What does it mean to fuse oneself in the Divine Will?

The first thing to dispel is a misunderstanding. The words “to fuse oneself” spontaneously evoke the drop disappearing into the ocean, sugar dissolving in water, the individual fading away. Many readers, encountering this vocabulary, fear a form of pantheism — the idea that the soul would cease to exist as a creature in order to merge with the divine substance. Yet Luisa describes exactly the opposite.

The simplest image is that of gold poured into a clay vessel. When the goldsmith pours liquefied gold into the mould, the mould does not become gold and the gold does not become clay: the two remain really distinct. But from their meeting comes a precious object. Likewise, in fusion, the will of the soul does not disappear and does not become God; it is seized, elevated, divinized by the Will of God poured into it.

Two registers that are often confused must therefore be distinguished from the outset: the union of wills and the fusion of essences. To fuse oneself in the Divine Will does not mean that the soul becomes God by nature; it means that it participates by grace in the eternal operation of God. The creature remains a creature; its created nature and God's uncreated nature stay real and separate. What fusion accomplishes is unity of operation: two wills willing and acting as one, without ceasing to be two.

This precision is no academic detail. All authentic Catholic mysticism holds this line: the highest union does not absorb the person, it makes her fully herself. The more the soul fuses itself, the more distinct, living and singular it becomes — Jesus will even tell Luisa that such a soul “is distinct from all other creatures, and so it will be in Heaven.”^[5]

Fusion cannot be understood without first grasping the distinction that carries Luisa's whole doctrine: there is a radical difference between doing God's Will and living in God's Will.^[6] This distinction is treated in detail in a companion article; its essentials are recalled here, for fusion is precisely the passage from one to the other.

Two states separated by the distance from heaven to earth

Doing God's Will means submitting to it, resigning oneself to it, conforming to it faithfully. It is the way of the greatest saints before Luisa, and it is holy. But Jesus specifies that it leaves two wills subsisting in the soul — God's and man's — and that man's, even sanctified, keeps weighing down and resisting. Living in God's Will, on the other hand, is a state in which a single Will reigns. The distance between the two, Jesus says, is as great as “that from heaven to earth, from a son to a servant, from a king to his subject.”^[7]

“To live in My Will is to reign in it and with it, whereas to do My Will is to be submitted to My orders. The first state is to possess; the second is to receive dispositions and execute commands. […] To live in My Will is to live with a single Will […]. To do My Will, on the other hand, is to live with two wills.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 17, September 18, 1924, and volume 15, January 24, 1923^[8]

Why fusion is the gateway

If “living in” God's Will supposes that a single will operates in the soul, how does one enter it? Through the act of fusion. To fuse oneself is precisely the act that moves from the regime of two wills to the regime of a single one. It is the gateway into this new state, and it remains its breath at every instant. Iannuzzi sums up Luisa's image: the soul that does God's Will remains “rooted in love” and “blossoms in the humanity of Jesus,” whereas the soul that lives in the Divine Will is “rooted in the very sun of His Will” and “grows and blossoms in that sun.”^[9] The first lives in the light of Jesus; the second lives in the very substance of the sun.

Fixing one's will in God's

In its most precise sense, fusion is the act by which the soul fixes its will in the Will of God. Jesus gives its barest definition concerning the morning prevenient act:

“The prevenient act is when the soul, at the first rising of the day, fixes its will in Mine, and decides and confirms that it wants to live and operate only in My Will. It anticipates all its acts and makes them all flow into My Will.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 14, May 27, 1922^[10]

This “fixing,” this “deciding and confirming,” is, as Iannuzzi writes, “an act of fusion.”^[11] It is therefore, at its root, a deeply personal and free act, engaging the whole freedom of the soul. It is not a technique, nor a passive state one would undergo. It is an act of the will giving itself, surrendering itself and letting itself be fused.

