“Perfection is founded entirely on the love of God: ‘Charity is the bond of perfection;’ and perfect love of God means the complete union of our will with God’s.”
St. Alphonsus
In Volume 1, Opere Ascetiche di S. Alfonso M. de Liguori, Roma, 1933, “Uniformity with God’s Will” is included as one of three works under the heading, “Lesser Works on Divine Love.” There is no preface in the Italian original. However, it has been thought well to provide one here.
Prof.
Candido M. Romano Saggio
Storico di Prof. Candido M. Romano, Roma Libreria Salesiano, 1896.
“This (i.e. God’s will) was for Alphonsus a theme of predilection, a theme dearest to his heart. Just as St. Ignatius stressed ‘the greater glory of God,’ St. Alphonsus in all his works, gave prominence to ‘the greater good pleasure of God.’ Most likely the occasion that brought forth this treatise was the death, in 1753, of Father Paul Cafaro, C.SS.R., St. Alphonsus’ confessor and director. The death of this worthy priest deeply affected the Saint and he expressed his sentiments in a poem on God’s will. The wide acclaim it received may have suggested to him the thought that a tract on the same subject would be helpful to the souls of others. If this be true, his surmise proved correct, for the appearance of his subsequent pamphlet was greeted with instant favor.”
Cardinal Villecourt, in his Life of St. Alphonsus, quotes long passages from this pamphlet and ends by saying: “Our Saint frequently read it himself and when his sight had failed he arranged to have it read to him by others.”
This brochure bears the stamp of Alphonsian simplicity of style and solidity of doctrine. Moreover the instances he cites from the lives of the saints have a gentle graciousness and contain a fragrance that is redolent of the Fioretti of St. Francis of Assisi.
Through God’s grace and our Lady’s prayers may a diligent reading of the book bring us far along the way of perfection by the cultivation of uniformity with God’s holy will!
THOMAS W. TOBIN, C.SS.R.
Oct. 16, 1952.
Feast of St. Gerard Majella, C.SS.R.
Perfection
is founded entirely on the love of God: “Charity is the bond of perfection St.
Denis Areop. De Div. Nom. c. 4.
To
illustrate:—A man has two servants. One works unremittingly all day long—
but according to his own devices; the other, conceivably, works less, but he
does do what he is told. This latter of course is going to find favor in the
eyes of his master; the other will not. Now, in applying this example, we may
ask: Why should we perform actions for God’s glory if they are not going to be
acceptable to him? God does not want sacrifices, the prophet Samuel told King
Saul, but he does want obedience to his will: “Doth the Lord desire
holocausts and victims, and not rather that the voice of the Lord should be
obeyed? For obedience is better than sacrifices; and to hearken, rather than to
offer the fat of rams. Because it is like the sin of witchcraft to rebel; and
like the crime of idolatry to refuse to obey 1
Kings, 15:22, 23.
The
greatest glory we can give to God is to do his will in everything. Our Redeemer
came on earth to glorify his heavenly Father and to teach us by his example how
to do the same. St. Paul represents him saying to his eternal Father: “Sacrifice
and oblation thou wouldst not: But a body thou hast fitted to me . . . Then
said I: Behold I come to do thy will, O God
Our Lord
frequently declared that he had come on earth not to do his own will, but
solely that of his Father: “I came down from heaven, not to do my own will,
but the will of him that sent me
To do
God’s will—this was the goal upon which the saints constantly fixed their
gaze. They were fully persuaded that in this consists the entire perfection of
the soul. Blessed Henry Suso used to say: “It is not God’s will that we should
abound in spiritual delights, but that in all things we should submit to his
holy will Bl.H.
Suso L 2, c. 4. St.
Teresa, Obras 4:27, 28. Suso,
Serm. 2. (Opera Colon Agrip.)
