The whole Christian life is contained in one prayer: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”[1] But this petition of the Our Father can be lived at two very different depths. One can do God's will — obey him, submit to his commands, accept his dispositions — and this is already the path of all the saints. One can also, in the language of Luisa Piccarreta, live in the Divine Will: no longer merely obeying God, but possessing his Will as one's own and acting with him in one single willing.
The difference is not a nuance of vocabulary. Jesus presents it to Luisa as a distance comparable to that separating heaven from earth, a son from a servant, a king from his subject.[2] Doing God's will means receiving commands and carrying them out faithfully. Living in the Divine Will means entering into the very mode in which the blessed live in heaven, where there is only one single Will that reigns and no further inner conflict.
This distinction does not set two rival spiritualities against each other: it describes two stages of one single itinerary. One never jumps over obedience; but obedience is not the summit. This article explains exactly what doing God's will means in the great Catholic tradition, what Luisa calls living in the Divine Will, the three images Jesus uses to distinguish them — servant and son, king and subject, heaven and earth —, to which Fr. Iannuzzi adds an illuminating analogy, and how the one leads to the other — without ever leaving the faith of the Church.
One formula, two very different realities
The most common misunderstanding is to think that doing and living in the Divine Will mean the same thing expressed in different words. Luisa Piccarreta — Servant of God, whose cause was opened on November 20, 1994 after the nihil obstat of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of March 28, 1994, and whose writings received in June 2024 the Nulla Osta of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which finds in them no doctrinal error preventing their dissemination (confirmed by the letter of December 3, 2024, Prot. N. 94/37-102675, which calls for an official critical edition and warns against the uncontrolled proliferation of the texts and inconsiderate devotions)[3] — uses these two expressions precisely to mark the operation of the soul before and after a decisive threshold.[4]
Fr. Joseph L. Iannuzzi, whose doctoral thesis on this subject was approved magna cum laude by the Pontifical Gregorian University in 2012, summarizes the fundamental point: Luisa affirms that “living in the Divine Will” is the mode of life that “most closely approaches that of the blessed in heaven,” and that it is as distant from “doing the Divine Will” “as heaven is from earth.”[5]
In substance, Jesus explains to Luisa that living in his Will means reigning in it and with it, whereas doing his Will means remaining submitted to his orders: the first state is possession, the second the reception of dispositions and the execution of commands.[6]
Everything lies in these two verbs: to possess and to receive. The one who does God's will receives it from outside as an instruction; the one who lives in the Divine Will makes it his own as his own good, which he administers freely.[7] The first attitude is that of the admirable faithful servant. The second is that of the heir, the son who disposes of his Father's goods as his own.
Before examining this threshold, we must do justice to what doing God's will already represents: not a mediocre state, but the heart of all Christian holiness.
Doing God's will: the royal road of all holiness
All holiness consists in doing God's will
Before Luisa Piccarreta, and independently of her, the Catholic tradition had always taught that perfection does not consist first of all in penances, ecstasies or dazzling works, but in the union of our will with God's. This is the central thesis of the short treatise by St. Alphonsus Liguori, Uniformity with God's Will (1755), one of the summits of modern spirituality: from its very first chapter, the saint lays down that perfection rests entirely on the love of God, and that perfect love of God consists in the complete union of our will with his.[8]
The Lord himself fixed the measure: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 7:21).[9] And St. Paul sums up the whole moral Gospel in one phrase: “This is the will of God, your sanctification” (1 Th 4:3).[10] Doing God's will is therefore not one devotion among others: it is the very definition of love and the criterion of salvation.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church connects this petition to the model of Christ himself, who could say: “I always do what is pleasing to him” (Jn 8:29), and who, in Gethsemane, reveals the secret of all obedience: “Not my will, but yours, be done” (Lk 22:42).[11] By uniting himself to this prayer of Christ, the baptized person learns to do the will of the Father as well.[12]
The three traditional degrees: resignation, conformity, uniformity
Classical spiritual theology distinguishes several degrees in this obedience of love. They are often presented as an ascent: one begins by enduring God's will, comes to welcome it, and finally no longer wants anything but it.