What fusion is not: neither confusion nor dissolution

Faithful to the great Catholic tradition, Iannuzzi dismisses from the outset any pantheistic reading. Fusion supposes, superimposed, three elements added to one another: resignation (the soul accepts all that God wills), conformity (it actively wills what God wills), and peaceful passivity (it lets itself be moved by the Holy Spirit without posing any further obstacle).^[12] This last element is precisely what distinguishes “living in” from merely “doing.”

“This expression, often used in connection with the state of spiritual marriage by the mystical doctor Teresa of Avila, does not mean a confusion of wills, but besides the resignation and conformity of the soul to the divine Will, it also supposes the passivity of that soul before the empire of the Will of God manifested by the Holy Spirit.” — Fr. Joseph L. Iannuzzi, The Gift of Living in the Divine Will, thesis, Pontifical Gregorian University, 2012, chapter IV, § 4.1.3^[13]

The gold and the clay vessel

The most telling image of fusion is that of liquefied gold poured into a clay vessel. It says in a single parable what a thousand distinctions would struggle to explain.

“It is as if liquid gold had been poured into a clay vessel and from that gold a goldsmith were making objects of gold. Could one say that this gold is not gold because it was poured into a clay vessel? Certainly not! […] In this example, the clay vessel represents the soul and the gold, My Will. The acts of the creature acting in My Will bind My Will to its own and the two liquefy together. With the help of this liquid, I, the divine Goldsmith, transform the acts of the soul into eternal gold.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 12, August 6, 1919^[14]

Everything is said. The human will does not disappear — clay remains clay. But when the Divine Will, which is the gold, pours itself into it and the two liquefy together in the act of fusion, the divine Goldsmith can fashion acts of “eternal gold,” belonging both to God and to the soul. Fusion is the operation that makes this common liquefaction possible. Without it, the human will stays solid, separate, and cannot serve the divine fashioning.

The mystical kiss upon the eternal mode

To describe the effect of fusion, Jesus uses another image, conjugal and nuptial: the mystical kiss imprinted upon the eternal Will itself.

“To fuse yourself in My Will is to enter into the eternal mode, to embrace it, to imprint upon it a mystical kiss and to receive the treasure of the blessings that My eternal Will contains. What is more, while the soul fuses itself in Our supreme Will, all of heaven comes to meet that soul to transmit to it all the blessings and glory they possess.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 17, January 4, 1925^[15]

The “eternal mode,” in Luisa's vocabulary, designates the way God operates: without beginning or end, in a single act embracing all the acts of all creatures of all times. To fuse oneself in the Divine Will is to join that way of operating; it is to pass from the finite, successive and fragmentary operating of the creature to the infinite, simultaneous and total operating of the Creator.

If fusion is above all an interior act of the will, it does not remain without expression. Saint Annibale Maria di Francia, Luisa's ecclesiastical censor and spiritual director, recalls that “there is no formula” for the holiness of Living in the Divine Will.^[16] And yet Luisa has a way of proceeding, which Iannuzzi reconstructed from hundreds of passages of the thirty-six volumes. Without being a rigid formula, it ordinarily unfolds in three moments.

Recognizing one's nothingness: “I am nothing, God is all”

First moment: descending into the truth of one's nothingness. Luisa expressed it with a simple formula — “I am nothing, God is all, come Divine Will.”^[17] This is not psychological humility, but a metaphysical truth: the creature, without God, is nothing, and its whole existence is a continual dependence on Him who calls it into being. Luisa even specifies, in the Italian text, that the soul places itself in its “true nothingness” — and not in humility, “which always still feels something of itself” — and, as nothing, enters into the All.^[18] This recognition is no morbid self-deprecation; it is the act of truth opening the space into which the gold of the Divine Will can pour itself.

