[Preface from the post linking to this page]:
Now in order is another strong admonition directed to those few followers of Luisa who are promoting bogus interpretations of Jesus’ revelations to her because they have somehow deluded themselves into believing that they are the recipients of directly infused knowledge from Jesus on how to understand His words to Luisa — “infused knowledge” which stands in direct contrast to what Heaven has already clearly said to the Church. I implore such people to read and heed this post I have written here. If, however, you are like 99% of Luisa’s followers I have met thus far (which is thousands of souls across three countries), then this admonition is not directed at you: for you understand full well that Luisa’s revelations are fully orthodox and must always be understood to be 100% in accord with both Catholic teaching — which is itself the lens through which we must always view Luisa’s writings, not vice versa — and the general calls of Heaven to the Church today through the consensus of trustworthy private revelation.
Forgive my repetitiveness, but alas, I feel I must yet again address the bad interpretations of Luisa’s revelations that circulate online and in some prayer groups; for, recently, I’ve been hearing from readers about some of these troubling teachings on Luisa’s writings posted online.
If (and I suspect this applies to the vast majority of my blog followers!) you have not been exposed to these bad interpretations, then there’s no need for you to read this post and I recommend you go for a walk, read a good book, or spend time with your family instead of continuing reading!
[I’ve done my best to present the proper understanding of Luisa’s revelations in The Crown of Sanctity (long book) and The Crown of History (short book). Fr. Iannuzzi has done an amazing job in his Doctoral Dissertation. The Volumes themselves, when read with the 5 criteria I list below, will themselves give you the orthodox understanding. So long as you have the proper understanding in mind, you needn’t bother much even knowing what the improper understandings consist in.]
This post will be harsh. I will doubtless burn some bridges and lose some allies over it. So be it. I care only that I say and do God’s Will, not that I build up treasures in this low world. And some very hard words in accordance with God’s Will are clearly in order for a few followers of Luisa’s who are so mired in the self will that they cannot even see that their very ostensible proclamation of the Divine Will actually stands in direct opposition to the clearly expressed contents of the same.
For we must above all remember what I wrote a few months ago: ‘Til the End of Time: Catholic First, Catholic Always. Luisa’s revelations are private, not public, revelation. There will be no new public revelation. There will be no dispensation or “moving on” from any of the Doctrines or Sacraments or Sacred Tradition of the Church. There will be no passing away of the Age of the Church (even the Era itself is just a part of that Age). In general, if you ever think you’ve arrived at a contradiction between what is said or implied in Luisa’s revelations and what is taught by the Church, you must always favor what is taught by the Church. (You haven’t actually arrived at such a contradiction — there are no such contradictions — but there may be some apparent ones due to bad interpretations, translation problems, etc.)
If you are a Catholic and you reject any of these things, then not only are you not a Child of the Divine Will… not only are you not a New Evangelist of the Third Fiat… you aren’t even a friend of God’s. For no matter how much Divine Will jargon you employ in your ramblings, you aren’t even in a State of Grace.
Why? Because you are a formal heretic; and formal heresy is a sin so grave that — along with apostasy and formal schism — it separates the one who commits it, latae sententiae, from the Body of Christ. Good luck living in the Divine Will if you aren’t even incorporated into Christ’s mystical body.
Luisa’s revelations 100% presuppose and require devout, orthodox-minded Catholicism, and must not ever be supposed to contradict such an approach to the Faith (the revelations themselves certainly do not do so; only some people’s errant interpretations do). This fact couldn’t be clearer in Luisa’s writings. Luisa’s revelations do not dispense us from or allow us to “move on from” one iota of what we Catholics have always done and especially must do today: the Rosary, Consecration to Mary, Confession, Eucharist, Scripture, Fasting, Praying for Intentions, Works of Mercy, etc.
To suppose that one “moves on from” devotions and intentions once he becomes “advanced enough” in Luisa’s revelations, at which point “Fiat” is all he prays, is diabolical. It is flatly contrary to everything Heaven is asking of us in every trustworthy private revelation. To dare encourage others to likewise “move on” is to do Satan’s work; for Lucifer wants nothing more than that the various calls of Heaven to specific devotions, intentions, and practices be abandoned.
Yes, Jesus speaks to Luisa of the superiority of fusing with His Will and adoring His Will to the practice of praying for specific intentions. This does not mean we do away with the specific intentions! Besides, this is not even a new idea in Catholic Spiritual Theology; it has always been understood that Prayer of Adoration is superior to Prayer of Supplication.
Jesus regularly uses a certain manner of speaking to Luisa, wherein He says things of the form “Not __A__, but __B__.” Pope Francis often does a similar thing in his homilies, and it confuses some who do not understand this approach. It is not meant to reject “A.” it is only meant to emphasize “B.”
And yet, those few passages where Jesus speaks of the inferiority of specific intentions/devotions/etc. to general fusing with the Fiat do not change the fact that Jesus is constantly telling Luisa to pray for specific intentions, and Luisa herself is also constantly doing the same even when not directly told to by Jesus.