During
our sojourn in this world, we should learn from the saints now in heaven, how
to love God. The pure and perfect love of God they enjoy there, consists in
uniting themselves perfectly to his will. It would be the greatest delight of
the seraphs to pile up sand on the seashore or to pull weeds in a garden for
all eternity, if they found out such was God’s will. Our Lord himself teaches
us to ask to do the will of God on earth as the saints do it in heaven: “Thy
will be done on earth as it is in heaven
Because
David fulfilled all his wishes, God called him a man after his own heart: “I
have found David . . . a man according to my own heart, who shall do all my
wills
A single
act of uniformity with the divine will suffices to make a saint. Behold while
Saul was persecuting the Church, God enlightened him and converted him. What
does Saul do? What does he say? Nothing else but to offer himself to do God’s
will: “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do Acts,
9:6. Ibid. St.
August. in
If we would completely rejoice the heart of God, let us strive in all things to conform ourselves to his divine will. Let us not only strive to conform ourselves, but also to unite ourselves to whatever dispositions God makes of us. Conformity signifies that we join our wills to the will of God. Uniformity means more—it means that we make one will of God’s will and ours, so that we will only what God wills; that God’s will alone, is our will. This is the summit of perfection and to it we should always aspire; this should be the goal of all our works, desires, meditations and prayers. To this end we should always invoke the aid of our holy patrons, our guardian angels, and above all, of our mother Mary, the most perfect of all the saints because she most perfectly embraced the divine will.
The
essence of perfection is to embrace the will of God in all things, prosperous
or adverse. In prosperity, even sinners find it easy to unite themselves to the
divine will; but it takes saints to unite themselves to God’s will when things
go wrong and are painful to self-love. Our conduct in such instances is the
measure of our love of God. St. John of Avila used to say: “One ‘Blessed be
God’ in times of adversity, is worth more than a thousand acts of gratitude in
times of prosperity St.
John Avil. Letters 41.
Furthermore,
we must unite ourselves to God’s will not only in things that come to us
directly from his hands, such as sickness, desolation, poverty, death of
relatives, but likewise in those we suffer from man—for example, contempt,
injustice, loss of reputation, loss of temporal goods and all kinds of
persecution. On these occasions we must remember that whilst God does not will
the sin, he does will our humiliation, our poverty, or our mortification, as
the case may be. It is certain and of faith, that whatever happens, happens by
the will of God: “I am the Lord forming the light and creating the darkness,
making peace and creating evil Isaias
45:6, 7. Amos,
3:6. Eccli.
11:14.
It is
true, when one offends us unjustly, God does not will his sin, nor does he
concur in the sinner’s bad will; but God does, in a general way, concur in the
material action by which such a one strikes us, robs us or does us an injury,
so that God certainly wills the offense we suffer and it comes to us from his
hands. Thus the Lord told David he would be the author of those things he would
suffer at the hands of Absalom: “I will raise up evils against thee out of
thy own house, and I will take thy wives before thy face and give them to thy
neighbor 2
Kings, 12:11. Isaias,
10:5, 6. St.
Aug. in St.
John, 18:11.
When the
messenger came to announce to Job that the Sabeans had plundered his goods and
slain his children, he said: “The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away Ibid.
ML
(Vitae Patrum) 73-402, etc.
Cesarius points up what we have been saying by offering this incident in the life of a certain monk: Externally his religious observance was the same as that of the other monks, but he had attained such sanctity that the mere touch of his garments healed the sick. Marveling at these deeds, since his life was no more exemplary than the lives of the other monks, the superior asked him one day what was the cause of these miracles.
He replied that he too was mystified and was at a loss how to account for such happenings. “What devotions do you practice?” asked the abbot. He answered that there was little or nothing special that he did beyond making a great deal of willing only what God willed, and that God had given him the grace of abandoning his will totally to the will of God.
“Prosperity does not lift me up, nor adversity cast me down,” added the monk. “I direct all my prayers to the end that God’s will may be done fully in me and by me.” “That raid that our enemies made against the monastery the other day, in which our stores were plundered, our granaries put to the torch and our cattle driven off —did not this misfortune cause you any resentment?” queried the abbot.
“No,
Father,” came the reply. “On the contrary, I returned thanks to God—as is my
custom in such circumstances—fully persuaded that God does all things, or
permits all that happens, for his glory and for our greater good; thus I am
always at peace, no matter what happens.” Seeing such uniformity with the will
of God, the abbot no longer wondered why the monk worked so many miracles Caesarius:
Dial. distin. 10: cap. 9.
