The divine will of God is for us to live in union with Him and through our lives bring His love to the souls of the lost. Knowing and loving God in return will heal the soul in need of grace. When you are given that grace your heart is drenched in love. The love of God is the most beautiful, most fulfilling, and deeply joyful form of love.
If we intercede for souls, we must unite our own will with the divine will of God. When we do this and we pray for His divine mercy on a soul we are saying, “Please God, may Thy Will be done.”
Just a Soul Seeking to Please the Eternal Father
What is the divine will of the Eternal Father? I cannot answer this like a theologian, but I will give a very humble and simple answer from my own experiences practicing the “Little Way” that St. Thérèse of Lisieux teaches.
Nearly six months ago I began to seriously seek out the answer to this question. How do I do God’s will in my life? What does this actually look like? How do I go about it? I asked the Lord.
For a while there I would go to chapel and He would speak to me, often through books, about the lives of certain saints. Jesus often would tell me a book and a page or He would put a verse in my mind or tell me a story to study. All these months He was communicating to me, saying, “Here my child, spend time with this, understand that, pray for these things.”
I began to understand why the lives of the saints were so spectacular and miraculous. They each lived for Christ in a love-filled self abandonment. They did things that one might call foolish and these things ended up changing the world. They sacrificed, many unto death, and lived with tremendous joy even in the most horrendous suffering.
How Can This Be?
When you surrender everything to God and your prayers become a sweet offering of love to Him, and a petition to bring His will to the suffering souls you encounter, He simply honors this request.
It’s that simple.
"Conformity with the holy will of God ought to be the rule of a Christian life. This it is that we implore, when we address these words to God: 'Thy will be done' .... God vouchsafes to propose to us, as the sole corrective of all our evils, a conformity to His holy will."
Living the 'Our Father' Prayer
The ‘Our Father’ prayer was given to us by Jesus Christ. Do we really mean it and do we understand what we are asking for when we pray it?
When we pray “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven” what are we asking for?
We are asking to become more holy, to merit eternal life, to become part of the Beatific Vision, and to grow from sinful children focused only on our selfish self-will and personal gratification to a world full of future glorified saints. What is the divine will of the Eternal Father? It is that we put Him first above all, and ask permission before we act. In doing so we rightly order our life to Him and we not only gain tremendous peace, joy, and love, but we also begin to have a positive effect on those around us. Why? It’s simply because He has many things to say. When we ask Him, He is more than willing to tell us what He would like us to do for a soul, and in our career, as well as in the many tasks He may have for us to do in any given day.
My Journey to Better Knowing God's Heart
Through a series of miraculous events the Lord had made it known to me last July that I was to seek His face every day in the chapel of a church that I had been married in over 23 years ago.
And so I began, little by little, to rise to this challenge of keeping the promise to attend to my Lord. In the beginning I had many distractions and attachments that pulled me from this momentous commitment. Some days I missed, there were times when illness prohibited, there were days when I lingered long, and days when I stayed but a few minutes. As the months rolled by I began to notice a beautiful thing happening. First He encouraged me to bring a journal, then He began introducing me to friends, some here on earth, but many in Heaven. He started to reveal things to me, and to give me things to do for Him.
With each request, and each acceptance, my love for Him grew and grew. He began to bless my family, and to give me graces. Soon I found myself detaching from things that were dangerous to my soul, things that kept me from doing the work that He called me to do.
When the Lord knows you love Him, and He sees you every day, when He conforms your heart and soul toward doing good through His grace, you begin to love at a much deeper level than you ever imagined. You begin to start seeing things more through His heart than through your own.
Die for Christ
What is it that you can’t live without? Thinking about that person, place, or thing? Give it up for Jesus. Surrender it to Him. Give Him possession of it. Literally consecrate it to Him. Then pray – every day if you have to – for His will to be done. Petition the Lord that His divine will be done over that person, place, or thing. Do this every day. Do this without stopping. Be patient. Let the Lord have total possession. Say to Him, “Totus Tuus my beloved Jesus. I give it totally to You.”
Praying the Divine Mercy for Souls
The Eternal Father desires to shower grace on our broken, sinful world. He has given the world the Divine Mercy devotion as an instrument for souls without Christ to be blessed by our intercession. Our selfless prayers of love to God the Father, for the sake of His Son Jesus, are sent up to Him as an oblation on behalf of lost souls. We kneel in love, asking our Beloved to offer His love to the soul that has no love. We say, “God the Father, I am eternally grateful for your Son, and I am indebted to Him for His sacrifice for my sin. Please, God, for the sake of His sorrowful passion, Have mercy on us and on the whole world.”
And the Eternal Father, in response to our petitions, begins to activate the children of God who pray this prayer to become His hands and feet through the power of the Holy Spirit, and this petition becomes an overflowing grace that saves souls and transforms lives.
The Miracle of God's Mercy: Priests Need Our Prayers
In the past two weeks I had beautiful encounters of grace that I want to share. These are random stories of how God inserts Himself into the life of the beloved child open to grace.
A few weeks ago I went on a business trip. While working on this trip I met a soul who happened to see my copy of ‘In Sinu Jesu’ sticking out of my bag. It is a well worn copy, and has many notes in the margins of many pages. We struck up a conversation about the book. Then the soul told me about a dear relative who left his priestly vocation and is awaiting approval to be laicized. I was asked to intercede. Jesus knew I would, and so I promised to do just that.
