart, give them my maternal love and, regenerating them to the new life of love and of grace, give them the step which would let them enter into the Kingdom of the Divine Fiat, which I possessed. I wanted to act as Queen and Mother, enclosing everyone in my Heart, to bring everyone to safety, and to give them the great gift of the Divine Kingdom. In my Heart I had a place for everyone, because for one who possesses the Divine Will there are no constraints – only infinite expanses. I looked also at you, my child – no one escaped Me. And since on that day everyone celebrated my birth, it was also feast for Me. But upon opening my eyes to the light, I had the sorrow of seeing the creatures in the thick night of the human will.

Oh, what an abyss of darkness envelops the creature who lets herself be dominated by her will! It is the true night, but a night with no stars – with, at most, a few fleeting lightnings – lightnings easily followed by thunders which, in roaring, thicken the darkness even more, and unload the storm over the poor creature – storms of fear, of weakness, of danger, of falling into evil.

My poor Heart was pierced in seeing my children in this horrible storm, in which the night of the human will had overwhelmed them.

Now listen to your little Mama: I am still in the cradle, I am little – look at the tears I shed for you! Every time you do your will, it is a night that you form for yourself; and if you knew how much this night harms you, you would cry with Me! It makes you lose the light of the day of the Holy Will; it turns you upside down; it paralyzes you to good; it breaks true love in you, and you remain like a poor ill one, who lacks the necessary things to be healed. Ah, my child, dear child, listen to Me: never do your will; give Me your word that you will make your little Mama content.

The soul:

Little holy Mama, I feel trembling in hearing of the ugly night of my will. Therefore I am here, at your cradle, to ask of You the grace that, by your prodigious birth, You make me be reborn in the Divine Will. I will be always near You, Celestial little Baby; I will unite my prayers and my tears to yours, to impetrate for myself and for all, the Kingdom of the Divine Will upon earth.

Little Sacrifice:

Today, to honor Me, you will come three times to visit Me in my cradle, saying to Me each time: “Celestial little Baby, make me be reborn together with You in the Life of the Divine Will.”

Ejaculatory Prayer:

My little Mama, make the dawn of the Divine Will rise within my soul.