Acting
according to this pattern, one not only becomes holy but also enjoys perpetual
serenity in this life. Alphonsus the Great, King of Aragon, being asked one day
whom he considered the happiest person in the world, answered: “He who abandons
himself to the will of God and accepts all things, prosperous and adverse, as
coming from his hands Anton.
Panorm. De Dictis Alph. Bk. 4.
There is
a story to this effect in the “Lives of the Fathers” about a farmer whose crops
were more plentiful than those of his neighbors. On being asked how this
happened with such unvarying regularity, he said he was not surprised because
he always had the kind of weather he wanted. He was asked to explain. He said:
“It is so because I want whatever kind of weather God wants, and because I do,
he gives me the harvests I want Vitae
Patrum. Exact citation unknown. St. Salvian.
De Gubern. Dei. Bk 1. no. 2.
This is
the beautiful freedom of the sons of God, and it is worth vastly more than all
the rank and distinction of blood and birth, more than all the kingdoms in the
world. This is the abiding peace which, in the experience of the saints, “surpasseth
all understanding
Solomon,
who tasted to satiety all the pleasures of the world and found them bitter,
voiced his disillusionment thus: “But this also is vanity and vexation of
spirit Eccus.
27:12.
By
uniting themselves to the divine will, the saints have enjoyed paradise by
anticipation in this life. Accustoming themselves to receive all things from
the hands of God, says St. Dorotheus St.
Doroth. Doctrina 7:4 & 6. Puccine,
Vita. Part. 1. chap 59. John,
16:22 & 24.
The
devout Father John Tauler Tauler,
Serm. De Fest. page 473 foll.
“Thank you, sir, for your kind wishes, but I do not recall ever having had a ‘bad’ day.”
“Then God has certainly given you a very happy life.”
“That is very true, sir. I have never been unhappy. In saying this I am not making any rash statement either. This is the reason: When I have nothing to eat, I give thanks to God; when it rains or snows, I bless God’s providence; when someone insults me, drives me away, or otherwise mistreats me, I give glory to God. I said I’ve never had an unhappy day, and it’s the truth, because I am accustomed to will unreservedly what God wills. Whatever happens to me, sweet or bitter, I gladly receive from his hands as what is best for me. Hence my unvarying happiness.”
“Where did you find God?”
“I found him where I left creatures.”
“Who are you anyway?”
“I am a king.”
“And where is your kingdom?”
“In my soul, where everything is in good order; where the passions obey reason, and reason obeys God.”
“How have you come to such a state of perfection?”
“By silence. I practice silence towards men, while I cultivate the habit of speaking with God. Conversing with God is the way I found and maintain my peace of soul.”
Union with God brought this poor beggar to the very heights of perfection. In his poverty he was richer than the mightiest monarch; in his sufferings, he was vastly happier than worldlings amid their worldly delights.
O the
supreme folly of those who resist the divine will! In God’s providence, no one
can escape hardship: “Who resisteth his will St.
Aug. Opera. Cap. 34 ML 40-966.
God wills
only our good; God loves us more than anybody else can or does love us. His
will is that no one should lose his soul, that everyone should save and
sanctify his soul: “Not willing that any should perish, but that all should
return to penance 2
Peter, 3:9. St.
Leo. Serm. de Nat. 2. cap. 1. Judith,
8:27.
God
surrounds us with his loving care lest we suffer eternal damnation: “O Lord,
thou hast crowned us as with a shield of thy good will
Let us
place ourselves unreservedly in his hands because he will not fail to have care
of us: “Casting all your care upon him, for he hath care of you 1
Peter, 5:7.
St.
