by Janet Klasson
“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”
Jeremiah 31:33-34
Laws and kings were not part of God’s original plan for humanity. The intense longing of God’s heart as expressed in the above scripture passage (and echoed in Isaiah 42:6, Isaiah 54:10, Jeremiah 32:40, Ezekiel 37:26, Hebrews 8:8-12, and Hebrews 10:16-17) was that his law would be written on our hearts, then we would be his people and he would be our God. He created us for intimacy with him, the same intimacy that he and Adam shared before the Fall. Scripture says that they walked together in the garden in the cool of the evening in perfect unity and harmony. Paradise.
In The Book of Heaven, Volume 21, April 8, 1927 (see below), Jesus tells Luisa Piccarreta that when Adam fell it was from such a great height that it was a miracle he survived. He may have survived the Fall, but he was badly broken. His disobedience brought disorder, disunity, disharmony, hard labour, sickness, sin, and death. His great Fall warranted a very harsh sentence.
Fortunately for us, Divine Justice is not only perfectly just, it is also perfectly merciful. God was not willing to give up on fallen humanity. Nevertheless, the trek back up to the Order, the Place and the Purpose for which he created us would be unimaginably treacherous, the journey doomed outside of grace. For man it was impossible, but for God all things are not only possible, but once he decides for it, it is as good as done. So, God himself would need to accomplish our return, but it would take a few thousand years of patience, require a couple of Base Camps, and a continuous line of Sherpas—the priests and prophets. Kings too, but not in the way man imagined.
So the story of salvation history has been all about the long trek back to the summit, a summit so far above us it is beyond our imagining. If climbing Everest takes two months on average, how high the climb must be that has taken humanity 6,000 years—and counting! Adam fell from a GREAT height indeed and how easy it is on a long trek to get side-tracked, to stop on the way, and to forget all about the goal. It takes a Divine Mind to stay focused for millennia. Thanks be to our loving Father, who did not abandon or forsake us, even when he had every reason to.
After the Fall, the supernatural law and the natural law became shrouded by sin; man tended toward rebellion and lawlessness. God knew that if we were to survive the long climb back we would need laws. He chose a lowly man, Moses, to receive the Tablets of the Law, the first Base Camp from which to replenish our spiritual supplies. He chose a lowly nation, Israel, to carry the treasure to the Promised Land. From that lowly nation would come priests and prophets, the first Sherpas. He himself planned to be the Majestic Leader of his chosen people. But this fallen race often lost sight of their goal and, at one point, seeing that all the pagan nations had earthly kings, they begged for one too.
“Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, ‘You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.’ But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, ‘Give us a king to govern us.’ Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. Now then, listen to their voice; only—you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.’
“So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, ‘These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plough his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.’
“But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, ‘No! but we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.’ When Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the Lord. The Lord said to Samuel, ‘Listen to their voice and set a king over them.’ Samuel then said to the people of Israel, ‘Each of you return home.’”
1 Samuel 8:4-22
You can hear the deep sigh in the Lord’s final words. Our God will never override the human will, even knowing what sorrow and woe it will bring. Still, despite man’s infidelity and persistent rebelliousness, God’s mercy and grace increased. He never lost sight of the goal, in fact, the closer we got to the goal, the more mercy and grace abounded. God’s glorious plan of salvation advanced, an unimaginable plan to send his own Beloved Son to pay, in both human and Divine currency, the ultimate price for our sins.
Thus, the trek passed through the Womb of a lowly Maiden, Mary. This new Eve would give birth to the new Adam, Jesus Christ, whose perfect obedience, even to death, death on a cross, would redeem fallen man and lead to the establishment of the Church, the second Base Camp, higher up. The spiritual supplies from this Base Camp were extraordinary. God gave us the King we did not expect nor deserve and went far beyond that, giving his wayward children the unimaginable Gift of the Holy Spirit, anointing all the baptized as priests, prophets—and kings!
Grace and mercy increased still more the nearer we got to the summit. We would need every Holy Breath of it, as the higher we climbed the thinner the air became and the icier the wind. Over the next 2,000 years, the teachings of the Church and the merits of the saints continued to fill our tanks with rich, purified air, as long as we remained faithful to them. The food of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, gave us new-found strength for this most demanding last leg of the journey.
And here we are today, still climbing, but increasingly more exhausted, sometimes even disheartened. Are we there yet?
It cannot be denied that we are on the cusp of events of cosmic importance. Our merciful Father has sent our Blessed Mother to soil her feet on the earth again and again, to warn us repeatedly through approved apparitions to repent of our sins and pray the rosary. She is the ultimate Sherpa, our refuge of safety until in the end her Immaculate Heart triumphs as she promised at Fatima. Just as at Cana, she is interceding for our needs. Just as at Cana, Our Lord is saving the best wine for last.
