Words…time…food…

What do words, time, and food have in common? We are sadly prone to waste them all.

Pondering the uncommon value of these three common things may spur us to give proper thanks to God for them and pray for the grace to use them in a way that benefits all and properly glorifies the Giver.

Words

I remember reading once that whenever Francis of Assisi saw a paper on the ground with words written on it, he would pick it up and preserve it because the letters on it could be re-arranged to spell God’s name. Oh my! Words today have become a cheap commodity. The term, “paperless society” has become a mockery, and the electronic word has increasingly become a travesty. STOP THE PRESSES!

Jesus is THE WORD Words have power. St. Francis shows us that they deserve to be treated reverently and with due deliberation in every form of expression. I feel convicted to examine how I use the written and spoken word, to give more thought to the quality and quantity of the words themselves, to let every word bear its own weight and depth, and to pray for wisdom. After all, our Savior, Jesus, THE WORD, He must be in all the words we think, speak, or write, for His glory. For us this is impossible but not for God—Lord, think in my thinking, speak in my speaking, write in my writing…

Sometimes we want to be the ones to “elevate” our own words, thinking if we just say something often enough, or loudly enough, they will have the effect we desire on the poor souls we want to change. There are many words I regret speaking, and many more I regret in the way that I spoke them. But, as Lin Wilder states eloquently in her blog post: People Don’t Change Their Minds, the only thing that can change hearts and souls is Divine Love.

Contrast that to the vitriol that spews onto our devices every day. Friends, in the Divine Will, we are privileged to be called to repair for the misuse or overuse of all words of all time, to redo them in the Divine Will, and to restore them to the Order of Grace. In the Divine Will we can offer Our Lord in reparation his own Words, those of Our Mama, every reading or proclaiming of the words of Scripture and the Volumes, every kind and loving word ever spoken, etc. It is our calling and our duty to do this.

Let us also examine our own use of words and try to use them sparingly and prayerfully, in the aroma of Divine Love. Fiat!

For an excellent teaching on sins of speech by St. Padre Pio see Article 9 of his series of articles on Spiritual Formation, available on EWTN. In this series he is counselling someone who suffers from scrupulosity, but we can all learn from what is taught.

Time

We are out of time, friends, which is 1) good news and, 2) the very best news. First the good news: this era of death is out of time, having written the script of its own demise. It’s going down. The very best news is that those of us in the Divine Will are also out of time, meaning outside of time. We have been given a stunning assignment, dear family, to live outside of time, in the Eternal Now, doing our Acts and Rounds in time for the salvation of the greatest number of souls, past, present, and future, all for the love and glory of God. From Volume 11:

“My daughter, only the souls who live in my Will can give Me true reparations and soothe Me from thorns so sharp. In fact, since they live in my Will, and since my Will is everywhere, they find themselves in Me and in everyone; they descend into the creatures and rise up to Me; they bring Me all the reparations; they soothe Me. And in the sick minds they turn darkness into light.” (L. Piccarreta, Book of Heaven, Volume 11, April 24, 1915)

It is so humbling to think of this. In the Divine Will, our Merciful Father allows us to participate in his every act and have him participate in ours and to repair, redo, and restore our days, our lives, and even others’ days and lives in the Divine Will. He knows what we are made of—dust. Yet he calls us to this glorious participation in His Will. (To clarify, when we repair, redo, and restore, we do not take away the free choices that we or others have made or will make, but they do receive extra graces, extra lights for their ultimate good in God’s Holy Will.) As well, through our Acts and Rounds, we are given the unimaginable privilege of giving God the gratitude and glory he has deserved in every nanosecond of time from the beginning of creation to the end of time—even before humans existed as we are the voice of all creation. Fiat! Glory!

So let’s keep that in mind and try to be as prudent with our time as we can be. We all need leisure but we don’t need to spend copious amounts of time poring over news and opinions that only serve to disturb our peace.

In the Divine Will, our Acts and Rounds have effects in the world we can’t comprehend. When I get sucked into the “low world” as Jesus calls it, I often come back to this passage:

Volume 13, January 11, 1922
The souls who live in the Divine Will will be for the Body of the Church like skin to the body, and will bring to all of Its members the circulation of Life.

Finding myself in my usual state, I was thinking about the Holy Divine Will, and I said to myself: ‘All the children of the Church are members of the Mystical Body, of which Jesus is the Head. What place will the souls who do the Will of God occupy in this Mystical Body?’ And Jesus, always benign, on coming, told me: “My daughter, the Church is my Mystical Body, of which I glory in being the Head. But in order to enter this Mystical Body, the members must grow to a proper stature, otherwise they would deform my Body. But, alas! – how many not only do not have the due proportion, but are rotten, wounded, so much as to be disgusting to my Head and to the other healthy members. Now, the souls who live, or will live in my Will will be for the Body of my Church like skin to the body. The body has internal skin and external skin, and because in the skin there is the blood circulation which gives life to the whole body, it is by virtue of this circulation that the members reach the proper stature. If it wasn’t for the skin and for the blood circulation, the human body would be horrible to the sight, and its members would not grow to the due proportion.

