Why Speak of a Reign of the Divine Will on Earth?

The starting point is not a private revelation, but the Gospel itself. At the heart of the Our Father, Christ placed a petition turned toward the earth.

"On earth as it is in heaven": a petition, not a decoration

The fourth word of the Pater is no pious ornament. The Catechism comments on it gravely: in asking "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," we beg God to unite our will to that of His Son so as to "fulfill His plan of salvation for the life of the world."^[2] The petition thus concerns the real world, history, the earth — not only each person's interior life, nor only the Heaven already won.

"We ask our Father to unite our will to his Son's in order to fulfill his will, his plan of salvation for the life of the world." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2825^[3]

Yet one need only look at the world to see that God's Will is not done there as in Heaven. If the petition were already fulfilled, Christ would not have put it on our lips. A prayer taught by Him who cannot lie therefore presupposes a real object: there is something to await, and that object concerns the earth.

"Come," not "confirm": a Kingdom announced

This is exactly the reasoning Luisa Piccarreta receives in the Book of Heaven. On February 5, 1928, Jesus explains to her that the petition of the Pater is not a formula about an accomplished fact, but the solemn announcement of a Kingdom still to come:

"Before ascending to Heaven, I made a promise more solemn still: that of the Kingdom of my Will. It was in the 'Our Father.' […] My very prayer to the heavenly Father: 'Come, may Thy Kingdom arrive, may Thy Will be done on earth as in Heaven,' meant that with my coming upon earth, the Kingdom of my Will would not yet be established among creatures. Otherwise I would have said: 'My Father, may our Kingdom, which I have already established on earth, be confirmed.' Instead I said: 'Come!'" — Jesus to Luisa, The Book of Heaven, vol. 23, February 5, 1928^[4]

The argument is formidably simple. Christ does not say "confirm" a Kingdom already given; He says "come." The verb faces the future. Just as humanity awaited the Redeemer promised from Genesis onward,^[5] it must await, with the same certainty, the coming of the Kingdom of the divine Will — not only beyond history, but on earth, since that is the very word of the prayer.

A promise more solemn than that of the Redeemer

In the same dictation, Jesus goes further: the promise of the Kingdom of the Will is presented as more solemn than the promise of the Redeemer, because it is sealed not by an isolated prophetic word, but by the official prayer Christ entrusted to the whole Church.^[6] The theologian Joseph Iannuzzi, whose thesis on the Divine Will was defended at the Pontifical Gregorian University, sums up the point:

"Jesus reveals to Luisa that this kingdom the Church has asked for for two thousand years is the Kingdom of the Divine Will, which has come to extend its reign on earth in souls." — Joseph L. Iannuzzi, doctoral thesis, § 4.1.1^[7]

The Kingdom asked for daily by the entire Church and the Kingdom of the Divine Will announced to Luisa are therefore not two things: it is the same petition, read in its full depth. To speak of a reign on earth is simply to believe that God will answer His own prayer.

The commonsense objection remains: why insist on the earth? Does salvation not consist in leaving the earth for Heaven? Three reasons justify this insistence.

Heaven already possesses this reign

The formula of the Pater is comparative: "on earth as it is in heaven." It presupposes that, in Heaven, God's Will already reigns perfectly. Asking that it be done "as in heaven" makes sense only if the missing term is the earth: we urgently ask that this loving plan "be fully realized on earth as it is already in heaven."^[8] The Catechism adds that, in this prayer, "it is principally a question of the final coming of the Kingdom of God through Christ's return."^[9] It is therefore not Heaven that awaits something — it is the earth.

