God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. (1Jn. 4.16)
The public manifestation of the Nine Excesses of Love written by Luisa Piccarreta dates back to December 16, 1928, when Fr. Benedetto Calvi, her last confessor, decided to read them in public the first time at the House of the Divine Will, despite Luisa's reluctance.
“Why do you want to oppose the reading of the nine excesses? Ah! You do not know how much life, how much love and grace they contain. You must know that my word is creation, and in narrating to you the nine excesses of my love in the Incarnation, I not only renewed my love which I had in incarnating Myself, but I created new love in order to invest the creatures and conquer them to give themselves to Me. These nine excesses of my love, manifested with so much love of tenderness and simplicity, formed the prelude of the many lessons I was to give you about my Divine Fiat, in order to form Its Kingdom. And now, by their being read, my love is renewed and redoubled.”
This is what the Nine Excesses of Love are. They are rooted in the Redemptive Fiat, allowing us to follow Jesus during the nine months He lay in His Mother's womb and meditate on His Passion from the moment of His conception.
March 25, the day of the Incarnation, brings us to meditate on Mary's “Yes,” a prolonged, multiplied “Yes” that is connected to God's creative Act. In fact, God, by special grace, created Mary, Immaculate, free from the guilt of origin. Mary, having received the use of reason used free will and said “Yes” to the Divine Will, so that it would reign as life in Her entire life. Through the centuries, Mary's acts, like conjoined rings, invite us to listen to the Word of Pope Pius IX who in 1854 proclaimed Mary as the Immaculate Conception. Truth confirmed by Mary herself to little Bernadette: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” It was March 25, 1858.
Everything that exists in creation is an excess of Love on the part of the Creator, even the smallest little flower, like the blue sky studded with stars speaks to us of divine Love. The excesses manifested by Jesus to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta must be seen through a most pure crystal which is the immaculate heart of Mary, She who embodied them in her life, from her first to her last Act.
First Excess: Trinitarian Excess
The First Excess is the Trinitarian Excess, an Excess arising from an outpouring of love from the Trinitarian Family.
And it is Luisa herself who in her mystical experience conveys to us the origin of it: “With a Novena of Holy Christmas, at the age of about seventeen, I prepared myself for the Feast of Holy Christmas, by practicing various acts of virtue and mortification; and, especially, by honoring the nine months which Jesus spent in the maternal womb with nine hours of meditation each day, always concerning the mystery of the Incarnation. As for example, for one hour, with my thought, I brought myself to Paradise, and I imagined the Most Holy Trinity: the Father, sending the Son upon earth; the Son, promptly obeying the Will of the Father; the Holy Spirit, consenting. My mind was confused in contemplating a mystery so great, a love so reciprocal, so equal, so strong among Themselves and toward men; and then, the ingratitude of men, and especially my own. I would have remained there, not for one hour, but for the whole day; but an interior voice told me: “Enough – come and see other greater excesses of my love.”
The Trinity is the source of unity in Will, in Love, in mutual giving. Such unity generates the link between the Creator and the creature, between the Divine Will and the human will. This allows the soul to rise and merge into the working activity of the Three Divine Persons who work for the good of each and every human creature.
From Volume 16
“The primary act of the Divine Persons is the perfect accord of Our Will. Our Will is so unified that Will of One cannot be distinguished from That of the Other; so much so, that even though Our Persons are distinct – We are Three – Our Will is One, and this One Will produces a continuous act of perfect adoration among the Divine Persons – One adores the Other.”
“A continuous act of perfect adoration among the Divine Persons – One adores the Other.” If the creature worships God and her Will is not united with the Divine Will, her worship is in vain. She worships with her lips but not with her heart.
Luisa tells us about the Trinitarian equality: “After Holy Communion I saw the Blessed Trinity, adored her and confessed my nothingness. A voice said: do not fear, we have come to take possession of Your Heart. To my wonder sometimes I saw the Trinity in the form of three children, and while I saw three, I saw one. At other times I would notice that all three Children weighed as much as one, as much one as three weighed the same.”
Our equality and similarity with God comes from this perfect unity of Will. The Children of God are all equal in the Heart of the Father. This echoes the first words with which Jesus introduces the prayer par excellence, “Our Father.” Moreover, this equality brings us back to the Acts done in the Will of God: Every act done in the Divine Will, from the greatest to the simplest, is of equal weight before God. Mary loves everyone with equal love, Jesus suffers His passion for the Glory of the Father and for the salvation of all, with equal love.
The Trinitarian Excess is fundamental and immense. It brings us back to the excellent and universal prayers that the Church prays and invites us to pray, so that due glory may be raised to God.
It is the prayer of the Glory Be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Glory to the Father renders the Glory due to the Trinity. Let us keep in our hearts the teaching of Jesus lost and found in the temple! “Why have you done this to us?” says Mary-and Jesus, ‘Did you not know that I must attend to the things of my Father?’ ‘Attending’ means restoring glory to the Father, that is, to the Triune Family, glory that man rejected with the first sin.
In Vol II Luisa gives us a simple and profound description of the Holy Trinity:
The sun is fire, but it is also light and heat. Here is the Most Holy Trinity veiled in the sun: the fire is the Father, the light is the Son, the heat is the Holy Spirit. However, the sun is one, and just as one cannot separate fire from light and heat, so one is the power of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who in reality cannot be separated from one another. And just as fire produces light and heat at the same time, in such a way that fire cannot be conceived without light and heat; in the same way, the Father cannot be conceived before the Son and the Holy Spirit, and vice versa, but all Three of the Them have the same eternal beginning.(February 28, 1899)
The Excesses are the source of divine love and contain life, irresistible strength and endless tendernesses. In Vol. 25 Jesus tells Luisa that after hearing the confessor's reading of the first Excess, He felt happy listening to them, but His happiness is increased in keeping Luisa in the house of the Divine Will, because both of them are listeners: Jesus, of what He told Luisa, and Luisa of what she heard from Jesus. Jesus’ love overflows. The word contains the breath, and as it is spoken, the word carries the breath which, like air, goes around from mouth to mouth and communicates the strength of His creative word; and the new creation which God’s word contains descends into the hearts. In Redemption Jesus had the cortege of His Apostles, and He was in their midst, all love, in order to instruct them; He spared no toil in order to form the foundation of His Church. Now, in this house- Jesus says- He feels the cortege of the first children of the Divine Will, and He feels His loving scenes being repeated, in seeing Luisa in their midst, all love, wanting to impart the lessons about His Divine Fiat in order to form the foundations of the Kingdom of the Divine Will.
Have a good journey with the excesses of love! Jesus feels happy to hear us speak of the Divine Will and waits longingly the moment when we begin to speak, in order to listen to us, and to feel the happiness that the Divine Will brings Him.
Fiat
(Meditations of Sister Assunta Marigliano-Commentary on the Excesses of Love)