Niles, abbot, used to say that our petitions should be, not that our wishes be
done, but that God’s holy will should be fulfilled in us and by us. When, therefore,
something adverse happens to us, let us accept it from his hands, not only
patiently, but even with gladness, as did the apostles “who went from the
presence of the council rejoicing, that they were accounted worthy to suffer
for the name of Jesus
If,
devout soul, it is your will to please God and live a life of serenity in this
world, unite yourself always and in all things to the divine will. Reflect that
all the sins of your past wicked life happened because you wandered from the
path of God’s will. For the future, embrace God’s good pleasure and say to him
in every happening: “Yea, Father, for so it hath seemed good in thy sight
How fortunate you, kind reader, if you too act thus! You will surely become a saint. Your life will be calm and peaceful; your death will be happy. At death all our hope of salvation will come from the testimony of our conscience as to whether or not we are dying resigned to God’s will. If during life we have embraced everything as coming from God’s hands, and if at death we embrace death in fulfillment of God’s holy will, we shall certainly save our souls and die the death of saints. Let us then abandon everything to God’s good pleasure, because being infinitely wise, he knows what is best for us; and being all-good and all-loving —having given his life for us—he wills what is best for us. Let us, as St. Basil counsels us, rest secure in the conviction that beyond the possibility of a doubt, God works to effect our welfare, infinitely better than we could ever hope to accomplish or desire it ourselves.
Let us now take up in a practical way the consideration of those matters in which we should unite ourselves to God’s will.
1. In external matters. In times of great heat, cold or rain; in times of famine, epidemics and similar occasions we should refrain from expressions like these: “What unbearable heat!” “What piercing cold!” “What a tragedy!” In these instances we should avoid expressions indicating opposition to God’s will. We should want things to be just as they are, because it is God who thus disposes them. An incident in point would be this one: Late one night St. Francis Borgia arrived unexpectedly at a Jesuit house, in a snowstorm. He knocked and knocked on the door, but all to no purpose because the community being asleep, no one heard him. When morning came all were embarrassed for the discomfort he had experienced by having had to spend the night in the open. The saint, however, said he had enjoyed the greatest consolation during those long hours of the night by imagining that he saw our Lord up in the sky dropping the snowflakes down upon him.
2. In personal matters. In matters that affect us personally, let us acquiesce in God’s will. For example, in hunger, thirst, poverty, desolation, loss of reputation, let us always say: “Do thou build up or tear down, O Lord, as seems good in thy sight. I am content. I wish only what thou dost wish.” Thus too, says Rodriguez, should we act when the devil proposes certain hypothetical cases to us in order to wrest a sinful consent from us, or at least to cause us to be interiorly disturbed. For example: “What would you say or what would you do if some one were to say or do such and such a thing to you?” Let us dismiss the temptation by saying: “By God’s grace, I would say or do what God would want me to say or do.” Thus we shall free ourselves from imperfection and harassment.
3. Let us not lament if we suffer from some natural defect of body or mind; from poor memory, slowness of understanding, little ability, lameness or general bad health. What claim have we, or what obligation is God under, to give us a more brilliant mind or a more robust body? Who is ever offered a gift and then lays down the conditions upon which he will accept it? Let us thank God for what, in his pure goodness, he has given us and let us be content too with the manner in which he has given it to us.
Who
knows? Perhaps if God had given us greater talent, better health, a more
personable appearance, we might have lost our souls! Great talent and knowledge
have caused many to be puffed up with the idea of their own importance and, in
their pride, they have despised others. How easily those who have these gifts
fall into grave danger to their salvation! How many on account of physical beauty
or robust health have plunged headlong into a life of debauchery! How many, on
the contrary, who, by reason of poverty, infirmity or physical deformity, have
become saints and have saved their souls, who, given health, wealth or physical
attractiveness had else lost their souls! Let us then be content with what God
has given us. “But one thing is necessary Luke,
10:42.
4. It is especially necessary that we be resigned in corporal infirmities. We should willingly embrace them in the manner and for the length of time that God wills. We ought to make use of the ordinary remedies in time of sickness— such is God’s will; but if they are not effective, let us unite ourselves to God’s will and this will be better for us than would be our restoration to health. Let us say: “Lord, I wish neither to be well nor to remain sick; I want only what thou wilt.” Certainly, it is more virtuous not to repine in times of painful illness; still and all, when our sufferings are excessive, it is not wrong to let our friends know what we are enduring, and also to ask God to free us from our sufferings. Let it be understood, however, that the sufferings here referred to are actually excessive. It often happens that some, on the occasion of a slight illness, or even a slight indisposition, want the whole world to stand still and sympathize with them in their illnesses.
But where
it is a case of real suffering, we have the example of our Lord, who, at the
approach of his bitter passion, made known his state of soul to his disciples,
saying: “My soul is sorrowful even unto death Ibid.
How childish the pretense of those who protest they wish for health not to escape suffering, but to serve our Lord better by being able to observe their Rule, to serve the community, go to church, receive Communion, do penance, study, work for souls in the confessional and pulpit! Devout soul, tell me, why do you desire to do these things? To please God? Why then search any further to please God when you are sure God does not wish these prayers, Communions, penances or studies, but he does wish that you suffer patiently this sickness he sends you? Unite then your sufferings to those of our Lord.
“But,” you say, “I do not want to be sick for then I am useless, a burden to my Order, to my monastery.” But if you are united to and resigned to God’s will, you will realize that your superiors are likewise resigned to the dispositions of divine providence, and that they recognize the fact that you are a burden, not through indolence, but by the will of God. Ah, how often these desires and these laments are born, not of the love of God, but of the love of self! How many of them are so many pretexts for fleeing the will of God! Do we want to please God? When we find ourselves confined to our sickbed, let us utter this one prayer: “Thy will be done.” Let us repeat it time and time again and it will please God more than all our mortifications and devotions. There is no better way to serve God than cheerfully to embrace his holy will.
St. John
of Avila once wrote to a sick priest: “My dear friend,—Do not weary yourself
planning what you would do if you were well, but be content to be sick for as
long as God wishes. If you are seeking to carry out God’s will, what difference
should it make to you whether you are sick or well St.
John Avil. Epist. 2.
Many times it will happen that proper medical attention or effective remedies will be lacking, or even that the doctor will not rightly diagnose our case. In such instances we must unite ourselves to the divine will which thus disposes of our physical health. The story is told of a client of St. Thomas of Canterbury, who being sick, went to the saint’s tomb to obtain a cure. He returned home cured. But then he thought to himself: “Suppose it would be better for my soul’s salvation if I remained sick, what point then is there in being well?” In this frame of mind he went back and asked the saint to intercede with God that he grant what would be best for his eternal salvation. His illness returned and he was perfectly content with the turn things had taken, being fully persuaded that God had thus disposed of him for his own good.
There is a similar account by Surio to the effect that a certain blind man obtained the restoration of his sight by praying to St. Bedasto, bishop. Thinking the matter over, he prayed again to his heavenly patron, but this time with the purpose that if the possession of his sight were not expedient for his soul, that his blindness should return. And that is exactly what happened—he was blind again. Therefore, in sickness it is better that we seek neither sickness nor health, but that we abandon ourselves to the will of God so that he may dispose of us as he wishes. However, if we decide to ask for health, let us do so at least always resigned and with the proviso that our bodily health may be conducive to the health of our soul. Otherwise our prayer will be defective and will remain unheard because our Lord does not answer prayers made without resignation to his holy will.
Sickness is the acid test of spirituality, because it discloses whether our virtue is real or sham. If the soul is not agitated, does not break out in lamentations, is not feverishly restless in seeking a cure, but instead is submissive to the doctors and to superiors, is serene and tranquil, completely resigned to God’s will, it is a sign that that soul is well-grounded in virtue.
What of the whiner who complains of lack of attention? That his sufferings are beyond endurance? That the doctor does not know his business? What of the faint-hearted soul who laments that the hand of God is too heavy upon him?
This story by St. Bonaventure in his “Life of St. Francis” is in point: On a certain occasion when the saint was suffering extraordinary physical pain, one of his religious meaning to sympathize with him, said in his simplicity: “My Father, pray God that he treat you a little more gently, for his hand seems heavy upon you just now.” Hearing this, St. Francis strongly resented the unhappy remark of his well-meaning brother, saying: “My good brother, did I not know that what you have just said was spoken in all simplicity, without realizing the implication of your words, I should never see you again because of your rashness in passing judgment on the dispositions of divine providence.” Whereupon, weak and wasted as he was by his illness, he got out of bed, knelt down, kissed the floor and prayed thus: “Lord, I thank thee for the sufferings thou art sending me. Send me more, if it be thy good pleasure. My pleasure is that you afflict me and spare me not, for the fulfillment of thy holy will is the greatest consolation of my life.”
We ought to view in the light of God’s holy will, the loss of persons who are helpful to us in a spiritual or material way. Pious souls often fail in this respect by not being resigned to the dispositions of God’s holy will. Our sanctification comes fundamentally and essentially from God, not from spiritual directors. When God sends us a spiritual director, he wishes us to use him for our spiritual profit; but if he takes him away, he wants us to remain calm and unperturbed and to increase our confidence in his goodness by saying to him: “Lord, thou hast given me this help and now thou dost take it away. Blessed be thy holy will! I beg thee, teach me what I must do to serve thee.”
In this
manner too, we should receive whatever other crosses God sends us. “But,” you
reply, “these sufferings are really punishments.” The answer to that remark is:
Are not the punishments God sends us in this life also graces and benefits? Our
offenses against God must be atoned for somehow, either in this life or in the
next. Hence we should all make St. Augustine’s prayer our own: “Lord, here cut,
here burn and spare me not, but spare me in eternity!” Let us say with Job: “Let
this be my comfort, that afflicting me with sorrow, he spare not Job,
6:10. 1
Kings, 3:18.
The time of spiritual desolation is also a time for being resigned. When a soul begins to cultivate the spiritual life, God usually showers his consolations upon her to wean her away from the world; but when he sees her making solid progress, he withdraws his hand to test her and to see if she will love and serve him without the reward of sensible consolations. “In this life,” as St. Teresa used to say, “our lot is not to enjoy God, but to do his holy will.” And again, “Love of God does not consist in experiencing his tendernesses, but in serving him with resolution and humility.” And in yet another place, “God’s true lovers are discovered in times of aridity and temptation.”
Let the
soul thank God when she experiences his loving endearments, but let her not
repine when she finds herself left in desolation. It is important to lay great
stress on this point, because some souls, beginners in the spiritual life,
finding themselves in spiritual aridity, think God has abandoned them, or that
the spiritual life is not for them; thus they give up the practice of prayer
and lose what they have previously gained. The time of aridity is the best time
to practice resignation to God’s holy will. I do not say you will feel no pain
in seeing yourself deprived of the sensible presence of God; it is impossible
for the soul not to feel it and lament over it, when even our Lord cried out on
the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me
The saints have all experienced desolations and abandonment of soul. “How impervious to things spiritual, my heart!” cries a St. Bernard. “No savor in pious reading, no pleasure in meditation nor in prayer!” For the most part it has been the common lot of the saints to encounter aridities; sensible consolations were the exceptions. Such things are rare occurrences granted to untried souls so that they may not halt on the road to sanctity; the real delights and happiness that will constitute their reward are reserved for heaven. This earth is a place of merit which is acquired by suffering; heaven is a place of reward and happiness. Hence, in this life the saints neither desired nor sought the joys of sensible fervor, but rather the fervor of the spirit toughened in the crucible of suffering. “O how much better it is,” says St. John of Avila, “to endure aridity and temptation by God’s will than to be raised to the heights of contemplation without God’s will!”
But you say you would gladly endure desolation if you were certain that it comes from God, but you are tortured by the anxiety that your desolation comes by your own fault and is a punishment for your tepidity. Very well, let us suppose you are right; then get rid of your tepidity and exercise more diligence in the affairs of your soul. But because you are possibly experiencing spiritual darkness, are you going to get all wrought up, give up prayer, and thus make things twice as bad as they are?
Let us assume that this aridity is a punishment for your tepidity. Was it not God who sent it? Accept your desolation, as your just desserts and unite yourself to God’s holy will. Did you not say that you merited hell? And now you are complaining? Perhaps you think God should send you consolations! Away with such ideas and be patient under God’s hand. Take up your prayers again and continue to walk in the way you have entered upon; for the future, fear lest such laments come from too little humility and too little resignation to the will of God. Therefore be resigned and say: “Lord, I accept this punishment from thy hands, and I accept it for as long as it pleases thee; if it be thy will that I should be thus afflicted for all eternity, I am satisfied.” Such a prayer, though hard to make, will be far more advantageous to you than the sweetest sensible consolations.
It is
well to remember, however, that aridity is not always a chastisement; at times
it is a disposition of divine providence for our greater spiritual profit and
to keep us humble. Lest St. Paul become vain on account of the spiritual gifts
he had received, the Lord permitted him to be tempted to impurity: “And lest
the greatness of the revelations should exalt me, there was given me a sting of
my flesh, an angel of Satan to buffet me
Prayer made
amid sensible devotion is not much of an achievement: “There is a friend, a
companion at the table, and he will not abide in the day of distress Eccli.
6:10.
Palladius, the author of the “Lives of the Fathers of the Desert,” experiencing great disgust in prayer, went seeking advice from the abbot Macarius. The saintly abbot gave him this counsel: “When you are tempted in times of dryness to give up praying because you seem to be wasting your time, say: ‘Since I cannot pray, I will be satisfied just to remain on watch here in my cell for the love of Jesus Christ!’ “Devout soul, you do the same when you are tempted to give up prayer just because you seem to be getting nowhere. Say: “I am going to stay here just to please God.” St. Francis de Sales used to say that if we do nothing else but banish distractions and temptations in our prayers, the prayer is well made. Tauler states that persevering prayer in time of dryness will receive greater grace than prayer made amid great sensible devotion.
Rodriguez cites the case of a person who persevered forty years in prayer despite aridity, and experienced great spiritual strength as a result of it; on occasion, when through aridity he would omit meditation he felt spiritually weak and incapable of good deeds. St. Bonaventure and Gerson both say that persons who do not experience the recollection they would like to have in their meditations, often serve God better than they would do if they did have it; the reason is that lack of recollection keeps them more diligent and humble; otherwise they would become puffed up with spiritual pride and grow tepid, vainly believing they had reached the summit of sanctity.
What has
been said of dryness holds true of temptations also. Certainly we should
strive to avoid temptations; but if God wishes that we be tempted against
faith, purity, or any other virtue, we should not give in to discouraging
lamentations, but submit ourselves with resignation to God’s holy will. St.
Paul asked to be freed from temptations to impurity and our Lord answered him,
saying: “My grace is sufficient for thee
So should we act when we find ourselves victims of unrelenting temptations and God seemingly deaf to our prayers. Let us then say: “Lord, do with me, let happen to me what thou wilt; thy grace is sufficient for me. Only never let me lose this grace.” Consent to temptation, not temptation of itself, can make us lose the grace of God. Temptation resisted keeps us humble, brings us greater merit, makes us have frequent recourse to God, thus preserving us from offending him and unites us more closely to him in the bonds of his holy love.
Finally, we should be united to God’s will in regard to the time and manner of our death. One day St. Gertrude, while climbing up a small hill, lost her footing and fell into a ravine below. After her companions had come to her assistance, they asked her if while falling she had any fear of dying without the sacraments. “I earnestly hope and desire to have the benefit of the sacraments when death is at hand; still, to my way of thinking, the will of God is more important. I believe that the best disposition I could have to die a happy death would be to submit myself to whatever God would wish in my regard. For this reason I desire whatever kind of death God will be pleased to send me.”
In his
“Dialogues”, St. Gregory St.
Greg. Dial. Bk. 3, chap. 37.
We should
likewise unite ourselves to God’s will when the moment of death is near. What
else is this earth but a prison where we suffer and where we are in constant
danger of losing God? Hence David prayed: “Bring my soul out of prison
St. John
of Avila was convinced that every right-minded person should desire death on
account of living in peril of losing divine grace. What can be more pleasant or
desirable than by dying a good death, to have the assurance of no longer being
able to lose the grace of God? Perhaps you will answer that you have as yet
done nothing to deserve this reward. If it were God’s will that your life
should end now, what would you be doing, living on here against his will? Who
knows, you might fall into sin and be lost! Even if you escaped mortal sin, you
could not live free from all sin. “Why are we so tenacious of life,” exclaims
St. Bernard, “when the longer we live, the more we sin St.
Bernard, Med. chap. 8.
Moreover,
the person who has little desire for heaven shows he has little love for God.
The true lover desires to be with his beloved. We cannot see God while we
remain here on earth; hence the saints have yearned for death so that they
might go and behold their beloved Lord, face to face. “Oh, that I might die and
behold thy beautiful face!” sighed St. Augustine. And St. Paul: “Having a
desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ
A hunter one day heard the voice of a man singing most sweetly in the forest. Following the sound, he came upon a leper horribly disfigured by the ravages of his disease. Addressing him he said: “How can you sing when you are so terribly afflicted and your death is so near at hand?” And the leper: “Friend, my poor body is a crumbling wall and it is the only thing that separates me from my God. When it falls I shall go forth to God. Time for me is indeed fast running out, so every day I show my happiness by lifting my voice in song.”
Lastly,
we should unite ourselves to the will of God as regards our degree of
grace and glory. True, we should esteem the things that make for the glory of
God, but we should show the greatest esteem for those that concern the will of
God. We should desire to love God more than the seraphs, but not to a degree
higher than God has destined for us. St. John of Avila St.
John Avila. Audi fil. c. 13.
This means, as Rodriguez explains it, we should be diligent in striving to become perfect, so that tepidity and laziness may not serve as excuses for some to say: “God must help me; I can do only so much for myself.” Nevertheless, when we do fall into some fault, we should not lose our peace of soul and union with the will of God, which permits our fall; nor should we lose our courage. Let us rise at once from this fall, penitently humbling ourselves and by seeking greater help from God, let us continue to march resolutely on the highway of the spiritual life. Likewise, we may well desire to be among the seraphs in heaven, not for our own glory, but for God’s, and to love him more; still we should be resigned to his will and be content with that degree of glory which in his mercy he has set for us.
It would be a serious defect to desire the gifts of supernatural prayer—specifically, ecstasies, visions and revelations. The masters of the spiritual life say that souls thus favored by God, should ask him to take them away so that they may love him out of pure faith—a way of greater security. Many have come to perfection without these supernatural gifts; the only virtues worth-while are those that draw the soul to holiness of life, namely, the virtue of uniformity with God’s holy will. If God does not wish to raise us to the heights of perfection and glory, let us unite ourselves in all things to his holy will, asking him in his mercy, to grant us our soul’s salvation. If we act in this manner, the reward will not be slight which we shall receive from the hands of God who loves above all others, souls resigned to his holy will.
Finally we
should consider the events which are happening to us now and which will happen
to us in the future, as coming from the hands of God. Everything we do should
be directed to this one end: to do the will of God and to do it solely for the
reason that God wills it. To walk more securely on this road we must depend on
the guidance of our superiors in external matters, and on our directors in
internal matters, to learn from them God’s will in our regard, having great
faith in the words of our Lord: “He that heareth you, heareth me Luke,
10:16.
Above all, let us bend all our energies to serve God in the way he wishes. This remark is made so that we may avoid the mistake of him who wastes his time in idle day-dreaming. Such a one says, “If I were to become a hermit, I would become a saint” or “If I were to enter a monastery, I would practice penance” or “If I were to go away from here, leaving friends and companions, I would devote long hours to prayer.” If, If, If—all these if’s! In the meantime such a person goes from bad to worse. These idle fancies are often temptations of the devil, because they are not in accord with God’s will. Hence we should dismiss them summarily and rouse ourselves to serve God only in that way which he has marked out for us. Doing his holy will, we shall certainly become holy in those surroundings in which he has placed us.
Let us
will always and ever only what God wills; for so doing, he will press us to his
heart. To this end let us familiarize ourselves with certain texts of sacred
scripture that invite us to unite ourselves constantly with the divine will: “Lord,
what wilt thou have me do Acts,
9:16.
If some
particularly crashing misfortune comes upon us, for example, the death of a
relative, loss of goods, let us say: “Yea, Father, for so it hath seemed
good in thy sight
May the divine will be loved and praised! May the Immaculate Virgin be also praised!