The earth is precisely the place of refusal

Sin did not wound Heaven; it wounded the earth. It is here below that the human will rose up against the divine Will, since Eden. The awaited reign is therefore a reparation that must take place where the wound was inflicted. Jesus presents the coming of His Will as man's return to his original end:

"I will be able to answer my own prayer, united to that of the whole Church, by bringing man back to his origin, to the end for which I created him: that my Will be done on earth as in heaven." — Jesus to Luisa, The Book of Heaven, vol. 15, April 14, 1923^[10]

Restoring the work of Creation

Finally, there is an overarching logic to God's plan. Creation — the first Fiat — was given so that man might live in the unity of the divine Will; this project was not cancelled by sin, but suspended. The Redemption — the second Fiat — reopened Heaven and restored grace, but without yet re-establishing on earth the life in the Will that man had lost. That is why the tradition of the Divine Will awaits a third Fiat, the Sanctifying Fiat, whose proper object is that God's Will reign "on earth as in Heaven":

"Whereas the second Fiat brought me down upon earth so that I might live among men, the third Fiat will bring my Will down into souls, where it will reign 'on earth as in Heaven.'" — Jesus to Luisa, The Book of Heaven, vol. 12, March 2, 1921^[11]

To speak of a reign on earth is therefore no whim: it is the completion, within history, of what the Creation had begun. The goal is not for man to escape the world, but for the world finally to be restored to its first order.

If we grant that a reign is awaited on earth, everything then depends on what we mean by "reign." This is where the essential point is decided — and where most misunderstandings dissolve.

Reigning "in souls" before reigning in the world

The reign of the Divine Will is not first an outward fact — a government, an institution, a domination — but an inward one: God welcomed as the living principle of human acts. Jesus speaks of a reign "in souls," which then spreads to families, communities, the Church.^[12] The world does not change by magic or decree; it changes to the extent that persons let the Holy Spirit fully govern their lives. That is why Luisa's spirituality insists on the distinction, treated elsewhere, between doing God's will and living in the Divine Will.

A "war of love," without weapons or politics

Jesus Himself rules out any political or warlike reading. The reign is not established by force but by gift:

"My Will shall come down from Heaven and reign among them. […] They shall wage war with weapons of love, by giving gifts, graces and peace." — Jesus to Luisa, The Book of Heaven, April 26, 1921^[13]

No earthly crown, no party, no theocracy: the Kingdom's only weapon is charity. This point radically separates the Divine Will from every political messianism — precisely the deviation the Catechism denounces under the name of "secular messianism."^[14]

The proper work of the Holy Spirit

Finally, this reign is not the visible return of Christ to govern the nations: it is the work of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies. The Catechism describes what the Spirit accomplishes "in the last times":

"The Spirit of the Lord will renew the heart of men, engraving a new law on it; he will gather and reconcile scattered and divided peoples; he will transform the first creation, and God will dwell there with men in peace." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 715^[15]

Iannuzzi stresses that this is the decisive criterion: the awaited triumphant holiness is attributed "to the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit," and not to a glorious second coming of Christ before the end.^[16] The reign of the Divine Will is therefore pneumatological — a matter of the Spirit in hearts — not a fleshly kingship.

This is the most serious objection, and it must be faced head-on. The Church has indeed condemned a doctrine of an earthly reign. Does the reign of the Divine Will fall under that condemnation?

What the Church condemned

The Catechism is clear:

"The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the 'intrinsically perverse' political form of a secular messianism." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 676^[17]

The canonical condemnation comes from the Holy Office. Questioned in 1944, it replied:

"What is to be thought of the system of mitigated millenarianism, which teaches that Christ the Lord, before the final judgment, will come visibly upon this earth to reign? — Answer: the system of mitigated millenarianism cannot be taught safely." — Holy Office, decree of July 21, 1944^[18]

The decisive word is "visibly." What the Church sets aside is the idea that Christ will return visibly, in the flesh, to reign physically over the present world for a fixed duration, before the Judgment.

The five marks of millenarianism — and their absence here

The theologians who studied the question distinguish five characteristic marks of condemned millenarianism. Millenarianism is the conjunction of these five traits; a single one missing suffices to step outside it. Yet the reign of the Divine Will possesses none of the five:

The only trait the reign of the Divine Will shares with the millenarian expectation is that it is situated before the Last Judgment. But this anteriority cannot by itself be the criterion of condemnation: for the Our Father itself asks for a reign "on earth," hence within history. If every hope of a reign before the end were millenarian, the Church would be condemning her own prayer.