Inviting the three divine Persons to operate

Second moment: inviting each of the three divine Persons to operate in a faculty of the soul and in a function of the body. Iannuzzi condenses Luisa's prayer thus:

“Come, eternal Father and Creator, to move in my will and beat in my heart; come, eternal Son and Redeemer, to think in my intellect and flow in my blood; come, eternal Holy Spirit and Sanctifier, to remember in my memory and breathe in my lungs.” — formula of fusion reported by Fr. Joseph L. Iannuzzi^[19]

This structure refers back to a revelation given to Luisa about Adam: the divinity had imprinted in man the Trinitarian likeness through six continual movements — three in the body (the beating of the heart, the circulation of the blood, breathing) and three in the soul (intellect, memory, will).^[20] In fusion, the soul makes this indwelling explicit and invites each divine Person to operate in the faculty corresponding to Him.

Asking Jesus to extend and multiply

Third moment: once the three divine Persons have been invited to operate in all the thoughts, words and actions of the day, the soul asks Jesus to extend and multiply these acts throughout the whole universe, and to diffuse them for the good of all creatures. At that very moment, as Iannuzzi explains, the finite acts of the soul begin to flow into the one eternal Act of God which, having neither beginning nor end, elevates them to embrace all the acts of all creatures of the past, the present and the future.^[21]

The morning prevenient act and the current act

This total fusion is normally made once a day, at the first rising of the day: this is the prevenient act (from Latin prae-veniens, anticipating the coming). It consecrates in advance, in the Divine Will, all the acts of the day. But, because we are wounded and distracted beings, the radiance of that morning act can grow dim as the hours pass. That is why it must be renewed by current acts that rekindle the fusion and extend it to each present circumstance.

“The present act is not subject to clouds. On the contrary, it has the power to dispel the clouds, if there are any […]. That is why both are necessary: the prevenient act offers its hand, disposes and forms the plan for the present act, while the present act preserves and extends the plan of the prevenient act.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 14, May 27, 1922^[22]

Concretely, the current act consists in offering the action one is accomplishing — even the most menial — as a link added to the great chain of light formed in the morning. For the detailed practice of these two acts, see How to begin the morning prevenient act? and How to make a current act in the Divine Will?.

If Jesus calls fusion “the most solemn, the greatest, the most important act” of a whole life, it is because of its fruits. Iannuzzi lists several; they are taken up here following Luisa's thought.

Entering the eternal mode

The first fruit is ontological: the soul enters God's eternal mode of operating. It no longer stays imprisoned in time ticking away; it participates in the single act embracing all times. All of heaven, Jesus says, comes to meet that soul: “The angels, the saints and the divinity itself transmit everything to this soul, knowing that what they transmit is transmitted in the Will of God where all is safe.”^[23] And the soul, in return, by multiplying these blessings through its own acts in the Divine Will, renders heaven double honour and double glory.

Forming spiritual suns

Each act fused in the Divine Will becomes a “spiritual sun.” This is one of Luisa's most characteristic images, given in the very entry entitled “Fusing oneself with Jesus in the Divine Will.”

“When you fuse yourself in Me, a sun is formed in you. While you think, love, make reparation, the rays of that sun are formed and My Will crowns these rays. That sun rises into heaven and radiates like a beneficial dew upon all creatures. The more you fuse yourself in Me, the more you form such suns.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 12, April 18, 1917^[24]

These suns do not stay confined in the soul; they rise, envelop all things, spread like dew upon creatures. That is the deep meaning of a fused life: it becomes a source of universal grace, without requiring of the soul the least outward feat.

The rounds in creation

A fruit proper to fusion is what Luisa calls the “rounds” or “tours” in creation. Once fused in the divine Will, the soul can spiritually traverse all God's works — the heavens and the stars, the seas and the mountains, the saints and the angels — to bring them back to God, rendering Him, in the name of all, the love and glory due to Him.

“When you make your round in My Will to retrace all its acts, to surround them with your cortege, to love them and to make them one with your own, you arrive in Eden, and I feel renewed the joys, the feasts and the happiness that Our Divinity experienced in Creation.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 24, June 12, 1928^[25]

All rounds are acts accomplished in the Divine Will, but not all acts in the Divine Will are rounds: rounds have this proper character of covering the whole of creation and re-establishing the original order broken by fallen human will.^[26] On this point, see What does it mean to make the rounds in the Divine Will?.

