“May the Divine Will always be blessed!”

Newsletter No. 176 –- January 1st A.D. 2017

Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

The liturgical feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary on January 1st, which is the Octave of Christmas.

Only Christmas and Easter enjoy the privilege of an octave, which is an eight day extension of the feast.

The honoring of Mary as the Mother of God can be traced back to the Council of Ephesus in 431. By the 7th century,

January 1st was observed as a celebration of the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the 13th century, the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ had come to replace the feast honoring Mary; however in 1751, after a push in Portugal for an official feast day celebrating Mary’s divine maternity, Pope Benedict XIV allowed Portugal’s churches to devote a feast to Mary on the first Sunday in May. Eventually, the feast extended to other countries, and in 1914 began to be observed on October 11. In 1931, Pope Pius XI extended the feast to the entire church, and in 1974, Pope Paul VI removed the feast of the Circumcision of Christ from the liturgical calendar and replaced it with the feast of the “Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God”, bringing Mary’s feast day back to the first day of the year.

The feast is a celebration of Mary’s motherhood of Jesus. The title “Mother of God” is a western derivation from the Greek Theotokos, which means “God-bearer”. On this day, we are reminded of the role that the Blessed Virgin played in the plan of our salvation. Through the Holy Spirit, God the Father prepared Mary to be the dwelling place where His Son and His Spirit could dwell among men. Christ’s birth was made possible by Mary’s fiat, or sanctioning of God’s plan with her words, “Be it done to me according to thy word”. Calling Mary “Mother of God” is the highest honor we can give to her. Just as Christmas honors Jesus as the “Prince of Peace”, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God honors Mary as the “Queen of Peace”. New Year’s Day is also designated as the “World Day of Peace”, further acknowledging the role of Mary in our hearts and in our world.