Resignation in trial
The first degree is resignation: accepting, without revolt, what God permits to be painful. The soul does not yet want the cross, but it no longer opposes it; it says yes to sickness, mourning, failure. It is the threshold of peace, but still a peace mixed with struggle. Luisa describes precisely this state as that of the soul “resigned” and “conformed” to God's Will, submitting to his “orders.”[13]
Habitual conformity
The second degree is conformity: no longer merely enduring, but wanting what God wants, making his will one's own in events as in commandments. This is the object of the great work of St. Francis de Sales, who devotes the whole ninth book of the Treatise on the Love of God to “the love of submission by which our will is united to God's good pleasure,” and who gives the famous image of holy indifference: the indifferent heart is like a ball of wax in the hands of its God, ready to receive every impression of his good pleasure.[14]
Uniformity and the abandonment of the saints
The third degree is what St. Alphonsus calls uniformity: no longer merely conforming one's will to God's in this or that event, but having only one and the same will with him, willing everything he wills because he wills it. This is the summit of the saints' abandonment, taught by St. Alphonsus following St. Francis de Sales: no longer wanting anything but what God wants, because it is he who wants it.[15]
These three degrees constitute the highest known holinesses in the history of the Church. And yet — this is the decisive point — Luisa affirms that at the very end of this ascent something else begins.
What “doing God's will” still leaves in place: two wills
As elevated as it may be, the way of obedience, resignation and conformity retains one feature: the soul still lives with two wills. Its human will remains distinct from God's, and even in the greatest saints it continues to weigh upon them. Jesus says this to Luisa with striking lucidity:
In substance, Jesus explains to Luisa that doing his Will means living with two wills: when God gives orders, the soul feels the weight of its own will, which causes contrasts, and even in faithfully carrying out those orders, it feels the weight of its rebellious human nature, its passions and its inclinations.[16]
This is the struggle described by St. Paul himself: “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24) — that is, as Jesus explains to Luisa in substance, of that self-will which wants to give death to the good we want to do.[17] As long as this duality remains, there is still distance, friction, inner fatigue. Doing God's will saves and sanctifies; but it does not yet remove the root of the struggle. That is precisely what the gift of living in the Divine Will claims to do.
Living in the Divine Will: no longer merely obeying, but possessing
Jesus' great word to Luisa: reigning and not being submitted
The threshold crossed by Life in the Divine Will can be summed up in a reversal: it is no longer a matter of God commanding and the soul executing, but of the Divine Will becoming the interior principle of human acts, so that the soul “reigns in it and with it.” The soul does not lose its freedom or personality — it finally receives them fully, by allowing God's Will to act as “its own life.”
In substance, Jesus explains to Luisa that living in his Will means making his Will one's own, as a good one disposes of freely; whereas doing his Will means considering it as God's Will, and not as one's own good, which one cannot dispose of at will.[18]
One single Will that reigns: the end of inner conflict
Where doing God's will left two wills in tension, living in the Divine Will leaves only one.
In substance, Jesus explains to Luisa that living in his Will means living by one single Will: and since his Will is all holy, all pure and all peaceful, and one single Will reigns in the soul, there no longer exists any contrast between God and the soul.[19]
This does not mean that the human will is destroyed or absorbed until it disappears — Catholic orthodoxy forbids such a notion, since Christ himself possessed a true human will, free and entire.[20] Rather, the human will ceases to pull toward itself, to “will on its own account,” and continually lets the Divine Will animate it. Peace is no longer a fruit wrested from combat: it becomes the soul's native state, in the image of the blessed. Luisa describes this soul as “rooted in the sun” of Jesus' Will, where it “grows and blossoms.”[21]
The gift, not the conquest: what the virtues cannot obtain
A capital point, and a safeguard against all spiritual pride: Life in the Divine Will is not the merited reward of ascetical heroism. It is a free gift, a pure favor of God, which does not flow from the perfection of the virtues.