Now, see how these souls who live in my Will are necessary to Me. Since I have destined them to be like skin to the body of my Church, and like circulation of life for all the members, they will be the ones who will give the proper growth to the members which have not grown; who will heal the wounded members, and who will restore the freshness, the beauty, the splendor of the whole Mystical Body by their continuous living in my Will, rendering it fully similar to my Head, which will sit in full majesty upon all those members. This is why the end of days cannot come if I do not have these souls who live as though dissolved in my Will – they interest Me more than anything. What impression would this Mystical Body make in the Celestial Jerusalem without them? And if this is what interests Me more than anything, it must interest you also more than anything, if you love Me. From now on, I will give to your acts done in my Will the virtue of circulation of Life for the whole Mystical Body of the Church. Just like the blood circulation in the human body, your acts, extended within the immensity of my Will, will extend over all and will cover these members like skin, giving them proper growth. Therefore, be attentive and faithful.”

Then, afterwards, I was praying, all abandoned in the Will of Jesus, and almost without thinking, I said: ‘My Love – everything in your Will: my little pains, my prayers, my heartbeat, my breathing – all I am and all I can, united to all that You are, so as to give proper growth to the members of the Mystical Body.” In hearing me, Jesus made Himself seen again, and smiling with satisfaction, added: “How beautiful it is to see my truths in your heart as fount of Life immediately having the development and the effect for which they have communicated themselves! Therefore, correspond with Me, and as soon as I see one truth developed, I will make it an honor for Myself to make another fount of truth arise.” (L. Piccarreta, Book of Heaven, Volume 13, January 11, 1922)

Yes, let’s bring this to mind often. Our calling to live in the Divine will is far beyond what we can ask or imagine.

Food

For most of my life food was the guest of honor at every emotional banquet I hosted. It was my idol—thoughts of breakfast are what got me out of bed in the morning. It has taken years of prayer and the sacraments to smash that idol. The Lord has been very patient and resourceful!

Once, in prayer as an adult, I asked for the gift of temperance. Immediately I heard these words in my head, “I gave you that gift at your Confirmation.” Then he added wryly, “You haven’t opened it yet.” Mea maxima culpa!

The Lord chides with an embrace—he did not leave me orphaned. For my part I was hoping to become miraculously temperate in eating, but no, he called me to be a penitent, which gave me a rule of life, including structured prayer and regular fasting and abstinence. Seriously? I would have voted myself “least likely to succeed”, but I gave the Lord my fiat and entered formation in the Brothers and Sisters of Penance of St. Francis in 2002.

It was a bumpy road but by God’s grace, I persisted and professed to live the Rule for life in 2007. God is SO patient! And inventive! A few years later he brought out the big guns—food intolerances and digestive issues. All my favorite foods went out the window. To paraphrase scripture: If peanut butter causes you to sin…throw it out! What really surprised me was how I reached a point where the more he took away, the less I minded, and the freer I felt.

We in western society have idolized food, and have callously wasted it while most of the world has gone hungry. This is an opportunity for self-examination. We may have a bigger problem, as I did, that needs abundant grace, or the Lord may be only asking something small of us, like our daily duties done in joy.

Remember that intention is everything. St. Louis Marie de Montfort said, “If but a pin is given in homage, and given with a good heart, it will be enough for Jesus, who loves only the good will.”

That is especially true in the Divine Will. We can even give him “his own things” as Luisa said, for “the poor must receive from the rich”. Something small can be elevated to the infinite by fusing it with Our Lord’s own fasting in the desert, with Our Mama’s fastings, with Luisa’s long and continuous fasting. So we give Jesus our few loaves with a couple of fish and he will feed an infinitude of souls.  

Through our Acts done in the Divine Will, the common gifts of words, time, and food are elevated beyond imagining, to reach their intended uncommon value, for the good of all and the Glory of God.

I have saved the best for last dear friends. Please do yourself the favor of listening to the cenacle recording featuring Mother Gabrielle Marie and The Benedictine Daughters of the Divine Will on The Feast of Pentecost 2022. The sisters give us some very beautiful teachings on our Acts in the Divine Will, among other inspiring teachings. I love these ladies! (Note: This is a two-part video, and be aware that there are audio difficulties in the middle of Part 2, but they only last a few minutes. Don’t disconnect!)