What place does Mary hold in the Kingdom of the Divine Will?

The Virgin Mary in the Kingdom of the Divine Will (1929–1930)

The best proof of Mary's centrality is that Jesus willed, for her, a work apart. Between 1929 and 1930, he has Luisa write a book of thirty-one meditations — one for each day of a month, on the model of the traditional “Months of Mary” — entitled The Virgin Mary in the Kingdom of the Divine Will. Its distinctive feature: it is not Jesus but Mary who speaks in it and guides the soul. The work opens with a maternal invitation of great tenderness:

“I invite you to enter the Kingdom of your Mama, the Kingdom of the Divine Will. I knock at the door of your heart to be welcomed by you. I bring you this book as a gift… You will savour the delicious food of the Divine Will. You will lack nothing.” — The Virgin Mary to Luisa, The Virgin Mary in the Kingdom of the Divine Will, preliminaries^[4]

The purpose Mary assigns to her own book is explicitly missionary and universal: to form, for all humanity, “subjects” and “children” of the Kingdom.

“I will go around the world, I will visit every person, every family, every religious community and every nation and, if necessary, I will continue for centuries, until I have formed all my subjects, as Queen, and all my children, as Mother, so that all may know the Divine Will and let it reign within them. That is the purpose of this book.” — The Virgin Mary to Luisa, The Virgin Mary in the Kingdom of the Divine Will, preliminaries^[5]

Why Mary holds a unique place

One might think that every soul called to live in the Divine Will holds the same rank in this Kingdom. But the writings clearly distinguish three founding figures, without confusing them: Jesus, the source of the gift; Mary, the first creature to receive it and to mediate it; Luisa, the first creature “conceived in sin” to receive its knowledge in order to announce it to all. This hierarchy is essential for understanding Mary's place: she is neither the author of the gift (that is Christ), nor merely one beneficiary among others, but the model-creature through whom everything passes.

That is why the present article stays centred on the Virgin. Luisa's place is treated elsewhere — why Luisa is called the little daughter of the Divine Will — as is the question of whether she is “the woman of Genesis” (dedicated article). What concerns us here is more fundamental: Mary is the only creature of whom Jesus says that she possessed the Kingdom at its source, without the slightest shadow.

From the first instant of the Immaculate Conception

The starting point is the Immaculate Conception. The Catholic faith teaches that Mary was, “by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ”, “preserved free from all stain of original sin” from the first instant of her conception (CCC § 491)^[6]. The spirituality of the Divine Will reads in this privilege far more than an absence of stain: it sees in it the immediate opening of a life entirely ruled by the divine Fiat.

“From the first instant of her Immaculate Conception, she received this act of Life of the Divine Will, to receive it then continually throughout her life. It was the greatest prodigy, the unheard-of miracle: the life of the Divine Will in the Empress of Heaven.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 20, 10 December 1926^[7]

Here lies the decisive difference with every other saint. The greatest mystics “do” the will of God, and sometimes endure it heroically; Mary, by contrast, lives in this Will as in her native atmosphere, because nothing in her ever resisted it. The distinction between “doing” and “living in” the divine Will — central to this whole doctrine — finds in Mary its perfect limiting case: in her, there was not one instant when her own will took precedence over God's (on this distinction, see the dedicated article).

“What I am by nature, my Mother has become by grace”

This unbroken life in the Fiat produces in Mary a true divinisation — not by nature, but by grace. The Greek Fathers called theosis this participation of the creature in the life of God; the Book of Heaven applies it to Mary in the strongest terms:

“The delights and graces poured into her were so great and so many that what I am by nature, my Mother has become by grace. Since she was without sin, my grace reigned freely in her. There is nothing of my Being that I have not communicated to her.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 2, 26 September 1899^[8]

The same teaching returns, twenty-four years later, related explicitly to the action of the Divine Will within her:

“By virtue of the Divine Will acting in her, one may say that what God is by nature, she has become by grace. Our Will can do all things.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 16, 8 December 1923^[9]

This affirmation remains rigorously Catholic. It does not make Mary a goddess: it says, in mystical language, what tradition calls her fullness of grace (“Rejoice, full of grace”, Lk 1:28)^[10] and her perfect cooperation with the Holy Spirit, “the joint work of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin” (CCC § 721–726)^[11]. Mary is “a little god by participation”, as man was called to be from Creation — with this difference, that in her this design was realised without fail.

The only one never to have withdrawn her will

What makes Mary a unique case is the absolute continuity of her union. Jesus presents this continuity as “the miracle of miracles”: a finite creature containing, without breaking it, the infinite and unbroken act of the divine Will.

“Do you want to know who she is who let herself be ruled by this continuous Act of my supreme Will and who, never giving life to her own will, received this continuous Act of Life of the Divine Will, so as to form in herself a fully divine Life in the likeness of her Creator? It was the heavenly and sovereign Queen.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 20, 10 December 1926^[12]

The image Jesus uses to convey the disproportion is striking: a single act of the Divine Will can “create heavens, suns, seas, stars”; beside it, all human acts are “like so many drops of water dissolving in the ocean”^[13]. If a single soul has borne within herself, without interruption, this Life of continuous act, then her greatness is literally immeasurable. That is why Mary does not belong in the series of the saints: she is their summit and their created source.

Queen because she let the Fiat reign within her

The title “Queen of the Divine Will” is not a decorative metaphor. Mary is Queen of the Divine Will because she was the first, and perfectly, to let this Will reign within her. The Book of Heaven names her in so many words “the heavenly and sovereign Queen”, she in whom the supreme Fiat “reigned” and “formed her life”^[14]. Mary's queenship is therefore not a domination she exercises, but a reign she welcomed: she is Queen because she was perfectly subject.

Jesus connects this queenship to the Marian worship of the Church itself: honouring the Queen is in reality celebrating the Fiat that made her what she is.

“In all the feasts in which the Church honours my Mama, the whole of Heaven celebrates, glorifies, praises and thanks the supreme Will, because it sees its Life in her… It is therefore with justice that, when they celebrate the Queen, they celebrate the supreme Fiat which created its Queen, reigned in her, formed her life, and is the first cause of her eternal happiness.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 20, 10 December 1926^[15]

This doctrine extends the dogma of the Assumption, which culminates in Mary's queenship: “raised to heavenly glory, [she] was exalted by the Lord as Queen of the universe” (CCC § 966)^[16]. The Book of Heaven simply adds the interior foundation of this queenship: Mary reigns in Heaven because the Divine Will reigned in her on earth.

The “unheard-of miracle”: the Divine Will forming a created life

What Jesus calls “the greatest prodigy” deserves to be understood, for it is what founds Mary's place. An infinite, immense, eternal will comes to “form its life” in a creature “without ceasing to remain immense”^[17]. Mary is neither absorbed nor annihilated: she remains fully herself, a woman of Nazareth, while being the created place where the divine Will unfolds its life as nowhere else in the order of creatures. It is this paradox — the infinite contained without constraint in the consenting finite — that the doctrine calls the summit of holiness possible to a creature.

From this follows a cosmic consequence which Jesus stresses: it is “the Divine Will forming its life in this Creature of excellence that opened Heaven, closed by the human will”^[18]. Adam's disobedience had locked Heaven; Mary's living obedience — her permanent Fiat — turned the key. Even before the Cross, Mary's very existence in the Fiat reopens, in seed, the lost access.

A Queen almost without subjects — until now

There remains a nuance that is often misunderstood, and which illuminates Mary's still-unfinished mission. A queen normally reigns over a people. Yet for centuries, Mary was “Queen of the Divine Will” almost without subjects: no other creature lived as she did in the Fiat. Father Joseph Iannuzzi, whose dissertation on the Divine Will was defended and published with the required ecclesiastical approvals, cites an explicit revelation on this point:

“How Our love rejoices and exults when We see her as the first queen of the work of Our creative hands! But Our love is not content with having a single queen… in order to have the procession of Our children: all kings and queens.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 23, 13 January 1928, quoted by J. L. Iannuzzi^[19]

God does not want a solitary Queen: he wants a people of kings and queens living as Mary does in the Divine Will. That is exactly the meaning of the Reign of the Divine Will on earth: not a political empire, but a multitude of souls finally sharing the Queen's state. Mary's queenship calls, by its nature, for a peopled kingdom.

Her own place between Redemption and Sanctification

Luisa's doctrine organises the whole history of salvation around three Fiats: the creative Fiat (“Fiat lux”, Gen 1:3), the redemptive Fiat (“Fiat mihi” of Mary, Lk 1:38), and the sanctifying Fiat (“Fiat voluntas tua” of the Our Father, Mt 6:10). The first was spoken by God alone; the other two require the cooperation of a creature. And the creature of the second Fiat is Mary.

The table below situates her exact place in this architecture. It does not repeat the detail of each Fiat — treated in the corresponding articles — but shows where the Virgin stands.

Mary is therefore not confined to the redemptive Fiat alone: she runs through all three. Most perfect fruit of Creation, agent of the second Fiat, Queen of the third — she is the golden thread linking the three works of a single design.

Co-redemptrix: “she never left me alone”

At the heart of her place stands her Fiat of the Annunciation. In answering “May it be done to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38)^[20], Mary gives not only her body to the Word: she unites herself in advance to his whole Passion. The Book of Heaven speaks of her as co-redemptrix — a term to be understood in its Catholic sense of a cooperation subordinate to and dependent on Christ, the sole Redeemer:

“At the same time as she conceived me, my Mother became co-redemptrix of humanity and embraced all my sufferings, my satisfactions and my reparations, to which she joined her maternal love for all… She accompanied me in everything: in love and in suffering. She never left me alone.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 17, 1 May 1925^[21]

Why did God need a creature for the Redemption? Because, after twenty centuries of waiting, “the true and pure joys of Creation” could not resume without “choosing a creature very close to the human generations”, capable of the “total stripping of the human will”^[22]. This creature, alone capable of this perfect stripping, could only be the Immaculate One. The Redemption therefore rested, on the human side, on Mary's Fiat — as developed in the article on the redemptive Fiat.

Queen of the third Fiat, but not its source

If Mary is the agent of the second Fiat, she is the Queen of the third — that of Sanctification, the Kingdom of the Divine Will. But here a doctrinal precision is required, and it is decisive if one is not to go astray. The gift of living in the Divine Will is mediated “through Jesus and Mary”: Mary is not an independent source of it, but the maternal channel willed by God. Iannuzzi puts it sharply:

“Just as Mary was the first creature to take an active part in the mediation of the Fiat of Redemption to all generations, so Luisa was the first creature conceived in sin to take part in the mediation of the Fiat of Sanctification… but always through Jesus and Mary.” — J. L. Iannuzzi, The gift of living in the Divine Will^[23]

In other words: the gift comes down from Christ, passes through Mary, and reaches Luisa — then the Church — only through her. This is the constant law of Catholic salvation: “through Mary”, never “without her”, never “above her”. Her maternal mediation, “subordinate to the mediation of Christ” and which only “shows forth the power” of the latter (CCC § 970)^[24], finds in the Kingdom of the Fiat its highest expression.

“The engine, the life, the guide, the perfect model”

The title of Queen does not say everything. Mary is also, and first, Mother: it is from maternal tenderness that she wills the Kingdom for her children. In the great Ascension passage (volume 34), Jesus describes her as the very soul of the Kingdom to come:

“She is the Queen of my Church to help it, protect it and defend it. She will be present among the children of my Will. She will always be the engine, the life, the guide, the perfect model, the majesty of the Kingdom of the divine Fiat so dear to her Heart.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 34, 20 May 1936^[25]

Five words sum up her function: engine (she sets in motion), life (she animates), guide (she leads), perfect model (she shows how to live), majesty (she is its glory). No soul enters the Kingdom without meeting her on the way.

An unfinished maternal mission

Here is the most moving trait of her place: Mary is not a satisfied Queen, settled in her glory. She longs, with ardent maternal longing, for her children to live on earth in the Kingdom where she already lives in Heaven. Until that happens, she considers her mission unfinished:

“Her ardent desires, her transports of maternal love are to will that her children live on earth in the Kingdom where she lived. She is not content with having her children in Heaven… She holds that the mission of Mother and Queen that God gave her is not completed, that it will only be ended when the Divine Will reigns on earth among creatures.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 34, 20 May 1936^[26]

This word gives Mary's place an active and present dimension. Modern Marian apparitions, the Church's insistence on the triumph of the Immaculate Heart, the Our Father prayed each day: all of this can be read, in this perspective, as the work of a Mother who “puts all her Heart and all her Love into helping the creature she sees disposed to will to live in the Divine Will”^[27]. Mary does not wait passively: she labours for the Kingdom.

Queen for subjects, Mother for children

Here we find again the twofold function announced from the preliminaries of the Marian book: Mary wills to form “all her subjects, as Queen, and all her children, as Mother”^[28]. The two titles do not compete; they complete each other. As Queen, she communicates the order, the dignity, the royalty of the Fiat; as Mother, she communicates life, tenderness, the child's familiarity with God. The subject obeys; the child resembles. Mary wills both: souls that let the divine Will reign and that inherit from their Mama.

“She wills that her children resemble her and possess the inheritance of their Mama.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 34, 20 May 1936^[29]

That is why coming to the Kingdom of the Divine Will, in this spirituality, is always passing through Mary: not as through an optional stage, but as through the Mother who first received this inheritance in order to transmit it.

Mary's place cannot be deduced from a single text: it is built up, volume after volume, over some twenty years of revelations. The following chronology gives the main landmarks.

This progression shows one thing: Mary's place is not an isolated intuition, but a coherent doctrine, stated over nearly forty years, and always articulated with the faith of the Church — Immaculate Conception, divine motherhood, co-redemption, Assumption and queenship.

This continuity is itself a sign of solidity: the first text quoted goes back to 1899, when Luisa was thirty-four; the last dates from 1936, eleven years before her death in 1947, as she completes, at seventy-one, a life almost entirely cloistered and devoted to this single dictation. The doctrine on Mary's place is therefore neither an intuition of youth nor a late addition: it runs, unchanged in substance, through Luisa's entire mystical life.

A place as lofty as this calls for safeguards, lest it slide into exaggeration. The spirituality of the Divine Will, as taught by Luisa and re-read by the authorised theologians, sets several.

Mary never surpasses Christ

First safeguard: all of Mary's titles — Queen, Mother, co-redemptrix, mediatrix — remain subordinate to Christ, the sole Mediator (1 Tim 2:5). The Catechism is formal: Mary's maternal function “shows forth the power of Christ's unique mediation” and “neither takes away anything from nor adds anything to the dignity and efficacy of Christ the one Mediator” (CCC § 970)^[30]. If Mary “opened Heaven”, it is “in view of the merits of Jesus Christ” (CCC § 491)^[31] and because the Divine Will — that is, God himself — reigned in her. The Queen has nothing she has not received.

Luisa never surpasses Mary

Second safeguard, proper to this doctrine: the parallel between Mary and Luisa does not make the latter a “new Virgin”. Iannuzzi insists on this: “Luisa does not surpass Mary's holiness”^[32]. Mary remains the first and highest of creatures; Luisa is only the first “conceived in sin” to receive the knowledge of the gift in order to announce it. Any reading that would place Luisa above Mary, or beside her, betrays the doctrine. This is one of the points verified by the Church in examining Luisa's writings.

No millenarianism: a spiritual reign

Third safeguard: the “Kingdom” of which Mary is Queen is not an earthly, political or temporal empire. The Church has condemned millenarianism — the expectation of a historical reign of Christ before the end (CCC § 676)^[33]. The Kingdom of the Divine Will is a spiritual and interior fulfilment of “Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven”, the extension to the Church of the state Mary lived in fullness — not a worldly utopia. The Queen promises no earthly throne: she promises that God's Will shall live in hearts as it lived in hers.

A doctrine consistent with the Marian dogmas

Last point: far from competing with the Church's Marian faith, this doctrine extends its four dogmas. The divine Motherhood founds the redemptive Fiat; the Immaculate Conception founds the possession of the Kingdom from the first instant; perpetual Virginity bespeaks total gift to the divine Will; the Assumption crowns with heavenly queenship she who had let the Fiat reign on earth. Mary's place in the Kingdom of the Divine Will is, at bottom, only the interior reading of what the dogmas proclaim outwardly.

What place does Mary hold in the Kingdom of the Divine Will? The first of all. Not as the author of the gift — that is Christ — but as the creature in whom this gift was realised without the slightest shadow, from the first instant of her Immaculate Conception. She is the “sovereign Queen” because she perfectly let the Fiat reign within her; she is the Mother because she longs, with ardent longing, for her children to live on earth in the Kingdom where she already lives in Heaven. Her mission, says Jesus, “will only be ended when the Divine Will reigns on earth”.

Mary is therefore at once the accomplished model — what every soul in the Divine Will is called to become —, the gateway through which this gift comes down from Christ to the Church, and the Queen awaiting a people. To understand her place is to understand that the Kingdom of the Divine Will is nothing foreign to the Catholic faith: it is the Gospel of the Our Father lived as Mary lived it, under the guidance of she who is, from all eternity, its Queen and Mother.

• What is the gift of living in the Divine Will? — the gift of which Mary is the perfect model.
• What is the redemptive Fiat? — Mary's Fiat at the Annunciation.
• What is the sanctifying Fiat? — the Kingdom of which Mary is Queen.
• Why speak of a reign of the Divine Will on earth? — the people the Queen awaits.
• Why is Luisa called the little daughter of the Divine Will? — the first creature conceived in sin to receive the gift.
• What is the difference between doing God's will and living in the Divine Will? — the distinction of which Mary is the perfect case.
• The four Marian dogmas — the dogmatic bedrock of Mary's place.