First of all I want to correct the passage reference from the last blog post. It should have been Volume 33, March 19, 1935. I have corrected the last post, but take this opportunity to give you a transcript of Fr. O’Connor’s teaching at around the 50 minute mark of his talk, Stay in your cell.
Fr. O’Connor refers to our “cell” as the Divine Will for us in each moment. At the 50:33 mark he speaks of “the great temptation to leave our cell, to leave the present, to leave where God has put us. And the great danger can be that we miss the time of our visitation, that precisely where God wants to come he finds us – not there. The cell is empty…”
A few moments later Father reads this passage from Volume 33, March 19, 1935:
“My blessed daughter, tell Me – what do you want? Do you want my Will to reign and live in you as life? If you truly want this, everything is done. In fact, Our love and ardent desire for the creature to possess Our Will as life, to make her live of It, is so great that as soon as her human will truly wants it, so does Our own fill the human volition with Our Supreme Volition, to form in it Its life and live in her as in Its own center…”
(L. Piccarreta, Book of Heaven, Volume 33, March 19, 1935)
Fr. Dominic then delivers this teaching, a refreshing dew on our parched hearts:
“So I hope some of the connections and the echoes are coming now. Jesus is telling us, telling Luisa, but also directing it to us, that all that is necessary—all that is necessary—is truly to desire the Divine will to be our life. And if we truly want this, everything is done. You see, we can often be tempted and we can often think—when I say tempted, it can either be our own character psychology [or] can be the devil at times—but when we hear about the Divine Will, there can be part of us that simply sees it as very difficult. When Jesus talks about the cross, dying to self, becoming nothing, we can start to imagine and think, oh well, this is impossible, I can’t possibly do this, I can’t live in my cell. I can’t possibly do this….It’s too difficult. God requires too much.
“But you can see that is precisely the mistake that is made. We’re looking at it in our own state of life from a human perspective because Jesus says if we truly want it, everything is done. In other words, the secret to avoiding these temptations and keeping peace of soul, and therefore joy and rejoicing, is to truly realize that if we only desire it, everything is already prepared. All the conquests, Jesus will carry out himself. All the burdens, he will carry….
“And people will have had different experiences and different ways of looking at it so the best I can do is to put it a bit like this: When we allow and desire the Divine Will to work in us, it’s not that pain and suffering suddenly cease. See that can be also a reason of wrong motivation for living in the Divine Will is to find a secret way to avoid [pain and suffering]. No.
“It’s not that when we’re doing this, the suffering ceases, but in a mysterious way, it’s like we’re observing ourselves going through it, but that someone is carrying the weight. So, although we’re experiencing the difficulties, we’re experiencing carrying the backpack [of suffering], there’s a feeling that some Other is bringing us through this. And really, only those that experience this will know the profound truth, that there is a paradox, that everything that Jesus says comes to fruition, everything is prepared, everything is taken care of, whilst at the same time allowing us our Way of the Cross.
“So, we are on the Way of the Cross following Jesus, but there is in the depth of the soul a realization that there is a Power at work in it.”
Thank you Fr. O’Connor for this bath of Divine Will on our parched hearts. Fiat!
Children of the Divine Will of Luisa Piccarreta 