We have been tested every step of the way to see whether or not we will keep his commandments, whether or not we will surrender our paltry human will to once again dwell in His Most Holy Divine Will. Now, beyond our wildest imaginings the gates of the Kingdom of the Divine Will are almost in sight. Through the unimaginable Grace of the Gift of Living in the Divine Will, God is making possible our return to the Order, the Place and the Purpose for which we were created by Him. We have been given Luisa as our last Sherpa and The Book of Heaven as our roadmap for this final push. The Sabbath rest is oh, so near.
The following reading from The Book of Heaven was written before the Second World War, yet it seems to speak even more clearly to our time and our place on the trek. Jesus speaks to Luisa:
“Poor peoples, poor children of Mine—under the regime of men without pity, without heart, and without the grace to be able to act as guides for their subjects. Indeed, the epoch of the Jewish People is being repeated, as they remained without a king when I was near to coming upon earth, and were under the dominion of an alien empire, of barbarous and idolatrous men who did not even know their Creator.
Yet, this was the sign of My nearing Coming into their midst. That epoch and this one hold hands in many things, and the disappearance of thrones and empires is the announcement that the Kingdom of My Divine Will is not far. It having to be a Universal, Pacific Kingdom, there will be no need of kings to dominate It—each one will be king to himself. My Will will be for them Law, Guide, Support, Life and Absolute King of all and of each one; and all the arbitrary and rightless leaders will be shattered like dust in the wind.
The nations will continue to fight against one another—some by war, some by revolution, among themselves and against My Church. They have a fire in their midst that devours them, that gives them no Peace, and they can give no Peace. It is the fire of sin, and the fire of acting without God that gives them no Peace; and they will never make Peace if they do not call God into their midst, as regime and bond of Union and of Peace. And I let them do, and I will make them touch with their own hands what it means to act without God.
“But this does not prevent the Kingdom of My Supreme Fiat from coming; this is all creature’s stuff, of the low world, that My Power knocks down and disperses whenever it wants, and it makes the most serene Sky and the most refulgent Sun arise from the storm. On the other hand, the Kingdom of My Divine Will is from on high, from the Heavens, formed and decreed in the midst of the Divine Persons—no one can touch It or disperse It.…
Be certain, do not worry because evils get worse; Our Power, Our Winning Love that has the virtue of always Winning, Our Will that can do everything and, with Invincible Patience, knows how to wait even for centuries—but what It wants and has to do is worth more than all the evils of creatures—in the face of Its Invincible Power and Its Infinite Value, their evils will be like little drops of water, like many trifles that will serve for the Triumph of Our Love and for the greater Glory of Our Fulfilled Will.”
Luisa Piccarreta, Book of Heaven, Volume 30, January 3, 1932
God is doing a new thing. It may not yet be in evidence, but take heart! The summit is just above that last high cloud. After the Triumph of the Immaculate, we will really understand what St. Augustine meant when he said, “Love and do what you will.” For then—finally—we will be his people and he will be our God. Fiat!
Arise, O Jerusalem, stand upon the height;
Baruch 5:5-6
look towards the east,
and see your children gathered from west and east
at the word of the Holy One,
rejoicing that God has remembered them.
For they went out from you on foot,
led away by their enemies;
but God will bring them back to you,
carried in glory, as on a royal throne.
The Fall of Adam
I was thinking to myself: “How is it that, by withdrawing from the Divine Will, from such height Adam fell so low?”
And Jesus, moving in my interior, told me: “My daughter, in the natural order, one who falls from a very high point either perishes completely or remains so wrecked and deformed that it is impossible for him to recover his original state of health, of beauty, of stature. He will remain as a poor cripple, blind, bent over and lame; and if he is a father, from him will come the generation of the cripple, of the blind, of the hunchback, and of the lame.
“In the same way, in the supernatural order, Adam fell from an extremely high point. He had been placed by his Creator at a point so high as to surpass the height of the heavens, of the stars, of the sun. By living in My Will, he dwelled above everything—in God Himself. Do you see, then, from what point Adam fell? Given the height from which he fell, it was a miracle that he did not perish completely; but even though he did not perish, the blow he received with the fall was so violent, that it was inevitable for him to remain crippled, wrecked, and deformed of his rare beauty. He remained shattered in all his goods, numb in operating, dazed in his intellect. A continuous fever debilitated him, such that, as it weakened all his virtues, he no longer felt the strength to dominate himself. The most beautiful character of man—the dominion of himself—had vanished, while passions took over, to tyrannize him, and to render him restless and melancholic. And since he was father and head of the generations, from him came the family of the cripple.
“They think that not doing My Will is something trivial, but instead, it is the total ruin of the creature; and as many more acts of her own will as she does, so many times does she increase her evils, her ruin, and she digs for herself the most profound abyss in which to fall.”
Luisa Piccarreta, Book of Heaven, Volume 21, April 8, 1927
Janet Klasson
Children of the Divine Will of Luisa Piccarreta 