The Two Foundations of the Spiritual Life: Knowledge and Will

Three spiritual powers according to Saint Augustine

It is to Saint Augustine (354-430) that the Western tradition owes its strongest doctrine of the soul as image of the Trinity. In books IX, X and XIV of his treatise De Trinitate, written between 399 and 419, the bishop of Hippo observes in the human soul three consubstantial and relatively distinct faculties: memory, intelligence and will^[5].

Augustine sums up his discovery there, in substance: memory, intelligence and will are neither three lives, nor three souls, nor three substances, but one life, one soul, one essence — and it is in this triad that the soul is the image of the Trinity^[6].

The analogy is precious. Memory, which gathers into the soul all that it possesses, points to the Father, source of all; intelligence, which begets knowledge, points to the Son-Word, "knowledge of God"; the will, which moves and unites, points to the Holy Spirit, the Love who proceeds from the Father and the Son^[7]. This is an appropriation received in the tradition: Augustine himself warns that it must not be understood in the proper sense, since each divine Person possesses memory, intelligence and love^[8].

The image tells us something not only about God, but about man. Knowing, willing, remembering are not three parallel operations; they are a single life of the soul deployed in three aspects. The whole spiritual effort will henceforth consist in reorienting these three powers toward their source: remembering God, knowing him, willing him.

The Thomist synthesis: intellect and will

Eight centuries later, Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) takes up this insight and reformulates it with Aristotelian precision. In the Summa Theologiae, he devotes questions 79 to 83 of the Prima Pars to the powers of the intellectual soul, and ranks two powers in particular as properly spiritual: the intellect (intelligence) and the rational appetite (will)^[9].

The intellect has the true for its object; the will has the good for its object. But the good is nothing other than the true insofar as it is desirable: knowing and willing are therefore, in the soul, two movements that command one another. Saint Thomas states the famous rule:

« Nihil volitum nisi praecognitum » — nothing is willed that is not first known. — Scholastic adage summing up Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae q. 9, a. 1^[10]

This scholastic formula means that no desire precedes its object: one cannot desire what one has no idea of. And conversely, the intelligence itself is moved by the will, which decides to halt or pursue reflection: "the will moves the intellect as to the exercise of its act"^[11]. In every fully human action, the will commands the intelligence what it must seek, and the intelligence presents to the will what it must love.

Saint Thomas inherits here a long Latin tradition — Augustine, Boethius, Anselm — and makes it the architecture of the moral and spiritual life: every sin is an aversio a Deo, conversio ad creaturam, a turning away from God and a turning toward the creature, by the will, under the gaze of the intelligence^[12]. And the virtues that order love toward God and neighbor — such as justice and charity — are themselves habitus, that is, stable dispositions, of that same will enlightened by the intelligence^[13].

Taken up in the Catechism of the Catholic Church

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, promulgated by Saint John Paul II in 1992, gathers this whole tradition into its moral part, in the First Section of Part III, "Man's Vocation: Life in the Spirit".

"Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1731^[14]

Three points are worth noting. First: freedom is not an external datum; it is rooted in reason and will, that is, in the two spiritual powers of the soul. Second: freedom is teleological — ordered to an end, made to order itself to a good — and its fulfillment consists in ordering itself to the supreme good. Third: its full maturation therefore lies not in endless oscillation between indifferent options, but in adherence to God.

The Catechism specifies elsewhere that this ordination passes through knowledge: "the desire for God is written in the human heart" (§ 27)^[15], and man is capable, by the natural light of his reason alone, of rising to a Creator (§ 36)^[16] — but this natural knowledge remains insufficient without faith, which "is first of all a personal adherence of man to God" (§ 150)^[17]. Faith therefore engages both foundations at once: the adherence of the intelligence, which surrenders to revealed truth, and the adherence of the will, which abandons itself to it.

What "willing" means in the interior life

The will is neither whim nor passing fancy. For the Catholic tradition, it is the power by which the soul tends freely and deliberately toward a known good. Saint Thomas distinguishes in this respect velleity — a vague desire, not ordered to action — from effective willing — a settled decision, which engages and sustains action^[18].

This precision is decisive for the spiritual life. Many souls believe they will holiness because they wish for it in theory; in reality, they have only a velleity not yet raised to the rank of true willing. The rule of discernment is simple: if I can and if I truly will, I will do it. If I do not do it, either I could not, or I did not truly will it.

