Saint Alphonsus on Uniformity with God's Will

During my spiritual reading this weekend, I was looking for material on conformity to the will of God, something that is becoming a focus for me in my retreat preparation. I found something by Saint Alphonsus that contrasts conformity of will with uniformity of will, the goal he holds as crucial in the spiritual life. He distinguishes joining the will to God and actually appropriating the will of God, and that the latter is more pleasing.

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).

In return the Lord calls him a vessel of election and an apostle of the gentiles: “This man is to me a vessel of election, to carry my name before the gentiles”.

Absolutely true – because he who gives his will to God, gives him everything. He who gives his goods in alms, his blood in scourgings, his food in fasting, gives God what he has. But he who gives God his will, gives himself, gives is.

everything he

Such a one can say: “Though I am poor, Lord, I give thee all I possess; but when I say I give thee my will, I have nothing left to give thee.” This is just what God does require of us: “My son, give me thy heart” (Prov. 23:26).

St. Augustine’s comment is: “There is nothing more pleasing we can offer God than to say to him: ‘Possess thyself of us’”.

We cannot offer God anything more pleasing than to say: Take us, Lord, we give thee our entire will. Only let us know thy will and we will carry it out.

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 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” (Habakkuk 10:5-7). Thou hast refused the victims offered thee by man; thou dost will that I sacrifice my body to thee. Behold me ready to do thy will.

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” (John 6:38).

He spoke in the same strain in the garden when he went forth to meet his enemies who had come to seize him and to lead him to death: “But that the world may know that I love the Father: and as the Father hath given me commandment, so do I; arise and let us go hence” (John 14:31).

Furthermore, he said he would recognize as his brother, him who would do his will: “Whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother” (Matthew 12:50).

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.”

“Those who give themselves to prayer,” says St. Teresa, “should concentrate solely on this: the conformity of their wills with the divine will. They should be convinced that this constitutes their highest perfection. The more fully they practice this, the greater the gifts they will receive from God, and the greater the progress they will make in the interior life.”

A certain Dominican nun was vouchsafed a vision of heaven one day. She recognized there some persons she had known during their mortal life on earth.

It was told her these souls were raised to the sublime heights of the seraphs on account of the uniformity of their wills with that of God’s during their lifetime here on earth.

Blessed Henry Suso, mentioned above, said of himself: “I would rather be the vilest worm on earth by God’s will, than be a seraph by my own.”

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” (Matthew 6:10).

Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787): Uniformity with God’s will

Eusebius of Caeserea: God's Presence in the Wilderness

Last week I shared my preparation for Advent: prayer that centered on a spirituality of the desert, an echo of the beginning of the Gospel of Mark we heard today. This theme was also present in the Office of Readings in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah and a commentary by Eusebius, bishop of Ceaserea.

My prayer with the Office brought me back to God in the wilderness, my "interior desert." This means tuning out distraction and seeking solitude, leaving everything of the former life to start again, but above all it means coming to a place of brokenness and need, the place where I cannot deny my insufficiency and become totally dependent on God and trust that he will transfigure my brokenness into a refuge where my trust in him is deepened.



The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God. The prophecy makes clear that it is to be fulfilled, not in Jerusalem but in the wilderness: it is there that the glory of the Lord is to appear, and God’s salvation is to be made known to all mankind.

It was in the wilderness that God’s saving presence was proclaimed by John the Baptist, and there that God’s salvation was seen. The words of this prophecy were fulfilled when Christ and his glory were made manifest to all: after his baptism the heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove rested on him, and the Father’s voice was heard, bearing witness to the Son: This is my beloved Son, listen to him. 

(Full text of the commentary in the Office here).

Hugh of Dorche: Repentance and the Purgative Way

John the Baptist appeared in the desert proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. People of the whole Judean countryside and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins.

Mark 1:3-4

Carthusian emblem: the Cross stands while the world is turned

Although this purgative way seems puerile to some, especially in regard to the subsequent two ways, nevertheless unless the mind passes through this way, being careful and attentive in its approach to engaging in divine matters, it will never in the present life be able to ascend, in practice, unto a knowledge of divine matters or of God; nor will it be able to ascend unto the fervor of unitive love, nor will it be able to be separated from those lower objects that consume those who possess them.

Therefore, the soul ought to humble itself in such a way that, first, it recalls its sins in some private and very hidden place  (especially in the secret silence of the night).

Let the soul recall its greater sins succinctly, lest the devil expose it to delighting in that thing for which it was supposed to obtain medicine.

Raising its face toward Heaven, let it, as best it can, enumerate before God (as if speaking to Him) its greater sins (up to ten or twelve); and, in enumerating, let the soul sigh, exalting God in every respect and disparaging itself in every respect, and saying as best it can:

“Lord Jesus Christ,” (or phrasing it in whatever manner it prefers) “I am the most worthless, most miserable sinner, more wretched and more abominable than all others. I have offended against Your majesty and mercy by means of so many and so grave wrongdoings that I am unable to count them – even as the sands of the seashore, because of their multitude, cannot be counted.”

And let the soul sigh and groan as effectively as it can. For just as a file brings it about, in the case of a piece of iron, that with each single rubbing some rust is removed, so each sigh and groan removes some of the rust of sin – the rust which remains even after the outpouring of grace.

And in this way the soul, purifying itself more and more, is elevated more and more by divine assistance – elevated unto perceiving things that reason does not investigate and that intellect does not behold.

Hugh of Balma (13th-14th Century): Mystical Theology, Via Purgativa, 3