Divine Will Hunting
By Fr. Terry Staples
Illustration by April Brenn

A new era of grace. Revelations of Jesus never before seen by the eyes of the Church. The possibility of a holiness beyond that of saints. An Italian mystic who rivals the Blessed Mother in importance and sanctity. Sound intriguing? Good. We're about to take a trip through the Kingdom of the Divine Will. Hang on, it could get bumpy.

Church history is littered with strange movements; those that have passed away and those that still remain. Just about all of them started with a single individual who, through charismatic presence or seductive writing, managed to gather a flock of believers. The Divine Will movement is no different.

Enter Luisa Piccarreta. Born in 1865, bedridden for most of her life, she claimed to receive locutions from Jesus. Evidently, the communications were lengthy and frequent, filling 34 volumes by the time of her death in 1947.

According to Piccarreta's writings, there were three great eras in salvation history which corresponded to, and followed from, three great "fiats." The first was the creative fiat: God created all things by His Word. This initiated the "Age of Creation." The second fiat came from the Blessed Virgin Mary: "Let it be done to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38). This ushered in the "Age of Redemption." Finally, after many years of turmoil in the Church, God has completed the work of creation and redemption by inspiring the third fiat: Piccarreta's own surrender to God. Her submission, which is presented as being on par with the fiat of creation and that of our Blessed Mother, brought the Church to a new level of sanctity. We have now entered the "Era of Sanctification." Through Piccarreta, the Kingdom of the Divine Will came to earth and is available to all who welcome it. Eventually, this new gift to the Church will spread to all Her members and creation will be restored to its pre-Fall state.

This raises the obvious question: What does this gift entail? According to Piccarreta's revelations, to "live in the Divine Will" is to literally possess the Divine Will in such a way that one's actions become purely divine. Before the "Era of Sanctification," all that could be achieved by the saints was a "poor and lowly union with God." They could, by grace, do God's will, but were not capable of possessing the Divine Will itself. This new union with Deity was introduced to the Church by Jesus through Piccarreta (though Adam, Eve and the Blessed Mother had this gift as well). One alleged locution has Jesus saying, "When a soul acts in My Will, her humanity is, as it were, suspended. Then the Divine Life of My love takes its place and acts; and, as it acts in a creature, My love finds itself unburdened of its desire for expression" (Book of Heaven, 94). Contrasting the traditional way of holiness (ie. obedience to God's will by grace) with the new way (ie. possession of the Divine Will), Jesus tells Piccarreta, ". . . to live in My Will is to reign in It and with It, while to do My Will is to be at My orders . . . To live in My Will is to live with a single Will — God's Will — a Will all holy, all pure, all peace." In this way, the traditional Catholic means of holiness is denigrated as mere servitude, over and against the new life in the Divine Will.

How, then, is one to receive this sublime gift? Two things must be done: (1) become familiar with Piccarreta's writings, and (2) fervently ask for the gift. The written "revelations" contain the scope of this new spiritual orientation, so the seeker must have recourse to them. This places great importance on Piccarreta herself, so much so that Jesus refers to her as the "second mother" to the Church, surpassed in sanctity only by the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the words of one revelation: "Since My Mother [Mary] was entrusted to Me, and being a Priest to her, I entrusted to her as a sanctuary all the laws, precepts and doctrines that the Church needed to possess. And, faithful as she was and zealous for even one of My words so they would not be lost, she deposited them in My faithful disciple, John. And for that reason My Mother has supremacy over all the Church. In the same way I have done this with you [Luisa]. Being necessary to serve the Fiat Voluntas Tua to all the Church, I have entrusted you to one of My ministers so that you might deposit in him everything I reveal to you about My Will: The Goods that It contains and how the creature should enter into It and how the Paternal Kindness wants to open another era of grace, putting the goods He possesses in heaven in common with the creature and restoring to man his lost happiness" (BH, 14).

There is much that is wrong with the Divine Will movement. For the sake of brevity, I will focus on one central problem: its serious violation of the Catholic understanding of Divine Revelation. In the First Eucharistic Prayer of the Mass, the Church proclaims a fundamental tenet of Catholicism: ". . . we offer them [the gifts] for all who hold and teach the Catholic Faith that comes to us from the Apostles." In the same way, the Second Vatican Council declared: "Everything we need for holiness and increase in faith has been handed on from the Apostles once and for all (cf. Jude 3). What was handed on by the Apostles comprises everything that serves to make the People of God live their lives in holiness and increase their faith. In this way the Church, in her doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes" (Dei Verbum, 8).

Piccarreta's Jesus denies this. Rather, God waited nearly 2,000 years to reveal to the Church a new and better means of holiness unknown to the Apostles. "Jesus" tells the mystic, ". . . it is certain that I have called you first over other souls. Because to no other souls, however much I have loved them, have I shown how to live in My Will, the effects, the marvels, the riches that the creature receives who acts in My supreme Will. Search the lives of the saints as much as you wish or in books of doctrine and you will not find the wonders of My Will working in the creature and the creature acting in My Will. The most you will find will be resignation, abandonment, the union of wills, but the Divine Will working in the creature and the creature in My Will, you will not find this in anyone. This signifies that the time had not arrived in which My kindness would call the creature to live in such a sublime state. Moreover, even the way I ask you to pray is not found in any other . . . " (BH, xix)

We see a clear contradiction between the teachings of the Church and those of Piccarreta's Jesus. But here, an objection might be raised. What about private revelation? If it is true that "everything we need for holiness and increase in faith has been handed on from the Apostles," how should we see the sacramentals and devotions which have been introduced after the Apostolic age? The Rosary, Scapular and Miraculous Medal are all relatively new to the Christian world. Aren't these things "needed for holiness and increase in faith"?