This logic of willing-and-being-able is inscribed in the very nature of the human will. Aristotle already formulated it (Metaphysics, Θ 5, 1048a); Saint Thomas systematizes it by distinguishing voluntas ut natura — which tends spontaneously to good in general — from voluntas ut ratio — which freely chooses among particular goods^[19]. Holiness belongs to the second: a deliberate choice, firm, ready to sacrifice everything for its object.

The golden rule: willing and being able make the action

One practical rule governs all human action: what one can do and wills to do, one does. If the action is not performed, either power is lacking, or willing is deficient — there is no other possibility.

A common experience verifies it: sitting on a chair, if you can get up and will to get up, you will get up; if you do not get up, one of the two conditions is missing. Transposed to the spiritual life, the rule is devastating. If God wills that we live by his life — and he does will it, since he created us for this^[20] — and if he himself can do all things, then the only possible cause of a blockage is our own willing. Not because grace would be refused to us, but because our consent has not yet risen to the rank of an effective decision.

Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787), Doctor of the Church and founder of the Redemptorists, made it the central axis of his spirituality:

"All holiness consists in loving God, and all love of God consists in doing the will of God." — Saint Alphonsus Liguori, The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ, "General Maxims for Living Well", § 21^[21]

And further on, in the same work:

"But our conformity to the divine will must be entire, without reserve, and constant, without interruption. That is the height of perfection." — Saint Alphonsus Liguori, The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ, ch. 13, § 5^[22]

God judges intention, not the greatness of the deed

From this primacy follows another spiritual principle: God judges not the brilliance of actions, but the purity of the will that animates them. A good work done out of habit, vanity or calculation is, in Saint Paul's words, but "a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal" (1 Cor 13:1)^[23]. Conversely, a tiny work done out of love weighs infinitely before God.

The principle runs through every spiritual school. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, in a letter to her sister Céline of 20 October 1888, gives its best-known formulation:

"Jesus does not so much look at the greatness of actions, nor even at their difficulty, as at the love which makes us do them." — Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Letter 65 to Céline, 20 October 1888^[24]

The rule, in Thérèse, is the "little way": every act, however modest, can become an offering when the will engages it out of love. The collection of the Institutions called of Tauler — a Rhenish compilation of the 14th century, circulated in Latin from the Surius edition (Cologne, 1548) under the name of the Dominican John Tauler (c. 1300-1361), but which scholarship does not retain as his work — had already stated it: "virtue and all good works depend on the will" (ch. XVIII)^[25].

The greatness of a Christian act is not measured by its visibility, but by the quality of the willing that carries it. The same gesture changes radically in weight depending on whether the will unites it to God or not.

The doctrine is sternly confirmed by Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), Servant of God of Corato, in the Book of Heaven. Jesus tells her on 7 May 1899:

"My daughter, what will become of souls who have done so many actions, even good ones, without purity of intention, out of habit or selfishness? What shame they will feel on the day of judgment on seeing these actions, good in themselves, but tainted by their imperfect intentions. Instead of bringing them honor, they will be a source of shame for them and for many others. In fact, it is not the greatness of actions that matters to me, but the intention with which they are done." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 2, 7 May 1899^[26]

"To live in God, it suffices to will it"

This concentration on the will leads to a statement of decisive simplicity: grace always comes first to the soul — no one rises alone to the supernatural^[27] — but God awaits only the soul's consent to fill it. Grace does not force the will; it invites it, and every full consent opens the gift wide. In its most radical form, this call for consent is what Jesus asks of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta for the proper gift of living in his Divine Will:

"My daughter, to enter into my Will, there is neither road, nor door, nor key, because my Will is everywhere. It is found under your feet, to the right, to the left, above your head, absolutely everywhere. To enter it, it suffices to will it. Without this decision, even if the human will finds itself in my Will, it is not part of it and does not enjoy its effects. It is there like a stranger. From the moment the soul decides to enter into my Will, it melts into Me and I into it. It finds all my goods at its disposal: strength, light, help, all that it wills. It suffices that it will it, and it is done. My Will takes charge of everything." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 12, 16 February 1921^[28]

The text matters by contrast with a widespread representation of holiness as a heroic conquest, the fruit of superhuman efforts and long mortifications. Jesus continues in the same passage: "It is the opposite for one who proceeds by the acquisition of virtues. How many efforts are needed, how many battles, how many long roads to travel! And when virtue finally seems to smile upon the soul, a slightly violent passion, a temptation, a chance encounter brings it back to the starting point." In this same passage, Jesus contrasts this entry into his Will with the mere acquisition of virtues, with its efforts, battles and relapses: for one who receives this gift, the way is swifter and simpler than isolated ascetical struggle — because it attacks the root instead of pruning the branches.