Universal mediation: elevating others

A question often returns among souls practising fusion: can one, by fusing oneself in the Divine Will, elevate others as offerings to the Father? Iannuzzi answers plainly: not only can one, but Jesus asks it through Luisa.^[27]

“Souls who live in My Will, as soon as they enter it, find in act all the acts of the Supreme Majesty; and since this Will is in all and in each one, these souls remain multiplied in all and are able to offer Me honour, glory, adoration and love for all.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 12, February 20, 1919^[28]

The soul does not redo Jesus' acts itself — they have no need of it, being already perfect — but it participates in them and, through that participation, can offer the Father all the acts of all creatures, “from the first to the last human creature that must exist on earth.”^[29] The fused soul thus becomes, after Jesus and with Mary and Luisa, a channel of universal blessings.

Reordering to the origin

When the creature sins, or simply lives outside the Divine Will, its acts “leave their origin” and fall into disorder. Fusion brings them back to their point of origin, which is God Himself.

“You must reorder yourself in Me. And do you know how? By fusing yourself entirely in My Will. Your breath, your heartbeats and the air you breathe must form a continual fusion in My Will. That is how order is re-established between the Creator and the creature returning to the origin from which it came.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 13, December 15, 1921^[30]

Fusion thus extends to the vital functions of the body: not only thoughts, but breath, heartbeat, breathed air. At its full measure, it becomes a true circulation of life between God and the soul, “the fusion of the human heartbeat into the eternal Heartbeat.”^[31] This is what Jesus calls, in another image, “forming one's paradise on earth.”^[32]

It would be wrong to imagine fusion as a sweet and painless experience. Jesus warns Luisa that it is a true martyrdom — and even that it “surpasses in merit martyrdom itself.”

“Living in My Will surpasses in merit martyrdom itself. Martyrdom kills the body. But living in My Will is like letting one's will be killed by a divine hand, which procures for the soul the nobility of a divine martyrdom. Each time the soul decides to live in My Will, My Will prepares to strike the blow to kill the human will.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 17, January 4, 1925^[33]

This martyrdom is no violence done to the creature. It is, in the paradoxical language of mysticism, a putting to death that is at the same time a rebirth. The human will does not disappear; it is killed as autonomous will to be reborn as united will. The blow is struck by a “divine hand,” that is, with infinite delicacy, but it is real. And it is precisely because of the depth of this stripping that fusion can produce fruits beyond all measure with ordinary works.

Iannuzzi notes a point of great theological importance: one cannot fuse oneself in the Divine Will without fusing oneself, in the same movement, in the order of grace.

“To all that you have said concerning your fusion in My Will, another act must be added, that of your fusion in the order of grace — in all that the Sanctifier, the Holy Spirit, has done and will do in those who are to be sanctified.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 17, May 17, 1925^[34]

This point is crucial for correctly situating the doctrine, and it answers in advance the quietist objection. Fusion in the Divine Will is not a parallel way dispensing from the sacraments, sanctifying grace or the ecclesial order. It is, on the contrary, the full unfolding of that order: the whole work of the Holy Spirit in the Church — the sacramental economy, the grace of the saints, the sanctification of the baptized through the centuries — is part of what the soul “espouses” in its act of fusion. This is also why Iannuzzi recalls, with Saint Annibale Maria di Francia, that the new saints of the Divine Will must possess, and to a heroic degree, all the virtues of the ancient saints.^[35] Fusion therefore supposes the state of grace, sacramental life, prayer and growth in the virtues — never their abandonment.

Fusion is no modern spiritual invention: it has models, which shed light on its meaning.