Not confusing "millennium" with "millenarianism"

A confusion of vocabulary keeps the misunderstanding alive. The millennium is a datum of the biblical text (Revelation 20:1-6); millenarianism is a literal, fleshly interpretation of that text. The former was never condemned; only the latter was. That the "thousand years" are not a chronological duration, Scripture itself indicates:

"With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." — 2 Peter 3:8^[19]

Saint Thomas Aquinas draws the consequence: the last age of the world "cannot be defined by a fixed number of years or generations."^[20] Hoping for a reign of holiness therefore in no way obliges us to count a thousand earthly years.

A question the Church has not settled

Must we conclude that the Church approves this hope? No: she does not impose it, but neither does she close it. Questioned in 1990 about the expectation of an era of peace within history, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — the future Benedict XVI, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — answered that "the Holy See has not yet pronounced definitively."^[21] The Catechism he had drawn up leaves the door precisely open by describing positively, in paragraph 715, the Spirit's work of renewal "in the last times."^[22] Rome has moreover opened the beatification cause of Luisa Piccarreta.^[23] Prudence therefore consists in holding the hope without making it a dogma.

The hope of a spiritual reign on earth, before the end, is no 20th-century novelty. The Fathers and doctors carried it long before Luisa.

The Fathers on the Our Father: "may Thy Spirit come"

Commenting on the Pater, Saint Gregory of Nyssa reports a variant of the petition for the Kingdom: where we say "may Thy Kingdom come," some read "may Thy Holy Spirit come upon us and purify us."^[24] For the great Cappadocian, the awaited Kingdom is already identified with the purifying coming of the Spirit — exactly the pneumatological reading taken up by the Divine Will.

Irenaeus and Augustine: a rest of the saints on earth

Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, who holds his tradition from the disciples of the apostle John, describes a creation "freed and renewed" in which "the just shall reign" after the resurrection.^[25] Saint Augustine, after first sharing this hope, ultimately rejected only its fleshly form — banquets and material pleasures — while acknowledging that a spiritual reading remains admissible:

"This opinion would not be objectionable, if it were believed that the joys of the saints in that Sabbath shall be spiritual, and consequent on the presence of God; for I myself, too, once held this opinion." — Saint Augustine, The City of God, XX, 7^[26]

What Tradition rejects is therefore not the hope of a reign of holiness on earth: it is its materialist caricature.

Bernard and Bonaventure: a "middle" coming, in the Spirit

Medieval theology refined this hope through the doctrine of Christ's three comings. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux distinguishes the coming in the flesh (past), the coming in glory (at the end), and between the two a "middle" coming, hidden, "in spirit and in power":

"His intermediate coming is hidden: the elect alone see it within themselves, and their souls are saved. […] He comes in spirit and in power." — Saint Bernard, Sermon for Advent^[27]

Saint Bonaventure, Doctor of the Church, likewise announces, after the trial of the Antichrist and before the day of judgment, "a time of such peace and tranquility as there has been none like it since the creation of the world," which he calls "the time of the advent of Christ in the Spirit."^[28] The reign of the Divine Will belongs to this lineage, not to fleshly millenarianism.

A cardinal patristics scholar confirms it

Cardinal Jean Daniélou, one of the greatest historians of patristics, recalls that the expectation of an "intermediate state in which the saints are still on earth" rests on data "which belong to the New Testament" (1 Thes 4:17; 1 Cor 15:23; Rev 20).^[29] This hope is therefore neither marginal nor suspect: it belongs to the deposit, provided it is read spiritually.

Beyond the Fathers, the popes of the last century nourished this same hope of a reign of Christ on earth — not by arms, but by holiness.