Why we fail: velleity and divided will

If willing God suffices to enter into his life, why do so many Christians remain, for years on end, halfway there? The tradition's answer is unsparing: because their willing is not true willing. It remains a velleity, an honorable wish, an "I would like to" that mobilizes nothing.

Saint Paul describes this interior laceration in a phrase become classic:

"For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want." — Saint Paul, Epistle to the Romans 7:19^[29]

The verse, long commented by Augustine against the Pelagians and by Thomas in his commentary on Romans^[30], does not describe the total powerlessness of the human will, but its interior division under the effect of concupiscence. The will wills the good in its deep orientation, but does not yet will the good to the point of doing it. The defect is not in capacity, but in the intensity of desire.

Saint Augustine himself testifies to this in book VIII of the Confessions, when, still a prisoner of impurity, he describes the battle of his two wills, one carnal and the other spiritual, whose discord tore his soul^[31]. Conversion comes when one definitively prevails over the other — not by superhuman effort, but by full consent given to the grace that had long been pressing.

Hence the practical conclusion: before seeking techniques for praying better or acquiring this or that virtue, the Christian must first ask himself with radical honesty: do I truly will God — to the point of being ready to sacrifice everything for Him? As long as the answer remains evasive, no method will suffice. As soon as it becomes firm, almost every method becomes useful.

The principle: no one desires what he does not know

If the will is the engine of action, knowledge is the fuel of desire. The scholastic rule "nihil volitum nisi praecognitum" — nothing is willed without first being known^[32] — describes a law of the human soul: one does not desire a reality of which one knows nothing. One may, strictly speaking, desire happiness in general; but for a particular good to be desired, one must at least have heard of it, have glimpsed its worth.

This law explains a frequent spiritual phenomenon: a cultivated man may remain indifferent to life in God not because he opposes it, but because he has no precise idea of it. He has heard "God", "paradise", "holiness", but without lived content. No savor has awakened his appetite. Conversely, the more a soul enters into a concrete and warm knowledge of God — through prayer, Scripture, the liturgy, the lives of the saints — the more its desire catches fire.

"Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you! [...] You were within, and I was without, and it was there that I sought you." — Saint Augustine, Confessions, X, 27, 38^[33]

The verb is exact: I have loved you, after I have known you. Love follows knowledge, and Augustine's own knowledge bore its affective fruit only after more than ten years of intellectual search.

The parable of the precious stone

Jesus explains it to Luisa Piccarreta in the form of a limpid parable. A soul ignorant of the worth of the gift of the Divine Will resembles a man who owns a precious stone, taking it for a pebble — and who, believing it of little worth, neglects it out of ignorance. The same stone is objectively worth the same; but subjective esteem changes everything.

"Each time I speak to you of my Will and you acquire new knowledge, your actions have more value and the riches you acquire are greater. It is like a man who had in his possession a precious stone, thinking it worth only a penny. He meets, by chance, an expert who tells him his stone is worth a thousand dollars. This man now owns no longer a single penny, but a thousand dollars. Later, he shows his stone to a more experienced jeweler who assures him his stone is worth at least twenty thousand dollars. Our man now owns twenty thousand dollars. To the extent that he knows his stone has value, to that same extent he esteems it and takes care of it, aware that it constitutes his whole fortune. [...] So it is with my Will and with virtues in general. To the extent that the soul understands these things and acquires the corresponding knowledge, its actions acquire new values and riches." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 13, 25 August 1921^[34]

The teaching goes beyond the sole case of the Divine Will. It is the universal structure of the Christian life: the Eucharist, confession, prayer, the Mass do not change in reality because one learns their worth — their intrinsic, infinite worth remains what it is. But for the soul, their subjective weight changes radically. The same Communion is not worth the same for the distracted child who steps forward and for the mystic who knows to whom he unites himself. Knowing the worth of what faith gives is beginning effectively to receive what it gives.