“Sanctity in My Will is totally different from the other sanctities… Life in My Will is nothing other than the interior life of the blessed in heaven.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, quoted in Fr. Iannuzzi's thesis[22]
Iannuzzi emphasizes this as a theologian: “the gift of Life in the Divine Will does not derive from the perfection of the virtues, but from a pure favor of God.”[23] The virtues remain necessary — they dispose the soul and keep it in the state of grace — but they do not produce the gift, any more than preparing the soil produces the rain. This gratuity protects the doctrine from all voluntarism: one does not manufacture Life in the Divine Will by force of effort; one disposes oneself to it and receives it.
The “eternal mode”: acting according to God's measure
Iannuzzi offers an illuminating technical distinction. Ordinary spiritual life leads the soul, through the stages of purgation, illumination and union, to the divine mode of habitual mystical union with God. The gift of Life in the Divine Will introduces the soul into an eternal mode: the soul now cooperates in the one operation of God, which has neither beginning nor end, and whose acts “simultaneously touch the life and acts of all creatures of the past, present and future.”[24] In a child's words: the divine mode means living united to God like the greatest saints; the eternal mode means acting with God in one single act that touches the past, the present and the future at once — acting as God himself acts.
This is why Jesus assures Luisa that acts accomplished in his Will are not confined to the moment: they participate in the one eternal act of God and bear fruit for the whole creation. Here one glimpses the missionary scope of this life, which connects with the question of a reign of the Divine Will on earth and with that of the gift of living in the Divine Will itself.
Four images for grasping the difference
To make perceptible a distance that escapes concepts, Jesus uses three comparisons with Luisa, to which Fr. Iannuzzi adds a fourth analogy. All say the same thing from four angles.
The servant and the son
The servant receives orders and executes them; the son possesses the goods of the house and disposes of them. The servant obeys from the outside; the son acts from within, through communion of life with his father. Doing God's will is the fidelity of the servant; living in the Divine Will is the freedom of the heir.[25]
The king and the subject
The subject submits to a law that remains external to him; the king reigns, and the law lives in him as the expression of his own will. To live in the Divine Will is to reign in it and with it — not by usurpation, but because God has freely communicated to the soul his own way of acting.[26]
Heaven and earth
This is the strongest image: the distance between the two states is, according to Jesus, like that from heaven to earth.[27] Doing God's will still belongs to the regime of earth, where one walks amid contrasts; living in the Divine Will already allows the soul, while still in exile, to taste the interior life of the blessed in heaven.
The baptized infant and the baptized adult
Iannuzzi adds a fourth image, borrowed from sacramental theology, to situate the case of St. Joseph: the difference between the one who enjoys the reflections of the Divine Will and the one who possesses its gift is “analogous to the difference between a baptized infant and a baptized adult.”[28] Both have grace; but one possesses it passively and in seed, while the other deploys it actively and consciously. St. Joseph, according to Luisa, lived from the “reflections” of the Divine Will that emanated from Jesus and Mary, without possessing the gift in its source as they did.[29]
Where the other sanctities end, Life in the Divine Will begins
The crowning of all sanctities
Far from despising earlier sanctities, Luisa teaches that Life in the Divine Will presupposes and crowns them. Jesus reveals to her that this gift does not begin below the other mystical states, but at the precise point where they come to completion.
“It is the sanctity not yet known on earth and that I will make known, the most beautiful and brilliant, which will be the crown and fulfillment of all the other sanctities.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, quoted in Fr. Iannuzzi's thesis[30]
This “new and divine holiness” is not added as a rival to the ways of St. Benedict, St. Francis or St. Teresa: it gathers up their whole inheritance. This is the proper subject of the article on the new and divine holiness.