In answering this objection, we must clarify the role of private revelation in the Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "Throughout the ages, there have been so-called 'private' revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history . . . Christian faith cannot accept 'revelations' that claim to surpass or correct the Revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment, as is the case in certain non-Christian religions and also in certain recent sects which base themselves on such 'revelations' " (CCC, 67).

Notice the role of private revelations: they help us to live more fully by the Revelation we already have. They cannot "surpass or correct" what comes to us from the Apostles. Thus, devotions like the rosary and scapular don't add any new doctrine to the Church; they simply help us to express and live our Faith more effectively. John Paul II emphasized this point during his 1982 pilgrimage to Fatima: "The Church has always taught and continues to proclaim that God's revelation was brought to completion in Jesus Christ, who is the fullness of that revelation, and that 'no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord' (Dei Verbum, 4). The Church evaluates and judges private revelations by the criterion of conformity with that single public Revelation. If the Church has accepted the message of Fatima, it is above all because that message contains a truth and a call whose basic content is the truth and the call of the gospel itself."

So, we have a criteria for judging private revelation: The teaching given must be demonstrable from Scripture and Tradition apart from any reference to the private revelation itself. In other words, the deposit of faith, "everything we need for holiness and increase of faith," is able to stand on its own without any reference to private revelation.

Now let's apply this criteria to Piccarreta's writings. In doing so, we find her revelations claim to do much more than help us live by what we have already received. According to the locutions, an entirely new "era of grace" previously unknown to the Church has been introduced: "With three Fiat's I will complete the work of sanctification in man . . . The generations will not cease until My Will reigns on earth. My Redemptive Fiat will interpose itself between the Creative Fiat and the Sanctifying Fiat. They will entwine, all three together, and bring to fulfillment the sanctification of man. The Third Fiat will give creatures such grace that they will return almost to their original state. Only when I have seen man as he emerged from Me, will My work be complete. Then will I enjoy perpetual repose in this, My last Fiat. Only the Life of my Will shall return man anew to his original state. Therefore, be attentive and together with Me, help Me accomplish the sanctification of creatures" (BH, 125).

Piccarreta claimed her revelations improve and complete the revelation we received from the Apostles. The promoters of the Divine Will movement unabashedly state that without reference to her writings, and without her fiat, it is impossible for us to reach the fullness of sanctity that God desires for all Christians. As we have seen, this stands in stark contradiction to Catholic teaching.

Some adherents argue that Piccarreta's teachings represent not an innovation in doctrine, but rather, a development. Admitting the Church has never before taught this material, they nevertheless claim that it has remained hidden in Scripture and is, therefore, part of the original deposit of faith; it took the third Fiat to bring it to the surface. While there is genuine development of doctrine within the Church, Piccarreta's revelations don't meet the criteria for being part of it. "The Tradition that comes from the Apostles makes progress in the Church, with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on" (Dei Verbum, 8). An important characteristic of true development is gradual progression. Following Jesus' parable of the mustard seed (Mark 4:30-32), legitimate development can be compared to the growth of a plant. Over the years it gradually, almost imperceptibly, grows — all the while, remaining the same plant. The Catechism characterizes the development of doctrine in this way: "'The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive Covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries" (CCC, 66).

There is a major difference between doctrinal development and doctrinal innovation. Every legitimate development in the Church is organically connected to the Tradition; it builds upon and deepens what is already present in the minds of the faithful. Piccarreta's doctrine is not, by her own admission, connected with the Tradition. Therefore, it does not qualify as a genuine development of doctrine.

Finally, some Divine Will defenders make reference to Scripture in an attempt to prove that the new teachings are in some way Apostolic. They claim that Piccarreta's revelations fulfill a portion of the Lord's Prayer: "Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10).

The problem with this argument is that it interprets (or in this case, misinterprets) the Scripture in a way foreign to the mind of the Church. The Second Vatican Council was clear on this: "But since sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted with its divine authorship in mind, no less attention must be devoted to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture, taking into account the Tradition of the entire Church and the analogy of faith, if we are to derive their true meaning from the sacred texts" (DV, 12). This is a very important aspect of Catholic exegesis. We cannot base our interpretation of Scripture solely on private revelation. Practically every heresy claims to be in some way founded on Scripture. When we wrest the Scriptures from Tradition, we come away with an errant interpretation. The Church has, throughout Her history, offered rich instruction on the Lord's Prayer, especially in the Catechism of the Council of Trent and the new Catechism of the Catholic Church. In all that time, She has never understood the Lord's Prayer to have the meaning promoted today by the Divine Will movement.

Two thousand years ago, St. Paul warned that there would be those who preached a false gospel, and those who would be seduced into following it: "I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if some one comes and preaches another Jesus than the one we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you submit to it readily enough" (2 Cor. 11:4).

Sadly, many are led astray by the false Jesus of Luisa Piccarreta. Leaving the true Church in search of a "better" means of holiness, they wander instead into a false gospel. As we have seen, the claims of the Divine Will movement are incompatible with those of the Catholic Faith. They contradict in the strongest terms the teachings of the Apostles, in favor of new "revelation." One cannot be impartial to this.

"If any one is preaching a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be anathema" (Gal. 1:9).