Knowledge as the "contract" of the gift

In the Book of Heaven, Jesus goes further: knowledge is not only a prerequisite of desire, it is like the contract by which the soul prepares to receive the gift.

"My daughter, it is true that living in my Will is a gift, and that it is the greatest of gifts. But this gift, which has infinite value, which is a currency that gains value at every moment, which is a light that never dims, which is a sun that never sets and which restores to the person his place of Honor and Sovereignty in Creation, is granted only to those who are well disposed, who will not waste it, and who are ready to sacrifice their own life so that this gift may have in them total supremacy. [...] The person must be well disposed, know well the gift offered, and truly esteem it. Knowledge is for her the first step to take: this knowledge opens the way and is like the contract that must be signed for obtaining the gift. The more the soul acquires Knowledge of my Will, the more it desires It and the more it presses the divine Giver to affix his signature to the contract that will give It to her. A sign that I presently will to grant the gift of my Will to creatures is that I greatly desire that its Knowledge spread everywhere." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 18, 25 December 1925^[35]

The passage is dense. It teaches (1) that the worth of God's gift is infinite; (2) that every disposition to receive it supposes esteeming its worth; (3) that this esteem requires knowledge; (4) that this knowledge, as it deepens, presses God to give. This last point reverses the usual logic: it is not only man who presses God by his prayer, it is the growth of knowledge that acts as an active request. The more the soul knows, the more the Giver is drawn to give.

Knowing God is already eternal life

Knowledge is not only a means of awakening the will. It is an end in itself, eternal life already begun. Jesus says so in his own words on the eve of his Passion, in the great priestly prayer reported by Saint John:

"And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." — Gospel according to Saint John, 17:3^[36]

The affirmation is extraordinary. Eternal life — that is, Heaven, definitive beatitude — is defined here not as a state of pleasure, an absence of suffering, or even as love alone, but as a knowledge. Knowing God. What tradition calls the beatific vision (CCC § 1028)^[37]. Saint Thomas makes it the summit of beatitude: not only loving God, but seeing Him as He is, with perfect love flowing from that very vision^[38].

On earth, this knowledge is still partial: "For now we see in a mirror dimly" (1 Cor 13:12)^[39]. But already, each step the soul takes in the knowledge of God is a foretaste of Heaven. That is why Saint Paul prays for the Colossians: "we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding" (Col 1:9)^[40].

The practical consequence is immense. Studying Catholic doctrine, reading the Fathers and doctors, meditating on Scripture, contemplating the liturgy, reading the lives of the saints — this is not an intellectual luxury: it is entering already, on this earth, into what will forever be eternal life. As Saint Jerome wrote: "ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ"^[41], a formula taken up by the Second Vatican Council in Dei Verbum § 25^[42].

Perishing for lack of knowledge

Conversely, ignorance of God is, in Revelation, the deep cause of the spiritual ruin of a people or a soul. The prophet Hosea, in the 8th century before Jesus Christ, bitterly denounced Israel's decline:

"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." — Prophet Hosea, 4:6^[43]

The sentence strikes by its concision and universality. What the prophet says holds not only for Israel in Hosea's time. It is the spiritual law: without knowledge of God, the soul drifts; without knowledge of its sin, it hardens; without knowledge of its own dignity, it debases itself. Knowledge is therefore not an ornament of the spiritual life: it is its condition of survival.

The observation joins that of all biblical wisdom. The book of Proverbs (1:7) affirms it in its own way: "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge"^[44]. The book of Wisdom (15:3) specifies: "For to know thee is complete righteousness, and to know thy dominion is the root of immortality"^[45]. And the Compendium of the Catechism specifies: "This means adhering to God himself, trusting him and giving assent to all the truths which he has revealed, because God is Truth" (Compendium, no. 27)^[46].

To whom much is given, much will be required

This elevation of knowledge carries, however, a stern counterpart. The more a soul knows, the more responsible it is. The more it has received, the more will be asked of it. Jesus says so in solemn terms:

"But he who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, shall receive a light beating. Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required; and of him to whom men commit much they will demand the more." — Gospel according to Saint Luke, 12:47-48^[47]

The passage warns that knowledge is never neutral. Receiving the teaching of the Church, of the saints, of the Scriptures is receiving a talent (cf. Mt 25:14-30) to be made fruitful. One who knows that God is love and refuses to love him does not sin like the ignorant one who knows nothing: his fault is measured by the extent of the light received. Saint Thomas takes up the distinction in speaking of ignorantia vincibilis (which could have been overcome) and ignorantia invincibilis, whose responsibilities are radically different^[48].

