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If you want your dream to be, build it slow and surely. Small beginning, greater and heartfelt work grows purely.

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Welcome. This is David Russell and Your Faith Anew Daily Reflections Guiding You to Live in the Divine Will. Today's reflection is from the Book of Heaven by the servant of God Louisa Picaretta, september twenty fourth, nineteen twenty two, volume fourteen. Let us begin in the will and name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Jesus, draw us beyond the narrow boundaries of self. Quiet within us everything that resists your grace. Give us the freedom of children who trust their Father completely. May our thoughts, desires, choices, and actions become open places where you may live and reign. We surrender this moment to you. Amen. A reading from the second letter of Peter chapter one verses three and four. His divine power has bestowed on us everything that makes for life and devotion through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and power. Through these He has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches in paragraph nineteen ninety seven. Grace is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life. By baptism, the Christian participates in the grace of Christ, the head of his body. As an adopted Son, he can henceforth call God Father in union with the only Son. He receives the life of the Spirit, who breathes charity into him and who forms the church. Before we listen, let us become still before Jesus and allow his grace to lead us beyond ourselves. Louisa writes. As I was in my usual state, my sweet Jesus made himself seen stripped, shivering with cold, telling me, My daughter, cover me and warm me, for I am cold. See, with sin, the creature had stripped herself of all goods, and I wanted to form for her a more beautiful garment, weaving it with my works, beating it with my blood, and adorning it with my wounds. But what is not my sorrow in seeing this garment so beautiful being rejected? As creatures content themselves with remaining naked, and I myself feel stripped in them, and I feel their cold. Therefore clothe me, for I need it. And I how can I clothe you? I have nothing and heed you can clothe me. You have my whole will in your power. Absorb it within you, and then release it, and you will make me the most beautiful garment, a garment of heaven and divine. Oh how warmed I will be, and I will clothe you with the garment of my will, so that we may be clothed with one single uniform. This is why I want it from you, so that I may give it to you with justice. If you clothe me, it is fair that I clothe you, to repay you for what you have done for me. All the evil in man is that he has lost the seed of my will. Therefore he does nothing but cover himself with the greatest crimes which degrade him and make him act like a madman. Oh how many follies they are about to commit Fair Palty since they want to have their own self as God. There is something astonishing at the heart of Christianity. God does not merely want us to become better people. He desires to share his own life with us. Saint Peter's speaks of becoming partakers of the divine nature. The church calls this grace, a participation in the life of God. This does not mean that we cease to be human or somehow become God. It means that through Christ, the life of the Trinity is given to us as a gift. God comes so close that His grace begins transforming how we think, love, choose, suffer, forgive, and hope. And this opens a beautiful way of understanding life in the divine will. Living in the divine will is not primarily about multiplying prayers or accomplishing extraordinary things. It begins much deeper with allowing Jesus to have greater freedom within us. Our greatest obstacle is often the little kingdom of self my plans, my preferences, my judgments, my need to control what happens next. Even good desires can become possessive when we insist that God fulfill them according to our timetable. Jesus offers another freedom. Remain in me, let me lead. When we give Him our will, we are not becoming passive, we are becoming available. Consider the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her greatness was not found in pursuing a life she designed for herself. At the Anunciation, she entrusted herself to a divine plan she could not possibly foresee. Her fiat became the beginning of an astonishing cooperation with grace. Something similar happens whenever we sincerely say Jesus, I want what you want. That prayer may seem small, but it reaches into everything. A conversation can belong to him. A disappointment can belong to him. Our work, our suffering, our waiting, our ordinary responsibilities can belong to him. And when we realize that we've taken something back into our own hands, we simply return. Jesus, here I am again. I give you my will. Live your life in me. Perhaps holiness is closer than we sometimes imagine. Not because it's easy, but because Jesus Himself is near. He's not standing at a distance asking us to reach him by our own strength. He is already giving himself. Our part is to receive. Let us pray. Jesus, I adore you and thank you for the life of grace you've given me. I don't want to live closed within myself. Take my thoughts, my desires, my plans, my worries, and everything I will encounter today. I place my human will freely into your hands. Teach me to recognize your presence in the ordinary moments of my life and to welcome your grace without resistance. Jesus, live in me, pray in me, love in me and act in me. May everything I am become an offering to the Father, united to you for his glory and for the good of all souls. Let your divine will reign more fully in me until my deepest joy is simply this to belong completely to you. Amen. Thank you for joining your faith anew today. Until tomorrow, stay in his will, and your faith will be made anew.