Luisa’s revelations also must not cause you to assume you have the Gift of Living in the Divine Will, or cause you to assume that you currently enjoy the benefits Jesus describes to Luisa that go along with the Gift. These benefits are now revealed to inspire us to desire and seek the Gift; not to instruct us on how to diagnose the present state of our holiness or that of others; not to make us presumptuously strut about with a fabricated confidence or a heretical quietism. Tragically, I have met some people who lack even basic virtues and graces and yet who seem to think they have the Gift and all that the Gift entails (although this is only a small handful of the thousands of Luisa’s followers I have met). This assumption makes as much sense as supposing that a hunk of iron has become the Body of Christ merely because the words of consecration were pronounced over it. This can never happen. The very matter itself is lacking, thus the Consecration cannot occur, no matter what words are said or by whom. Such people who lack basic virtues and graces but act and speak as if they are “continually operating in the One Eternal Fiat and embracing All” are deceiving themselves and others, contradicting Jesus’ words to Luisa, and certainly acting in no way similar to Luisa herself.
Now, I know that I myself regularly emphasize just how very “easy” and attainable the Gift is. And I do not take back a word of that! But I emphasize this accessibility of the Gift to inspire you, not to encourage you to assume you have the Gift. People who go about assuming they have the Gift and all its benefits merely because they “have said their Prevenient act” are likely guilty of a diabolical version of pride. Let us not forget that the devil himself was originally the greatest angel; until he began to think of himself, and wound up rebelling against God. I cannot think of a soul that the devil would more enjoy devouring for all eternity than one who, while on earth, went about assuming he had the greatest holiness even while he was actually mired in all sorts of sin and error.
And do you know how a Catholic rebels against God? By preferring anything over Catholic Teaching — even if that something is a teaching they thought they saw in the greatest private revelation.
Let’s make this clear: When it comes to the Gift, you — whoever you are, no matter how deep into Luisa’s writings you are — are a mere nothing compared to Luisa.
But Luisa herself thought nothing of herself. She behaved like a normal Catholic. Whenever the necessity of referring to herself arose, she considered herself a mere nothing.
In sum; are you at all confused as to how you ought to be the best child of the Divine Will you can be? BE A NORMAL DEVOUT CATHOLIC. That is how. (And also be on fire for Luisa’s revelations.)
But let us consider more about Luisa herself.
She insisted that all of her writings be submitted to the Church so that theologians could deal with them however necessary in order to ensure fidelity to Catholicism.
Now, it just so happens, that no substantial theological modifications were necessary (just some explanatory notes on some excerpts prone to misinterpretation and some cleaning up of more superficial things like grammar); but the point remains that Luisa herself insisted that such modifications would have been fine had they been necessary.
So what is my point? It is as follows (and it is directed only to that 1% of followers of Luisa who promote the errant interpretations of her writings):
How dare you, a mere follower of Luisa, a mere reader of her writings, cling so strongly to one of your own interpretations of something that Jesus said to her, when Luisa herself — the very recipient of the revelations who heard them from Jesus’ own Divine Lips — in no way harbored this stubbornness?
How dare you, a mere reader of Luisa’s writings, pretend to have such clarity and certainty regarding what Jesus “interiorly teaches you” about these revelations, when even Luisa herself — the very recipient of them, who had miracle after miracle after miracle and validation after validation (all under the most careful direction of Church appointed spiritual directors, one of whom is a canonized saint) — spent year after year struggling and questioning and endlessly seeking confirmations of the validity and orthodoxy of the very words she audibly heard from Jesus who visibly appeared to her?
Not only that, but, unless you are reading the original Italian, you aren’t even reading the revelations themselves: you are reading a faulty translation of them. Remember, no existing English translation of the revelations is perfect; each has errors. This is not a problem so long as:
- You are a well Catechized Catholic
- You read Luisa’s revelations through an entirely Catholic lens
- You would never in your wildest dreams contradict a single Catholic teaching just because you thought a private revelation told you to
- You have sufficient humility to realize you are very capable of error and that The Faith is the bulwark of truth — not your own interior and fallible sense of what Jesus is saying to you as you read Luisa’s volumes — and that your own grasp of the Faith itself is also doubtless imperfect; thus the need for you to respect those who know more than you about Catholic teaching.
- You do not generate your own strange interpretations of Luisa’s writings based upon one or two quotes you mined out of the middle of a diary entry, but instead seek to be guided above all by the main themes of what Jesus is telling Luisa, and you focus on heeding the holy impressions left on your heart instead of focusing on the various ramifications of your own interpretations of the details.
But this is a huge problem if any of those 5 elements are missing. If you arrogantly (even if using a soft and “humble” voice!) present yourself as having some sort of infused understanding of Luisa’s revelations and thus are exempted from the virtues of humility, orthodoxy, prudence, and obedience (virtues exalted in Luisa’s writings more than anywhere else I have ever seen!), then you are not merely a bad devotee of Luisa’s…. You are putting the very salvation of your soul at risk and you may be dragging other souls towards hell.
I don’t wish at all to discourage reading the Volumes; I constantly am begging people to do just that! But those five criteria must be in place as you read them.
Let us say you are one of the 1% of Luisa’s followers to whom I address this post, and that all of the admonishments presented above have run off your soul like water off a rock. That is tragic, indeed, but may I at least beg one thing of you?
Keep your wild thoughts to yourself. If you really believed them, and if they really were true, and if they really were what Jesus was instructing you, then this would be very easy for you: like Luisa herself repeatedly expressed, you would want to keep these secrets between yourself and Jesus.
If you’ve already posted these wild thoughts somewhere online, just quietly remove them, at least, so that what you have said can stop continually damaging the coming of the Kingdom by giving more ammunition to Luisa’s slanderers.
“Be very careful when you speak about my Will”
-Jesus to Luisa. July 19th, 1907.
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