Fusing oneself into the Divine Will: beyond conformity
To name the act by which the soul enters this state, Luisa uses the verb to fuse oneself. Iannuzzi carefully specifies that this “fusing oneself” “does not mean a confusion of wills”: it supposes, in addition to resignation and conformity, a passivity of the soul under the sway of God's Will brought about by the Holy Spirit.[31]
In other words, fusing oneself does not erase obedience or conformity: it presupposes them and then surpasses them. One does not fuse oneself into the Divine Will by jumping over resignation, but by allowing it to blossom to the point where God himself takes the initiative. This nuance is treated more fully in the article on what it means to fuse oneself into the Divine Will.
Mary, first model of Life in the Will
Life in the Divine Will is not a novelty without precedent: it has a face. The Virgin Mary lived it in fullness, and Luisa sees herself called the “first” to form her life in the divine Will: in her is made the “first deposit” of this life.[32] Mary never knew the duality of inner combat; in her, from the first instant, one single Will reigned. She is thus the model and Queen of this manner of living, as developed in the article on the Virgin Mary in the Kingdom of the Divine Will.
Should the two be opposed? The continuity of one path
The word Fiat itself, in a child's words: it is the word by which God creates — when God speaks, it is. Three times, God spoke this word for us: to create us, to redeem us, to give us back his own Life.
Doing God's will remains indispensable
It would be gravely mistaken to conclude that, because the gift of living in the Divine Will is higher, one could neglect obedience, the commandments or the sacraments. The opposite is true. One never receives the gift without fidelity, and one does not keep it without fidelity: Iannuzzi recalls that “stability in the virtues” is required, “without which the soul cannot preserve the gift of Life in the Divine Will.”[33] Doing God's will is not a stage left behind: it is the permanent ground in which the gift takes root.
From resignation to possession: one single itinerary
The right image, therefore, is not that of two competing roads, but of one single ascent: resignation prepares conformity, conformity calls for abandonment, and abandonment disposes the soul to the gift of Life in the Divine Will. This is the movement described in the article on the passage from one's own will to God's Will: one begins by withdrawing from one's own will the right to govern, until God's Will can reign without division.
A grace offered, not reserved to a few mystics
Finally, this life is not the privilege of a few extraordinary souls. If Luisa is its “little daughter” and first deposit, it is precisely so that this gift may be communicated. The Catechism recalls that “it is the will of our Father that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tm 2:3-4).[34] Life in the Divine Will is inscribed within this universal will of salvation: it is offered to anyone who consents to let God be fully God within him — which is what every Christian asks, without yet fully knowing it, whenever he prays “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Further reading
- The Divine Will — the broader doctrine in which this distinction is situated.
- What is the gift of living in the Divine Will? — the proper content of the gift received by Luisa.
- The passage from one's own will to God's Will — the interior itinerary that leads to it.
- What does it mean to fuse oneself into the Divine Will? — the act of entry into this life.
- The new and Divine holiness — how this gift crowns all sanctities.
- The Virgin Mary in the Kingdom of the Divine Will — the accomplished model of Life in the Will.
- Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947) — the life and mission of the “little daughter of the Divine Will.”
Notes and References
Gospel according to St. Matthew, 6:10 (Jerusalem Bible): third petition of the Our Father.
1L. Piccarreta, Le Livre du Ciel, volume 17, September 18, 1924, passage on the difference between living in God's Will and doing God's Will; quoted in Fr. Joseph L. Iannuzzi, Le Don de la vie dans la Divine Volonté dans les écrits de Luisa Piccarreta, doctoral thesis, Pontifical Gregorian University, 2012, pp. 135-136 (note 83), and in his 70 questions sur le Don de la Vie dans la Divine Volonté, question 65. The English text (Lumen Luminis ed., entry of September 18, 1924: “To live in my Will is to reign… To do my Will is to be submitted to my orders…”) has been checked for substance; the French formulations of this article are paraphrases, the Italian original having been impossible to check.
2 6 7 16 17 18 19 25 26 27Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947): Servant of God since the opening of her cause on November 20, 1994 by Archbishop Carmelo Cassati of Trani; nihil obstat of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then presided over by Cardinal Ratzinger, on March 28, 1994; Nulla Osta of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, June 2024, for the continuation of the cause, finding no doctrinal error in her writings such as to prevent their dissemination; official letter of December 3, 2024 (Prot. N. 94/37-102675) from Archbishop Philippe Curbelié, Undersecretary of the Dicastery, to Archbishop Benoît Bertrand, president of the doctrinal Commission of the French Bishops' Conference, confirming this Nulla Osta, requesting an official, typical and critical edition with pedagogical notes, and warning against the uncontrolled proliferation of the writings and inconsiderate devotions.
3Fr. Joseph L. Iannuzzi, Le Don de la vie dans la Divine Volonté dans les écrits de Luisa Piccarreta, doctoral thesis, Pontifical Gregorian University, 2012, p. 135 (section “Faire et Vivre dans la Divine Volonté”).
4 5St. Alphonsus Mary Liguori, De l'uniformité à la volonté de Dieu (written about 1755), ch. 1 (summary): perfection rests entirely on the love of God, and perfect love of God consists in the complete union of our will with his.
8 15Gospel according to St. Matthew, 7:21 (Jerusalem Bible).
9First Letter to the Thessalonians, 4:3 (Jerusalem Bible).
10Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2824: “It is in Christ, and through his human will, that the Father's Will has been perfectly and once for all accomplished” (cf. Jn 8:29; Lk 22:42).
11Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2825: united to Christ, the faithful can unite their will to his in order to accomplish the Father's will.
12L. Piccarreta, Le Livre du Ciel, volume 12, August 14, 1917; quoted in Iannuzzi, thesis, 2012, p. 136 (notes 84-86): the soul “resigned” and “conformed” to God's Will, submitted to his “orders.”
13St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God (1616), book IX, “Of the love of submission by which our will is united to God's good pleasure”, ch. IV: “The indifferent heart is like a ball of wax in the hands of its God, to receive likewise all the impressions of the eternal good pleasure”.
14On the reality and freedom of Christ's human will (against monothelitism), cf. Third Council of Constantinople (680-681); Iannuzzi, thesis, 2012, on the inseparable but distinct operation of the two wills in Christ.
20L. Piccarreta, Le Livre du Ciel, volume 19, June 21, 1926; quoted in Iannuzzi, thesis, 2012, p. 136 (note 88): the soul “rooted in the sun” of Jesus' Will, which “grows and blossoms” in him.
21Fr. Joseph L. Iannuzzi, Le Don de la vie dans la Divine Volonté, thesis, Pontifical Gregorian University, 2012, pp. 131-132: the gift does not flow from the perfection of the virtues but from a pure favor of God; stability in the virtues is nevertheless required in order to preserve it.
22 23 33Fr. Joseph L. Iannuzzi, Le Don de la vie dans la Divine Volonté, thesis, 2012, pp. 134-135: from the “divine mode” of mystical union to the “eternal mode” of divine operation, which touches all creatures of the past, present and future.
24Fr. Joseph L. Iannuzzi, 70 questions sur le Don de la Vie dans la Divine Volonté, questions 17 and 20: St. Joseph lived from the “reflections” (the “overflow”) of the Divine Will emanating from Jesus and Mary; analogy of the baptized infant and the baptized adult.
28 29Fr. Joseph L. Iannuzzi, Le Don de la vie dans la Divine Volonté, thesis, 2012, p. 131: a “new holiness” that constitutes “the crowning and fulfillment of all other sanctities.”
30Fr. Joseph L. Iannuzzi, Le Don de la vie dans la Divine Volonté, thesis, 2012, pp. 136-137: to “fuse” oneself into the Divine Will does not mean a confusion of wills.
31L. Piccarreta, Le Livre du Ciel, volume 14, July 6, 1922: Luisa called as “the first” to form her life in the Divine Will and to be its “first deposit”; cf. Iannuzzi, 70 questions, questions 18 and 20.
32Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2822 (quoting 1 Tm 2:3-4): “It is the will of our Father that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.”
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