Book of Heaven – December 24 A.D. 1936

The Celestial and Divine Mother, and the human Mother. Fast race of love of God, in which He makes this Mother, by virtue of the Fiat, generate Her Jesus in each creature.Continuing the same topic on the Most Holy Virgin. A light descending from the bosom of the Eternal One invests my poor mind; but it is a speaking light, speaking so many things about the Celestial Sovereign, that I don’t know how to be able to repeat them all. But my beloved Jesus, with His usual goodness, says to me: “Courage, my daughter, I will help you – I will administer to you the words. I feel the irresistible need to make known Who this Mother of Mine is, the qualities, the privileges, and the great good that She does and can do to all generations. Therefore listen to Me, and I will tell you things never before thought-of either by you or by others, such as to stir the most incredulous, ungrateful and sinful ones; I will tell you to what extent Our Love can reach. Well then, Our Love gave Itself no peace – It ran and ran, but with such rapidity as to engage the whole of Our Divine Being into giving unto such excesses as to astound Heaven and earth, and make all exclaim: ‘How is it possible that a God has loved the creatures so much?’ And so, listen, my daughter, to what Our great Love does: the creatures had a Celestial Father, but Our Love was not content – in Its delirium and folly of love It wanted to form for them a Celestial Mother and a terrestrial Mother, so that, if the cares, love and tendernesses of the Celestial Paternity should not be enough for them in order to love Him, the love and unspeakable tendernesses of this Celestial and human Mother would be the link of connection which, banishing any distance, fear or apprehension, would make them abandon themselves in Her arms, to let themselves be conquered by Her love, so as to love He Who had formed Her for love of them and in order to be loved. Therefore the most astounding portents were needed, and a Love that never says ‘enough’ and that  only a God can do. In order to obtain this intent, listen now to what It does: We called out of nothing this Holy Creature and making use of the same seed of the human generations, though purified, We gave Her life. From the first instant of this life, the celestial virtue of Our Divine Fiat united to it, and together with it, It formed Divine Life and human life, It raised Her Divinely and humanly, and sharing with Her the divine fecundity, It formed in Her the great prodigy of being able to conceive a Man and God: with the human seed She was able to form the Humanity of the Incarnate Word, and with the seed of the Fiat She could conceive the Divine Word. With this any distance ceased between God and man; by being human and Celestial, this Virgin brought man and God closer, and gave the Brother to all of Her children, Whom they could all approach, and live life together; and seeing in Him and in Her the same guises, invested by the same human nature, they would have such trust and love as to let themselves be conquered, and love She who so much loved them. How much love does a good mother not win from her children? More so, since She was powerful, rich, and would lay down Her life in order to rescue Her children. And what did She not do to render them happy and holy? So, the Humanity of the Word and the Mother, Celestial and human, are like pledges in order to conquer the love of all, and tell them with all love: ‘Do not fear, come to Us, We are like you in everything. Come, and We will give you everything.’ ‘My arms will always be ready to embrace you; and in order to defend you, I will keep you enclosed inside my Heart, to give you everything. It is enough to tell you that I am your Mother, and that my Love is so great that I keep you conceived inside my Heart.’But all this is nothing yet. I was God, I was to operate as God. Our Love kept running and running, and went on inventing new devices of love, yet more excessive. You yourself will remain stupefied in hearing them; and when the human generations will hear them, they will love Us so much as to repay Us, for the most part, for the great race of Our Love. Now, pay attention to Me, and thank Me, my blessed daughter, for what I am about to tell you: for Our Love it was not enough, as I said before, that by virtue of Our Fiat all be conceived in the Heart of this Virgin, to have the true Maternity, not by words, but by deeds; nor was it enough that She be conceived in each creature, so that each one might have a Mother all for himself, and have the full right and possession, all being Her children. Now Our Love moved on to another excess. First you must know that this Celestial Queen, by possessing all the fullness of Our Divine Fiat – which possesses by Its own nature the generative and bilocating virtue – together with the Divine Fiat She can generate and bilocate Her Son-God as many times as She wants. And so Our Love imposes Itself on this Celestial Creature and, delirious, by virtue of my Fiat that She possessed, gives Her the power to generate Her Jesus in each creature; She makes Him be born, She nurtures Him, She does for the creature everything that is needed in order to form the Life of Her dear Son. She makes up for all that the creature does not do for Him: if He cries, She dries His tears; if He is cold, She warms Him; if He suffers, She suffers together with Him; and while She mothers and raises Him, She mothers and raises the creature. It can be said that She raises them together, She loves them with one single love, She guides them, nourishes them, clothes them; and with Her maternal arms She forms two wings of light, and covering them, She hides them inside Her Heart, to give them the most beautiful rest. Therefore, it was not enough for Our Love that the Word would incarnate Himself in order to generate one single Jesus for all and give one single Mother to all the human generations – no, no, Our Love would not have been excessive. Its race was so fast as to find no one to stop It; and only when, with Its Power, It generated this Mother in each soul, and let Her generate Her Jesus, so that each one would have Mother and Son at his disposal – then did It somehow calm down. Oh! how beautiful it is to see this Celestial Mother, all love, and all intent, in each creature, on generating Her Jesus, in order to form a portent of love and of grace. And this is the greatest honor and glory that Her Creator has given Her, and the strongest love that God could give to creatures. Nor should anyone be marveled: Our Fiat can do anything and can reach anywhere; everything is in Its wanting it so – if It does want it, it is already done. Rather, the marvel should be in knowing unto what excesses Our Love toward man carried Us.”

Fiat!!!

January 1st , A.D. 2017 – The Circumcision of Christ

Calendar for the Traditional Roman Rite

Book of Heaven – January 1 A.D. 1929

Pages of her life which will form an epoch. The gift that Jesus wants. The circumcision. Decision on the part of God; He is waiting for the decision of creatures. … I was thinking about the bitter pain which little Baby Jesus suffered in the circumcision. It is only eight days since He was born, and He submits Himself to a cut so painful. And Jesus, moving in my interior, added: “My daughter, in the first epoch of his life, by sinning, Adam made a wound to his soul, through which the Divine Will went out and, in Its place, darkness, miseries, weaknesses entered, which formed the woodworm to all the goods of man. So, if he has any good without my Divine Will – if he has any at all, they are worm-eaten, moldy, without substance, therefore without strength and without value. And I, who love him so much, in the first days of my life down here, wanted to submit Myself to the circumcision, suffering a most cruel cut, to the point of snatching my baby tears. And by this wound I opened the door to the human will, to let it enter again into Mine, so that this wound of mine might heal the wound of the human will and might enclose man once again in my Divine Fiat, which would remove from him the woodworm, the miseries, the weaknesses, the darkness; and by virtue of my omnipotent Fiat, all of his goods would be redone and restored. Daughter, from the moment I was conceived and from the very first days of my being born, I occupied Myself with the Kingdom of my Divine Will and with how to place It in safety in the midst of creatures. These were my sighs, my tears, my repeated sobs, my pains, all directed toward reestablishing the Kingdom of my Fiat upon earth. In fact, I knew that no matter how many goods I might give him, man would never be happy, nor would he possess the fullness of goods and of sanctity, or have the insignia of his creation which constitute him king and dominator; he is always the man-servant, weak, miserable. But with my Will, and by making It reign in their midst, I would give him, in one single stroke of fortune, all goods, his royal palace and his lost dominion. About twenty centuries have passed and I have not stopped – my sighs last still; and if I have manifested to you so many knowledges about my Divine Will, these are nothing other than my speaking tears and the indelible characters of my pains and sighs, which, transforming into words, manifest themselves to you, to make you write on paper, with the most tender and convincing manners, what regards my Divine Volition and how It wants to reign on earth as It does in Heaven. Therefore, on Our part, the Divinity has decided with indelible and unshakeable decrees that Our Divine Will come to reign upon earth – and no one can move Us; and as the sign of this, We have dispatched from Heaven the army of Its knowledges. If it were not so, it would not be worthwhile to place the so many values of a Divine Will at risk; just as they have remained hidden to man for many centuries, so could they continue. Now We are waiting for the creatures’ part, who are still temporizing from making up their minds, especially those who temporize from occupying themselves with making known the secrets of my Divine Will and the great good of Its knowledges. Human will, how ungrateful you are; I am waiting for your decision so that we may exchange the kiss, and I may give you the Kingdom which I have prepared for you. And you temporize still? My daughter, pray and place no obstacle on your part to a good so great, which will be the greatest display of Our love.”