This gravity must never, however, lead one to flee knowledge, but to engage it in the will. That is the meaning of coupling the two foundations: knowing in order to will, willing so as not to make knowledge a useless burden. All knowledge acquired without being put to work remains sterile: it increases responsibility without increasing charity.

Knowing in order to will, willing in order to know more

The relation between the two foundations is not hierarchical but circular. Knowledge precedes desire — nihil volitum nisi praecognitum. But desire, in turn, commands the intelligence to go further: we learn better what we love, we retain what touches the heart. Without love, the mind stays on the surface of things. As Pascal sums it up in a famous phrase: "we know the truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart"^[49].

Saint Thomas, more austerely, says the same thing: the will "moves the other powers of the soul" (Ia-IIae, q. 9, a. 1) — including the intelligence as to the exercise of its act^[50]. That is why a man who decides to seek God, even without yet having understood much, ends up understanding infinitely; whereas a man who has not made that decision, however learned, remains in a cold light that changes nothing in his life.

The back-and-forth is therefore organized as follows:

The table, simplified, says the essential: the spiritual life is an ascending spiral in which each advance of one faculty calls for an advance of the other.

Memory, affection and grace: the action of the Spirit

Augustinianism recalls that beside intelligence and will, the soul possesses a third power: memory, which gathers and keeps what it has received. Saint Augustine confesses that God was not in his memory before being known: "where then did I find you, that I might learn you? You were not in my memory before I knew you" — and that it is in God, above himself, that he found him (Confessions, X, 26, 37)^[51]. Without memory, knowledge would vanish as it is acquired; without memory of God, the will would no longer have a heading.

The spiritual life therefore engages not only two powers, but three, in correspondence with the Trinity. And it is the Holy Spirit, the Love who proceeds from the Father and the Son^[52], who inwardly moves the human will and inclines it to consent, as Saint Paul writes to the Romans: "for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words" (Rom 8:26)^[53]. No true movement of the will toward God has its source in nature alone: it is preceded by grace.

The Second Council of Orange (529) settled the question against the Pelagians and semi-Pelagians: "if anyone says that the grace of God can be conferred by human invocation, but that it is not grace itself which makes us invoke it — he contradicts the prophet Isaiah and the Apostle" (Rom 10:20)^[54]. In other words, even the first act of the will turning toward God is already moved by grace. The doctrine is taken up by the Council of Trent, session VI, canon 3^[55], and by CCC §§ 1996-2005^[56].

The symmetrical pitfalls: intellectualism and voluntarism

The balance of the two foundations is so delicate that it requires avoiding two symmetrical pitfalls.

Spiritual intellectualism consists in accumulating knowledge about God without engaging the will. It is the Pharisee who knows the Law without practicing it (cf. Mt 23:3), the theologian who speaks of God without praying to him, the Catholic who reads much and changes nothing. Saint James gave a pitiless description:

"You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe — and shudder." — Saint James, Epistle 2:19^[57]

Knowledge that does not engage the will remains sterile: it enlightens the mind without transforming life.

Spiritual voluntarism is the reverse pitfall: engaging the will blindly, without light. It is the soul that wills to be holy "in order to be holy", that multiplies efforts out of temperament and exhausts itself chasing its own image. Saint Paul — who had himself shared that zeal when he persecuted the Church (Gal 1:13-14; Phil 3:6)^[58] — prays for Israel's salvation while testifying: "I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened" (Rom 10:1-2)^[59]. It is the root of all devout rigidities and of certain mystical deviations.

The Catholic way is holding both foundations together: knowledge that engages itself in the will, a will that lets itself be instructed by knowledge. The Catechism expresses it in a sober formula: "faith is a personal act: the free response of the human person to the initiative of God who reveals himself" (§ 166)^[60]. A personal response — hence of the will; to the initiative of God who reveals himself — hence to received knowledge.

