The Book of Heaven
—Unofficial Version—

May 27, 1922

The prevenient act and the actual act.

I was thinking to myself: "If one act done in His Will is so great, how many of them, alas, do I let escape!’ And my sweet Jesus, moving in my interior, told me: "My daughter, there is the prevenient act and the actual act. The prevenient act is when the soul, at the first rising of the day, fixes her will in Mine, and decides and confirms that she wants to live and operate only in my Volition. She anticipates all of her acts and makes them all flow in my Will. With the prevenient will, my Sun rises, my Life remains duplicated in all of her acts, as though in one single act; and this makes up for the actual act. However, the prevenient act can be shaded - obscured by the human ways, by one’s own will, by self-esteem, by negligence and other things, which are like clouds before the Sun, that render its light less vivid on the face of the earth.

On the other hand, the actual act is not subject to clouds; on the contrary, it has the virtue of dispelling the clouds, if there are any, and it makes many more suns rise, in which my Life is duplicated, with such vividness of light and heat as to form as many new suns, one more beautiful than the other. However, both of them are necessary: the prevenient act gives the hand, disposes and forms the plane for the actual act; the actual act preserves and expands the plane of the prevenient."