BOOK OF HEAVEN

From the writings of the Servant of God, Luisa Piccarreta,

the Little Daughter of the Divine Will

VOLUME 25

January 1, 1929

Pages of her life that will form an epoch. The gift that Jesus wants.  The circumcision.  Decision on the part of God; He is waiting for the decision of creatures.

I was thinking about what I could offer to little Baby Jesus as gift for the first day of the year. “Would it not be good to give Him my will again as a little footstool at His little feet, or as an amusement in His tiny little hands?”

But while I was thinking about this, my little Jesus made Himself seen in my interior, telling me: “My daughter, your will is already Mine, nor are you the master of it any longer, having given it to Me so many times.  And I keep it now as footstool, now as amusement in My hands, and now I enclose it in My Heart as the most beautiful conquest and as the secret joy that soothes My many pains.

“Do you want to know what I would like as gift on this day? All your acts that you have done in My Will during this year.  These acts will be as many suns that you will place around Me, and I—oh! how content I will be in seeing that the little daughter of My Divine Volition has given Me the many suns of her acts as gift; and I, in return, will give you the grace to double these suns of your acts done in My Will, to give you the field to be able to offer Me a gift yet more beautiful and rich.”

Then He added: “My daughter, each manifestation I have given you about My Divine Will is like a page of your life; and if you knew how many goods these pages enclose….  Each of them is a current between Heaven and earth; it is one more sun that will shine over the heads of all.  These pages will be the heralds of the Celestial Fatherland; they are steps that My Divine Volition takes in order to draw near the creatures.  Therefore, these manifestations about It, like pages of life, will form an epoch for the future generations, in which they will read the Kingdom of My Fiat, the many steps It took to come into their midst, and the new rights It gave them to make them enter again into Its Kingdom.

“My manifestations are decrees, and only when I want to give that good that I manifest, then do I move to manifest a knowledge. Therefore, everything I have told you about My Divine Will are Divine capitals that I issued; therefore, they will be the most beautiful pages of your life, that will enclose the long history of My Will, and braiding the history of the world, will form the most beautiful epoch of all centuries.”

After this, I was thinking about the bitter pain that little Baby Jesus suffered in the circumcision. It is only eight days since He was born, and He submits Himself to a cut so painful.

And Jesus, moving in my interior, added: “My daughter, in the first epoch of his life, by sinning, Adam made a wound to his soul, through which the Divine Will went out and, in Its place, darkness, miseries, weaknesses entered, that formed the wood worm to all the goods of man.  So, if he has any good without My Divine Will—if he has any at all, they are worm-eaten, moldy, without substance, therefore without strength and without value.

“And I, who love him so much, in the first days of My Life down here, wanted to submit Myself to the circumcision, suffering a most cruel cut, to the point of snatching My baby tears. And by this wound I opened the door to the human will, to let it enter again into Mine, so that this wound of Mine might heal the wound of the human will and might enclose man once again in My Divine Fiat, that would remove from him the wood worm, the miseries, the weaknesses, the darkness; and by virtue of My Omnipotent Fiat, all of his goods would be redone and restored.