Adam before the fall

The first model, the oldest, is Adam before sin. Before his fall, Adam lived in the unity of the divine Will: all the acts God accomplished in creation for his happiness, Adam received and rendered back to God in a single act, “as in triumph.”^[36] Every fusion of the creature finds its archetype there: man rendering back to God, in the name of the whole of creation, the love and glory God had deposited in it. The fall broke that circulation; the Reign of the Divine Will is the divine work restoring it.

Jesus, source of all fusion

Jesus is the absolute source of fusion. His divine Person possesses the Divine Will by nature, whereas creatures possess it by grace.^[37] In His humanity, the Divine Will operates eternally, while His human intellect, His human memory and His human will continually cooperate with that operation. It is by participating in that dynamic of Christ that souls can in turn fuse themselves: when the fused soul “remakes” the acts of all creatures after Jesus, it is not the soul remaking them, it is God operating in it.^[38]

Mary, fused with the Word

Mary is the perfect model of realized fusion. Jesus tells Luisa that His Mother possessed God's Will on earth “in the same manner as God possesses it in heaven.”^[39] His Divine Will in Him and His Divine Will in her were “continually fused,” to the point that between Mother and Son there was “a kind of bilocation.”

“There could be no separation between Me and My sweet Mama. The separation was only apparent. There was fusion between her and Me […]. One may say there was a kind of bilocation. This also happens to souls when they are truly united to Me.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 11, May 9, 1913^[40]

It is because of that plenary fusion that Mary could conceive the Word in her womb. On Mary's place in this spirituality, see What place does Mary hold in the Kingdom of the Divine Will?.

Luisa, the first to receive the gift

Luisa, finally, is presented by Jesus as the first creature conceived in original sin to receive the plenary gift of Living in the Divine Will.^[41] Her fusion is paradigmatic for all the baptized who will come after her. She reports it very simply:

“I began to fuse my whole poor being in the supreme Will, and while I was doing so, I noticed that the heavens opened, and I rose to meet the whole heavenly court, and all of heaven came toward me.” — Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 17, January 4, 1925^[42]

Luisian fusion is no foreign body in the history of Catholic spirituality: it prolongs and radicalizes a language the great mystics already knew.

The spiritual marriage of Teresa of Avila

The clearest parallel, drawn by Iannuzzi himself, is that of the spiritual marriage described by St. Teresa of Avila in the seventh mansion of the Interior Castle: a union in which the will of the soul and the Will of God become truly one, without ceasing to be distinct.^[43] Luisa's vocabulary is conjugal: the soul “espouses,” “mystically kisses,” “possesses” the divine Will and is possessed by it. Iannuzzi specifies, however, what Luisian fusion adds: beyond resignation and conformity, peaceful passivity under the empire of the Holy Spirit — that is, the passage from a will that does to a will that lives in.

Losing oneself in God's will

The theme of perfect resignation, which “liquefies” the two wills, already runs through Luisa's writings from the earliest volumes.

“Perfect resignation to My Will liquefies our two wills and fuses them into one. It is sugar and honey. But, by resistance to My Will, sugar becomes bitter and honey turns into poison.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 3, April 16, 1900^[44]

This language of the “liquefied” will joins the classical teaching on transforming union: St. John of the Cross describes the summit of the spiritual life as the transformation of the soul's will into God's will, and St. Francis de Sales makes the union of our will with God's the very heart of love. Luisa's novelty is not to contradict that tradition, but to push its logic to a new gift — no longer only doing God's Will heroically, but living in its very operation. This is what the most recent tradition calls the new and Divine holiness.

• What is the gift of living in the Divine Will? — the gift that fusion opens.
• What is the difference between doing God's will and living in the Divine Will? — the founding distinction.
• How to begin the morning prevenient act? — the morning practice.
• How to make a current act in the Divine Will? — renewing fusion through the day.
• What does it mean to make the rounds in the Divine Will? — a fruit proper to fusion.
• What place does Mary hold in the Kingdom of the Divine Will? — the perfect model.
• The Divine Will — general presentation.
• Luisa Piccarreta — life, writings and ecclesial status.
• The Book of Heaven — the primary source of this doctrine.