Each day I prayed for this soul, whose name was written with pencil on a torn scratch piece of paper and folded in half. I hurriedly stuffed it in my bag and zipped the pouch shut that day it was given to me. And I honestly forgot about that scrap.
After two weeks of praying for this soul and recruiting others in my parish chapel to do the same, I was invited to attend a meeting. I grabbed that same old bag, and I unzipped the pocket and found that old scrap. I didn’t need it, because I knew the name of the soul and had written it in the intentions book at the chapel many times. I was nudged not to throw it out, however, so I kept it there and zipped the pouch back up.
At this meeting I met a man who has lived a long and amazing life serving Jesus and adoring Him in the Blessed Sacrament. He told many stories of miracles from His life, and later while walking to the car he began to chat me.
This soul has lived a very long life, and had a near death experience, even. In it he went through a long tunnel and saw a great light. At the end the Lord asked him did he want to continue or go back, and he said if he could save one more soul for the Lord he would return. And so the Lord sent him back.
So we walked the short distance and he began to tell me a story. He told how after this experience he went to Medjugorje. While there he saw a man sitting in the grass alone near a tree. The Lord told him to speak to that man and to encourage that man about his vocation. He gave him words to say. The soul did exactly that. We nearly arrive to the cars and he proceeds to tell me that many years later a man came up to him, a priest, and he exclaimed, “You probably don’t remember me, but I remember you! I met you in Medjugorje. I was sitting by a tree. You told me something that changed my life. I wanted to thank you. You see, I was there thinking about leaving the priesthood, and your words changed my mind!”
Then the old soul says, kind of laughing – “I really don’t know why I told you this story.”
I said, “I think I know why.”
I stopped dead in my tracks. I turned to this beautiful soul, this old soul, this gentleman with many children and grandchildren. I said, “Sir, I need to give you a scrap of paper. I believe God wants you to pray for this priest. He wants to leave his vocation. Here, let me give you his name.”
And we both smiled because God was among us and we were doing His divine will in that moment and we both knew it. I have complete faith that the Lord in His mercy will come to the aid of this priest in need.
He so loves His priests. They are most beloved servants, and most attacked by the evil one.
Lifting a Soul from the Edge of Hell
During this same time I met another soul whose sibling was very much in despair and unable to cope. This loved one had tried, twice already, to end his own life.
So I began to pray. I lifted this soul, who I have never met, to the Eternal Father, and begged Him for mercy. I dedicated the Divine Mercy Chaplet for this soul, and prayed daily, without discussing my deeds at all. Not one bit. I didn’t tell others I had decided to do this oblation for the soul. I just began the task. I surrendered this petition to the divine will of the Eternal Father.
Months went by. Things got better then things got worse.
I remained faithful to God my Beloved. I continued to pray, every day, in the chapel for this soul.
I will likely never meet the soul.
Last week a woman approached me after chapel prayers. I had never met her formally, but she also comes daily to pray the Divine Mercy in this chapel. She told me she had a gift for me. The Lord had put it in her heart to give me exorcized salt and holy water. She also had a St. Benedict medal for my child, but was compelled to give me an extra.
I thanked her and took them.
That afternoon I learned that the soul I had been praying for so long relapsed and had an episode. It wasn’t another attempt, but the soul was in a poor state, quite desperate. The person confiding me was in need of spiritual help and by a miracle I was given these things in time for a departure. And these blessed sacramentals boarded a plane bound for the soul I had been praying for.
I could have never dreamed up these solutions for these souls. In my own will and with my own desires I may have done many things differently. Or worse, in my selfish self-will, I may have done nothing at all because I was not open to grace and obedience to the call.
We are called to be His saints here on Earth. He needs us to conform to His will and to bring the love of of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to a hurting and broken world.
The divine will of God is ours to possess. God can only give it when enough people in the world open their hearts and pray for it to be done on Earth as it already is in Heaven. It’s literally Heaven on Earth. The more I say yes to His requests the more I find myself wanting Him to request more. The joy in knowing God is your friend and that by loving your neighbor you are loving Him is immeasurable. I want to be there for Him, to be a friend of His Sacred Heart, a soul He can rely on to pray for the Kingdom of the Eternal Father to come.
It is a beautiful way.
Prayer for Requesting the Divine Will of God
Lord Jesus Christ, my Eternal Good, my Fullness, my Cup that Overflows, my Gift of Salvation, my Spotless Lamb, my Perfect Victim –
I thank You and praise You for Your Eternal Sacrifice on the Altar.
I glorify You and I unite myself with You this day in perfect union with the Holy Trinity to fulfill all holy tasks given to me.
Fill me with Your Holy Spirit and guide my thoughts, my words, my actions this day so that I may be in perfect union with Your divine will for my life.
I ask all this in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit and by the intercession of the Virgin Mary and all the saints, Amen.
The Gift of Suffering with Christ
“You will be consoled according to the greatness of your sorrow and affliction; the greater the suffering, the greater will be the reward.” – St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi
“Holiness consists simply in doing God’s will, and being just what God wants us to be.” – St. Therese of Lisieux
“It is certain that the love of God does not consist in experiencing sweetness or tenderness of heart but in truly serving God in justice, strength and humility.” – St. Teresa of Avila
“The road is narrow. He who wishes to travel it more easily must cast off all things and use the cross as his cane. In other words, he must be truly resolved to suffer willingly for the love of God in all things.” – St. John of the Cross