Pius XI: the peace the peaceful King came to bring

In instituting the feast of Christ the King, Pius XI declares that recognizing Christ's kingship would spread real goods "over the whole of society" — "a just freedom, order, concord and peace" — and he adds:

"Why despair of this peace which the peaceful King came to bring upon earth?" — Pius XI, encyclical Quas Primas (1925)^[30]

John Paul II: "Thy kingdom come" and the "new and divine holiness"

John Paul II explicitly linked the petition of the Pater to a hope for history:

"Such is the great hope of our invocation: 'Thy kingdom come!', a kingdom of peace, justice and serenity, which recomposes the original harmony of creation." — John Paul II, general audience of November 6, 2002^[31]

He even used, in a 1997 message, the expression Luisa receives in her writings — the "new and divine" holiness with which "the Holy Spirit wishes to enrich Christians at the dawn of the third millennium."^[32] That the summit of the recent Magisterium takes up this vocabulary confirms that we are not dealing with a private daydream, but with a hope rooted in the doctrine of the Kingdom.

Creation renewed, not abolished

It remains to specify on which earth this reign is accomplished. The Catechism teaches that "the visible universe is itself destined to be transformed," restored "so that the world itself should be at the service of the just."^[33] The awaited reign is therefore not established upon the world as it is, in its corruption, but upon a creation progressively restored to its order. This earth transformed within history must not be confused with the definitive new earth that will follow the Judgment — a distinction developed in the article Are the New Heavens and the New Earth Material?.

If the hope is ancient, why insist on it now? And with what precautions?

A hope, not a chronology

First, speaking of the reign gives no date, no scenario, no map of events. The Gospel forbids apocalyptic curiosity: "it is not for you to know times or seasons."^[34] The Divine Will is no exception to this rule. To speak of it is to hope for a new fruitfulness of the Spirit, not to announce a timetable. As soon as hope hardens into dated prophecy, it goes astray.

What this changes for the ordinary Christian

Second, this is no idle speculation: the hope of the reign directs concrete life. If God's Will is to reign "on earth as in Heaven," then every act accomplished in that Will — the morning prayer, the present duty, suffering offered up — is no longer an isolated gesture, but a stone of the coming Kingdom. That is the meaning of the practice of the actual act: letting one's ordinary life flow, here and now, into the divine Will. The reign is not awaited passively; it begins in the souls that welcome it.

The indispensable safeguards

Finally, this hope stands securely only within the Catholic framework. Four safeguards preserve it from all deviation:

• The Church remains judge: the Divine Will is a gift for the Church, not a parallel revelation judging her.
• The sacraments remain necessary: the reign dispenses from nothing; it brings baptismal life to its fullness.
• Charity is the sole criterion of the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22).^[35]
• The rejection of fleshly millenarianism and of every political messianism remains firm.

With these safeguards, speaking of a reign of the Divine Will on earth is in no way imprudent: it is confessing that God will keep His word.

Why speak of a reign of the Divine Will on earth? Because Christ Himself had us ask for it: "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." This petition aims at the earth, not Heaven alone nor the hereafter alone; it announces a Kingdom to come ("come," and not "confirm"); it awaits an interior reign, the work of the Holy Spirit in souls — not a political empire nor a fleshly return of Christ. This hope escapes condemned millenarianism point by point — possessing none of its five marks — and it rests on a continuous witness: the Fathers, the doctors, and even the recent Magisterium. Provided it is kept under the Church's authority, in the sacraments, under the sign of charity and without apocalyptic curiosity, it is no utopia: it is taking the Our Father seriously.

• The Reign of the Spirit — what this reign is, in detail.
• What Is the Sanctifying Fiat? — the third Fiat, whose object is this reign.
• Are the New Heavens and the New Earth Material? — definitive eschatology, to be distinguished from the reign within history.
• Doing God's Will or Living in the Divine Will? — the spiritual foundation of the reign.
• The Divine Will: Private Spirituality or Gift for the Church? — its ecclesial status.
• How to Make an Actual Act in the Divine Will? — how to hasten this reign day by day.