Mary, accomplished model of the union of the two foundations

The perfect union of knowledge and willing finds its creaturely summit in the Virgin Mary. The account of the Annunciation (Lk 1:26-38) shows it admirably: the young girl of Nazareth consents only after understanding the scope of what is proposed to her. She asks the angel Gabriel: "How shall this be, since I have no husband?" (Lk 1:34)^[61]. Her knowledge first; her will afterwards.

And her Fiat — "let it be to me according to your word" (Lk 1:38)^[62] — is not the resignation of a will effacing itself; it is the freest and most fruitful act of a mere creature, the one on which depends the Incarnation of the Word. Saint Augustine already observed: Mary, full of faith at the angel's announcement, conceives Christ first in her mind before conceiving him in her womb^[63]. Knowledge precedes consent; consent triggers grace.

Mary is thus the exemplary figure of the two foundations in perfect balance: intelligence fully awake, will fully surrendered. That is why the Catholic tradition sees in her Fiat the summit of faith: the CCC says of Mary that she "embodies in the most perfect way the obedience of faith" (§ 148)^[64] — the model toward which every Christian soul is called to tend.

Nourishing the knowledge of God

The first practical consequence is that no Christian can do without studying his faith. Not to become a theologian, but because no flame of love burns long without fuel. Concretely, this implies:

• regular reading of Scripture, "Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Ps 119:105)^[65];
• frequenting the Catechism, which Saint John Paul II, in promulgating it, recognizes "as a valid and authoritative instrument for ecclesial communion and as a sure norm for teaching the faith"^[66];
• reading the saints and doctors: Augustine, Bernard, Thomas, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Francis de Sales, Alphonsus Liguori, Thérèse of Lisieux, Faustina, the venerable Marthe Robin, the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta — each illuminates one angle of the truth;
• attentive listening to the liturgy, the first school of faith for ordinary faithful (CCC §§ 1074-1075)^[67];
• meditation on God's great works in creation, redemption and sanctification.

Nourishing one's knowledge is not accumulating information, but letting a truth become a savor. Christ calls himself "the bread of life" (Jn 6:35)^[68]: one does not approach him to discourse on bread, but to eat it.

Engaging the will each day

The second consequence is that no knowledge avails without a daily engagement of the will. The spiritual tradition proposes several simple gestures that activate this willing, with no heroic pretension:

• the morning act of offering, by which the will sets the frame of the whole day: "I offer you, O my God, all my thoughts, words, actions and sufferings";
• purity of intention renewed before each important action: "I do it for you, Lord" — a gesture which, as Saint Thérèse of Lisieux taught, transforms the worth of a sink of dishes or an ordinary email;
• brief interior prayer during the day — the acts of the presence of God of Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection^[69] — which keeps the will turned toward its heading;
• the evening examination of conscience, which is not moral bookkeeping, but an amorous re-reading: where did my will follow God? where did it turn away?;
• regular confession, which readjusts the will wounded by sin.

All these gestures do not create God's will: they only gather it and make it habitual. Faithfulness in little things gradually changes the quality of the willing itself.

Discerning true desires from velleities

The third consequence is a work of discernment on the real content of our willing. As long as the will is not examined, it takes itself for what it would like to be; under God's gaze, it discovers what it is. Several questions, asked honestly, make it possible to test a desire:

The function of discernment is not to humiliate the soul, but to purify its will. A velleity recognized as such can become, by grace, true willing. A velleity mistaken for true willing remains forever at the stage of wish. That is why Saint Ignatius of Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises, asks the exercitant to identify "the movements" of the soul and to discern what the will truly wills beneath what it believes it wills^[70].

Going further in Via Divina — This article presents in encyclopedia form a lesson from the free Via Divina formation on the two foundations of the spiritual life. To follow the complete teaching, integrate it into a structured path and put it into practice daily: open the Via Divina formation.

• Wanting What God Wants Is Our Greatest Happiness — the direct application of the primacy of the will.
• Passing from Self-Will to the Will of God — the spiritual and mystical unfolding of the same principle.
• The Divine Will — doctrinal synthesis of the Gift announced to Luisa Piccarreta.
• Knowledge of God's Love Begets Trust — another application of the principle of knowledge.
• The Double Abyss: Humility and Trust — a parallel articulation of two founding kinds of knowledge.
• The 8 Stages of the Spiritual Life — the complete itinerary in which these two foundations belong.

2, taken up in the CCC — God can be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason.