What is the Redemptive Fiat?

Before defining the Redemptive Fiat, one must understand what the word "Fiat" means in this spiritual vocabulary. The term comes from the Latin fiat, "let it be done" — the creative word of Genesis, Fiat lux, "let there be light" (Gen 1:3), and Mary's word at the Annunciation, Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum, "let it be done to me according to your word" (Lk 1:38).

An effective word of God, not a mere wish

In biblical language, God's word is never a powerless wish: it does what it says. "He spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm" (Ps 33:9). Jesus takes up this conviction with Luisa and applies it to three great divine interventions, which he calls the three Fiats: by the first, God creates; by the second, he redeems; by the third, he sanctifies by making his Will reign. Each is a "Fiat" in the strong sense: a word of God that unfailingly produces its effect.

Three Fiats, one eternal act

In these dictations, these three Fiats are not three successive decisions made by a God who changes his mind. They are the three faces of one eternal act, because in God there is no succession:

"My Will is a simple Act and not a succession of acts." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume XVIII, October 24, 1925^[8]

The dictation teaches that Creation, Redemption and Sanctification form one single simple act for the Divine Will.

What unfolds for us in time — first Creation, then Redemption, finally Sanctification — is, on God's side, one single willing. "The Work of the Divine Fiat" — the name Jesus gives Luisa to the work he entrusts to her — "must embrace everything: Creation, Redemption and Sanctification. [...] Everything is contained in It. Having no beginning, it is the beginning of all things, the end and the fulfillment of our works."^[9]

A reflection of the Most Holy Trinity

If the three Fiats form one whole while remaining distinct, it is because, in what Jesus entrusts to Luisa, they are a reflection of the Trinity itself:

"The three Fiats are inseparable, each completing the other two. They are a reflection of the Most Holy Trinity, being One and distinct among themselves. My Love and my Glory demand this third Fiat." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume XII, January 24, 1921^[10]

Catholic tradition attributes — or appropriates — each of the great divine works to one of the three Persons, without dividing them, since every work ad extra is common to the Three. These dictations take up exactly this language: Creation is attributed to the Father, Redemption to the Son, and the fulfillment of "thy will be done" to the Holy Spirit.^[11] The Redemptive Fiat is therefore the Fiat of the Son: the work attributed to the Son, the Word sent in the flesh.

The following table places the Redemptive Fiat among the three divine works as Luisa distinguishes them.

The Redemptive Fiat is therefore, in this spirituality, the whole work of Christ the Redeemer. Fr. Iannuzzi sums it up thus: the "second Fiat of the Trinity, which follows the Fiat of Creation" and which "reveals its provenance in the eternal Will" of God.^[12]

The first Fiat without a creature, the second with Mary's cooperation

The most striking difference between the first and the second Fiat is the cooperation of a creature. When God creates, no one can cooperate, because nothing yet exists. When he redeems, on the contrary, he wills the consent of a creature:

"The first 'Fiat,' which concerns Creation, was pronounced without the intervention of any creature. For the second, which concerns Redemption, I wanted the intervention of a creature, and it was my Mother who was chosen." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume XII, January 24, 1921^[13]

The Creative Fiat and the Redemptive Fiat are thus, according to Luisa's own meditation, "linked, each being like the echo of the other."^[14] One manifests God's love by creating; the other, by visiting fallen man in order to redeem him, she writes in her reflection: "By his second Fiat, the Fiat of Redemption, God visited us by giving Life to each of the acts of the Eternal Word."^[15]

An eternal Fiat in the mind of God, begun in time

As an act of the Divine Will, the Redemptive Fiat is eternal; as an event among men, it has a beginning, a duration and a history. Jesus holds the two together:

"My Will is eternal, in time and in eternity, having neither beginning nor end. While Redemption, although It was eternal in the Divine Mind, had a beginning in time, being the product of the Eternal Will." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume XIX, March 19, 1926^[16]

This is why Redemption took such a long time. God could have saved man "with a single word"; he chose instead to take everything up again patiently, act by act:

"I could have accomplished Redemption in a very brief time, even with a single word. But, during long years, with so many privations and sufferings, I wanted to make the miseries of man My own. I wanted to devote Myself to many and various actions so that man might be renewed and divinized, even in his smallest works." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume III, January 12, 1900^[17]

The New Adam who remakes what the first had lost

The theological spring of the Redemptive Fiat is the Pauline antithesis between the two Adams: "as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ" (1 Cor 15:22), for "the last Adam became a life-giving spirit" (1 Cor 15:45). The Fathers called this logic recapitulation: Christ takes up the whole human story in himself in order to remake it anew, as Saint Irenaeus teaches.^[18] Jesus takes it up with Luisa in the vocabulary of the "Kingdom":

"I represented the New Adam who had not only to bring the remedies to save creatures, but I had to remake and restore what Adam had lost. Consequently, I had to take on a human nature in order to include in it what the creature had lost and could recover through Me." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume XXI, March 16, 1927^[19]

In order to "include in it" what the creature had lost — the word of the dictation, which Fr. Iannuzzi renders as "enclose" —, the Word assumed a human nature representing fallen Adam: passible and mortal, capable of suffering, but without sin or concupiscence, unlike our wounded nature inclined to evil.^[20] This is the whole mystery of the Incarnation, which the Church confesses since Nicaea: the Son of God, "for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven [...] and became man."^[21]

A common idea limits Redemption to the Passion: Christ saved us "on the Cross," and only there. The Catechism first posits the same breadth: "The whole of Christ's life is a mystery of redemption," this mystery being "at work in the whole of Christ's life" — including "in his hidden life which, by his submission, atones for our disobedience" (cf. Lk 2:51).^[22] What Jesus tells Luisa goes in the same direction: without subtracting anything from the unique value of the sacrifice of the Cross, the Redemptive Fiat embraces the whole life of Christ. Each of his human acts, even the humblest, has redemptive scope.

The hidden life divinizes human acts

The thirty years at Nazareth are not a neutral time before the "real" salvation. By working wood, eating and sleeping, the Word communicated divine value to all human actions:

"My daughter, when I was on earth, did my hands not lower themselves to working wood, to driving nails, thus helping my adoptive father Joseph? Thus, with my hands and my fingers, I created souls and I divinized human actions by giving them a divine Merit. [...] I placed in their hands little divine coins of inestimable value. If my Passion redeemed them, my hidden Life attached to their acts, even the most insignificant, divine Merits of infinite Value." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume XI, August 14, 1912^[23]

The hidden life was itself a form of offering, a silent "victim" for the whole inner man:

"During my hidden Life, I was a victim for the whole interior of man, making reparation for his evil desires, thoughts, tendencies and affections." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume XI, March 8, 1912^[24]

The Passion and the "two distinct Passions"

The Cross obviously remains the summit. But Jesus distinguishes to Luisa, within his Passion, two distinct Passions: the one inflicted on him by men, and the one that came to him from the Divinity — which, he says, "far surpasses" the first, accompanied "by an immense Love" rather than by hatred and injustice.

"The sufferings given to Me by the Divinity far surpass those given to Me by creatures, as much in intensity as in number and in duration. [...] It is thus that in the last Hours of my earthly Life, I suffered the Passion at the hands of creatures. The injustices, hatred, mockeries, acts of vengeance, humiliations, etc., that men made Me undergo were so great that my poor Humanity became the reproach and the refuse of all [...] In short, I lived two distinct Passions." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume XII, June 4, 1919^[25]

This insistence echoes Catholic doctrine: it is "love to the end" (Jn 13:1) that confers on Christ's sacrifice "its value of redemption and reparation, of expiation and satisfaction."^[26] The Cross is the "unique sacrifice" which, offered "once for all" (Heb 10:10), seats Christ "forever at the right hand of God" (Heb 10:12) and, "by a single offering," leads the sanctified "forever to their perfection" (Heb 10:14).^[27]

"Felix culpa": a state surpassing the original state

The Redemptive Fiat does not merely repair: it super-elevates. Here Jesus takes up with Luisa the daring exclamation of the Easter liturgy, the Exsultet — "O happy fault, which merited such and so great a Redeemer" — which the Catechism takes up in its own name.^[28]

"In their wounds and their deformities, I placed the precious stones of my sufferings in order to cover all their miseries. I clothed them with such magnificence that their appearance surpasses in beauty their original state. That is why the Church exclaims: 'Happy fault!' Following upon sin, Redemption came, by which my Humanity nourished my children with its blood, clothed them with its personality and its beauty." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume XIV, February 26, 1922^[29]

The most original contribution of what Jesus entrusts to Luisa on the mystery of Redemption is what Fr. Iannuzzi, in his dissertation, calls the timeless Humanity of Jesus. Because the Word is God, and because for God all things are present "from all eternity," his Humanity touches all the acts of all men, those of the past as well as those of the future.^[30]

All souls conceived in his Humanity

At the moment of the Incarnation, Jesus tells Luisa, Christ "enclosed" in himself the lives of all creatures, in order to take up and divinize each of their acts:

"When I was conceived and my Humanity was formed, I caused all creatures to be reborn in Me, in such a way that my Humanity perceived all their acts. [...] Having caused all creatures to be reborn in Me, I offered them my whole Life. And do you know when I caused them to be reborn? On the Cross, in the bed of my cruel sufferings and of my atrocious Agony, in the last breath of my Life, I gave them birth. [...] each one marked with the seal of my Humanity." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume XIII, October 16, 1921^[31]

One year later, Luisa receives on this same mystery an even more striking image: that of a tiny Humanity — no larger than a hazelnut — and yet vast enough to conceive within itself the lives of all creatures of the three times.

"He who created everything was enclosed in a little created humanity! [...] As soon as the divine Power had formed my Humanity — about the size of a hazelnut, yet with all its members fully formed — and the Word took possession of this Humanity, then the immensity of my Will, containing all past, present and future creatures, conceived the lives of all these creatures. [...] Even though I seemed to be alone, through the microscope of my Will the life of all creatures could be perceived in Me." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume XV, December 16, 1922^[32]

A retroactive, contemporary and proactive influence

From this timeless presence it follows that Christ's merits reach the three times at once. Iannuzzi speaks of a "retroactive, contemporary and proactive" influence on the acts of all human beings.^[33] Concretely: the righteous of the Old Testament, who did not know Baptism, were "justified, sanctified and saved by the timeless merits of the Humanity of Jesus" even before the institution of the sacrament.^[34] Iannuzzi, drawing on A. Hulbosch (God in Creation and Evolution, 1965), reads in the Pauline title of the Son, "firstborn of all creation" (Col 1:15), the expression of his eternal presence before the worlds were — a presence by virtue of which, according to these dictations, his Humanity "anticipated Original Sin with the promise of the Fiat of Redemption."^[35] Here we find the protoevangelium of Genesis, the first announcement of the Redeemer made to Adam immediately after the Fall (Gen 3:15).^[36]

The image of the sun

To express this universal irradiation, Jesus uses with Luisa the image of the sun: just as the one sun gives light and heat to all creatures without dividing itself, his Humanity radiates the Divine Will upon all human acts. Fr. Iannuzzi comments on this image: from the center of the "eternal sun of the Divine Will," the spiritual rays of Jesus' Humanity penetrate and invest all human acts in order to reorder them.^[37] It is Jesus himself who, in a dictation to Luisa, develops this image of the light hidden and then revealed: "I therefore had to accomplish a greater miracle by hiding the Light in the veil of my Humanity [...] But in rising after death, representing innocent Adam, the New Adam, [...] I clothed Myself with a most pure Light."^[38] — to be compared with the Transfiguration, where "his face shone like the sun" (Mt 17:2).

The second Fiat "wanted the intervention of a creature": that creature is the Virgin Mary. Her place in the Redemptive Fiat is, in what Jesus told Luisa, considerable — but always subordinate and dependent on the one mediation of Christ, in conformity with the doctrine of the Church.

The Fiat of the Annunciation, origin of Redemption in time

It is Mary's consent that opens the work of Redemption in time: "God sent his Son, born of a woman" (Gal 4:4). Luisa states it in parallel with the Fiat lux of Creation:

"From one Fiat of my Will came forth millions of stars. From the Fiat of my Mother, from which my Redemption takes its origin, came forth for souls millions of graces, more beautiful, more brilliant and more varied than the stars." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume XII, February 2, 1921^[39]

This is why Jesus tells Luisa that "three times the Divinity has acted ad extra" — outside of itself, toward creatures: "the first time, in Creation [...]; the second, in Redemption, which asked for the cooperation of a woman, my heavenly Mother [...]; the third" concerning the fulfillment of the Divine Will on earth.^[40]

Conceived immaculate in order to cooperate fully

If Mary was able to cooperate so perfectly, it is, according to what Jesus told Luisa, because she was conceived without Original Sin and lived, alone among creatures, continually in the Divine Will. Iannuzzi explains that, "exempt from this interruption" that wounded all humanity, Mary received from her Immaculate Conception the prerogative of being a "depositary" of all human acts, and thus disposed "all human generations for the Incarnation."^[41] Her cooperation is treated in its own right in the article The Virgin Mary in the Kingdom of the Divine Will.

"Co-Redemptrix": a word to understand with the Church

The texts reported by Luisa sometimes use the word "Co-Redemptrix" for Mary.^[42] This historical usage can only be understood in the sense of an entirely subordinate cooperation: the Church confesses that Mary truly cooperated in salvation "by her obedience, faith, hope and burning charity" (Second Vatican Council, Lumen gentium, 61), but that this cooperation, received from Christ, adds nothing to his one mediation: "No creature could ever be counted along with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 970).^[43] The title itself has never been defined as a dogma, and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its note Mater Populi fidelis (November 4, 2025, approved by Leo XIV on October 7, 2025), judges the use of the title of Co-redemptrix to define Mary's cooperation "always inappropriate" (n. 22).^[44] This article therefore retains the language of the Magisterium — subordinate association and cooperation — without promoting the title: in what Jesus told Luisa, Mary's role always derives from the merits of Jesus' Humanity.

Here we reach the decisive point, the one that justifies the very existence of a third Fiat. Redemption is complete with regard to salvation: nothing is lacking to it. And yet, according to what Jesus told Luisa, it left one work in suspense.

What Redemption fully restored

The Redemptive Fiat restored to man everything necessary for salvation: it expiated sin, reopened the gates of Heaven closed since Adam, and made the baptized adoptive sons of God, heirs of eternal life (Gal 4:4-7). The Catechism says this without reserve: by his death, Christ frees us from sin, and by his Resurrection, he opens for us access to a new life — "the justification that restores us to God's grace"; and Scripture attests that we were "reconciled to God by the death of his Son" (Rom 5:10).^[45] On this level, Redemption is perfect, unique and definitive.

What remains in suspense: the Kingdom of the Will on earth

But Jesus tells Luisa an astonishing word: when Christ ascended into Heaven, he did not leave on earth the Kingdom of his Divine Will as Adam possessed it before the Fall. He remade it in his own Humanity^[46], then promised it for later, in the Our Father:

"I came down from Heaven and I formed the Kingdom of Redemption. But before going back up to Heaven, I made an even more solemn promise: that of the Kingdom of my Will. It was in the Our Father. [...] Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume XXIII, February 5, 1928^[47]

In other words, the very petition of the Our Father — "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" — would be the proof that this Reign is not yet fully realized: one does not ask for what one already possesses.^[48] The second Fiat "made me descend to earth so that I might live among men"; the third "will make my Will descend into souls, where it will reign on earth as in Heaven."^[49]

Why a third Fiat is necessary

Here the three Fiats are tied together. The third is not a "super-redemption" that would make the first insufficient: it is the application and crowning of what the first two prepared.

"By the Fiat of Creation, many wonderful and beautiful things came forth from Us. By the Fiat of Redemption, there was satisfaction for all the acts of creatures, taking them by the hand and bringing them back into the bosom of the Heavenly Father. Likewise, the third Fiat must run its course and manifest its effects: my Will known, loved and reigning on earth." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume XVI, January 23, 1924^[51]

Luisa receives this same necessity under the form of a "triple equilibrium" among the three Fiats: Creation, Redemption and the promised reign of the Fiat Voluntas Tua possess, Jesus tells Luisa, "the same value, the same weight and the same measure" of divine acts already prepared — and it is the waiting for this still incomplete equilibrium which, in a moving confidence, makes God feel as though "tired" of waiting:

"My Redemption goes hand in hand with Creation. It possesses as many Acts as Creation possesses. They are in perfect equilibrium with one another [...] In such a way that they will have the triple equilibrium of Acts, the same value, the same weight and the same measure. I am obliged to wait, and I feel within Myself the multiplicity of these Acts that I want to accomplish, without accomplishing them, because the Kingdom of my Fiat is not known and does not reign on earth." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume XXVII, December 10, 1929^[52]

Redemption therefore remains the root: without it, nothing. But it calls for its fruit, as seed calls for harvest. This is what the article The gift of living in the Divine Will explains. As for the suspicion of "millenarianism," it does not hold: the awaited Reign is interior — the Will which "will descend into souls where It will reign" (volume XII, March 2, 1921)^[53] — and not a visible return of Christ before the last judgment, which the Church has rejected even in its mitigated form (Catechism, no. 676; decree of the Holy Office, July 1944). The objection is treated at greater length in Answers to objections to the work of Luisa Piccarreta.

One practical question remains: what does this Fiat change for the faithful today? The answer given to Luisa is that one does not merely contemplate the Redemptive Fiat from afar: one is called to enter it, to make the acts of Christ the Redeemer one's own.

Receiving the merits as if they were one's own

Because the Humanity of Christ enclosed all human acts, the soul that lives in the Divine Will can "go through" the work of Redemption and appropriate it — not to add to it, but to receive it and return it to God in thanksgiving. This is one meaning of the rounds (giri) of Luisa's spirituality, where the soul passes again through each of God's works, Redemption included, to deposit its love there; this practice is explained in What does it mean to make the rounds in the Divine Will?.

Living the Passion "from within"

More concretely, meditating on and accompanying the Passion "from within" — for example through the 24 Hours of the Passion dictated to Luisa — is a privileged way of entering into the Redemptive Fiat, by uniting oneself to the acts Christ performed for every soul. This exercise is presented in the article The 24 Hours of the Passion. The point is never to "redo" Redemption, but to let its fruits bear fully within oneself — which, according to these dictations, prepares the third Fiat.

The Redemptive Fiat is, in the spirituality of Luisa Piccarreta, the second of God's three Fiats: the work of Redemption, attributed to the Son, accomplished with the cooperation of Mary's Fiat. It embraces the whole Humanity of Christ — Incarnation, hidden life, public life, Passion, Resurrection — and not the Cross alone. Through his "timeless Humanity," Christ touched the acts of all men, from the first righteous person of the Old Testament to the last man. This Fiat fully restored grace, reopened Heaven and made us adoptive sons; but it left in suspense the Kingdom of the Divine Will "on earth as it is in heaven," the object of the promise of the Our Father and of the third Fiat. To understand the Redemptive Fiat is therefore to understand both everything Redemption has accomplished and why it still calls for its crowning.

• The Divine Will — the main article on the doctrine and spirituality.
• The gift of living in the Divine Will — the nature of the gift prepared by the third Fiat.
• What does it mean to make the rounds in the Divine Will? — how to "go through" the works of God, Redemption included.
• The Virgin Mary in the Kingdom of the Divine Will — Mary's role associated with Redemption.
• The 24 Hours of the Passion — entering the Redemptive Fiat by accompanying the Passion.
• Answers to objections — the question of millenarianism and the "Reign."
• Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947) — the mystic of Corato and her mission.
• The Book of Heaven — the source of the revelations cited in this article.

Sources

• Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), The Book of Heaven, volumes III, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXIII, XXVII (quotations identified by volume and date; passages verified in the French ed. GE – La Volonté Divine – Lumen Luminis, trans. Guy Harvey, for private use — pages given in the notes; volume XIV cited after Fr. Iannuzzi, dissertation, ch. III, note 6).
• Fr. Joseph L. Iannuzzi, The Gift of Living in the Divine Will in the Writings of Luisa Piccarreta — doctoral dissertation, Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, 2012, chapter III (pp. 95-109), "Luisa's doctrine on the 'Fiat of Redemption'."
• Catechism of the Catholic Church: §§ 411-412 (protoevangelium, Felix culpa), 456-460 (the Incarnation), 599-618 (the redemptive mystery), 968-970 (Mary's cooperation).
• Second Vatican Council, dogmatic constitution Lumen gentium, §§ 60-62 (Mary and the one mediation of Christ).
• Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies (the recapitulation of all things in Christ).