“Daughter, from the moment I was conceived and from the very first days of My being born, I occupied Myself with the Kingdom of My Divine Will and with how to place It in safety in the midst of creatures.  These were My sighs, My tears, My repeated sobs, My pains, all directed toward reestablishing the Kingdom of My Fiat upon earth.  In fact, I knew that no matter how many goods I might give him, man would never be happy, nor would he possess the fullness of goods and of sanctity, or have the insignia of his creation that constitute him king and dominator; he is always the man-servant, weak, miserable.  But with My Will, and by making It reign in their midst, I would give him, in one single stroke of fortune, all goods, his royal palace and his lost dominion.

“About twenty centuries have passed and I have not stopped—My sighs last still; and if I have manifested to you so many knowledges about My Divine Will, these are nothing other than My speaking tears and the indelible characters of My pains and sighs, that, transforming into words, manifest themselves to you, to make you write on paper, with the most tender and convincing manners, what regards My Divine Volition and how It wants to reign on earth as It does in Heaven. Therefore, on Our part, the Divinity has decided with indelible and unshakeable decrees that Our Divine Will come to reign upon earth—and no one can move Us; and as the sign of this, We have dispatched from Heaven the army of Its knowledges.  If it were not so, it would not be worthwhile to place the so many values of a Divine Will at risk; just as they have remained hidden to man for many centuries, so could they continue.

“Now We are waiting for the creatures’ part, who are still temporizing from making up their minds, especially those who temporize from occupying themselves with making known the secrets of My Divine Will and the great good of Its knowledges. Human will, how ungrateful you are; I am waiting for your decision so that we may exchange the kiss, and I may give you the Kingdom that I have prepared for you.  And you temporize still?  My daughter, pray and place no obstacle on your part to a good so great, that will be the greatest display of Our Love.”

BOOK OF HEAVEN

From the writings of the Servant of God, Luisa Piccarreta,

the Little Daughter of the Divine Will

Volume 29

 May 31, 1931

My sweet Jesus remained silent, and, withdrawing, He left me in the Light of His Will; and—oh! how many things I comprehended. But who can say them all?  More so, since in It one speaks with celestial terms, and in finding myself inside myself I must adapt the celestial terms to the human; and fearing I might make a mess, I content myself with moving forward, hoping that, if Jesus wants it, He will adapt Himself to speaking with the terms of the low world. 

After this, I continued my acts in the Divine Fiat, and my poor mind paused in the little house of Nazareth, where the Queen of Heaven, the Celestial King Jesus, and Saint Joseph, were in possession of and lived in the Kingdom of the Divine Will. So, this Kingdom is not foreign to the earth; the house of Nazareth, the little family that lived in It, belonged to this Kingdom and kept It in full force.  But while I was thinking about this, my great King Jesus told me:  “My daughter (Luisa), indeed the Kingdom of My Divine Will has existed upon earth, and therefore there is the sure hope that It will return again to Its full force.  Our house of Nazareth was Its true Kingdom; however, We were without peoples. 

“Now, you (Luisa) must know that each creature is a Kingdom; therefore, one who lets the Divine Will reign within herself can be called a little Kingdom of the Supreme Fiat. So, she is a tiny little house of Nazareth that We have upon earth; and, though little, since Our Will is in her, reigning, Heaven is not closed for her; she observes the same laws of the Celestial Fatherland, she loves with the same love, feeds herself with the foods from up there, and is incorporated into the Kingdom of Our interminable regions.  Now, in order to form the great Kingdom of Our Will upon earth, first We will make the many tiny little houses of Nazareth—that is, the souls who will want to know It in order to let It reign within themselves.  I, Myself, and the Sovereign Queen, will be at the head of these tiny little houses, because, We having been the first to possess this Kingdom on earth, it is Our right, that We will not surrender to anyone, to be the directors of them.  Then, with these tiny little houses, repeaters of Our house of Nazareth, We will form many little states of Ours, many provinces, that, after they have been formed well, and ordered like many little Kingdoms of Our Will, will fuse together and will form one single Kingdom and one great people.  Therefore, in order to have Our greatest works, Our way of acting is to begin, first alone, one on one with one single creature; when We have formed this one, We make her a channel in order to enclose in Our Work two or three more creatures; then We expand, forming a little group, and then We expand it so much as to take the whole entire world.  Our works begin in the isolation of God and the soul, and end by continuing their life in the midst of entire peoples.  And when there is the beginning of a work of Ours, it is the sure sign that it will not die at birth; at the most, it may live hidden for some time, but then it will go out and will have its perennial life.  Therefore, always forward do I want you in My Divine Will.”

BOOK OF HEAVEN

From the writings of the Servant of God, Luisa Piccarreta,

The Little Daughter of the Divine Will

Volume 20

January 1, 1927

The will of the soul as present for Baby Jesus.  How His whole life was the symbol and the calling of the Divine Will.  How the knowledges are the means in order to hasten the coming of the Kingdom of His Will.

(I was meditating on the old year that was setting, and the new one that 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. See, when I came upon earth, I wanted to give many examples and similes of how I wanted the human will to end.  I wanted to be born at midnight, so as to break the night of the human will with the refulgent day of Mine.  And even though at midnight the night continues, it does not finish, it is yet the beginning of a new day; and My Angels, to give honor to My birth and to point out to everyone the day of My Will, from midnight on, gladdened the vault of the heavens with new stars and new suns, such as to turn the night into more than daylight. 

“This was the homage that the Angels gave to My little Humanity, in which resided the full day of the Sun of My Divine Will, and the calling of the creature into the full day of It. Still little, I submitted Myself to the so very cruel cut of circumcision, that made Me shed bitter tears for the pain—and not only Me, but with Me cried My Mama and dear St. Joseph.  It was the cut of the human will that I wanted to make, so that creatures might let the Divine Will flow within that cut, and so that a broken will might have life no more—but only Mine, that had run within that cut in order to begin Its life again. 

“Still little, I wanted to flee to Egypt.  A tyrannical and iniquitous will wanted to kill Me—symbol of the human will that wants to kill Mine; and I fled, in order to say to all:  ‘Flee the human will, if you do not want Mine to be killed.’  My whole life was nothing other than the calling of the Divine Will into the human.  In Egypt I lived like a stranger in the midst of that people—symbol of My Will, that they keep as though estranged within their midst; and symbolizing that whoever wants to live in peace and united with My Will, must live as though estranged from the human will.  Otherwise, there will always be war between the two of them—they are two irreconcilable wills. 

“After My exile, I returned to My fatherland—symbol of My Will that, after Its long exile of centuries upon centuries, will return to Its dear fatherland, into the midst of Its children in order to reign. And as I went through these stages in My Life, I kept forming Its Kingdom in Me, and I called It with incessant prayers, with pains and with tears, to come to reign in the midst of creatures.  I returned to My fatherland and I lived hidden and unknown.  Oh! how this symbolizes the sorrow of My Will that, while living in the midst of the peoples, lives unknown and hidden.  And with My hiddenness, I impetrated that the Supreme Will be known, that It might receive the homage and the glory that are due to It.  There was nothing I did that did not symbolize a sorrow of My Will, the condition in which creatures put It, and a call I made in order to return Its Kingdom to It.  And this is what I want your life to be:  the continuous calling of the Kingdom of My Will into the midst of creatures.”

Then, after this, I was going around through the whole Creation in order to bring the heavens, the stars, the sun, the moon, the sea—in sum, everything, to the feet of little Baby Jesus together with me, so as to ask Him, all together, that the coming of this Kingdom of His Will upon earth might come soon. And in my desire, I was saying to Him:  “See, I am not the only one who is praying You, but the heavens are praying with the voices of all the stars; the sun, with the voice of its light and of its heat; the sea, with its murmuring—they are all praying You that Your Will may come to reign upon earth.  How can You resist listening to so many voices that pray You?  It is innocent voices—voices animated by Your very Will, that are praying You.” 

Now, while I was saying this, my little Jesus came out from within my interior to receive the homage of all Creation, and to listen to their mute language; and squeezing me to Himself, He told me: “My daughter, the easiest means in order to hasten the coming of My Will upon earth are the knowledges about It.  The knowledges bring light and heat, and form within themselves the Prime Act of God, in which the creature finds the first Act on which to model her own.  If she does not find the first Act, the creature does not have the virtue of forming the Prime Act; therefore the acts, the things that are most necessary in order to form this Kingdom, would be missing. 

“See then, what one additional knowledge about My Will means. By carrying the Prime Act of God within themselves, they will bring with them a magnetic force, a powerful magnet, in order to draw creatures to repeat the Prime Act of God.  With their light, they will bring the disillusionment of the human will; with their heat, they will soften the hardest hearts to bend before this Divine Act; and creatures will feel captivated to wanting to model themselves on this Act. 

“Therefore, the more knowledges I manifest about My Will, the more quickly is the Kingdom of the Divine Fiat drawn upon earth.”

12/28 On this day in 1938 the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta writes the last chapter of Volume 36. The obedience to write ceases.