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

New Advent

Preparing for the season of Advent today, I came across a recommendation for approaching the daily readings. This is very helpful for me because I meditate on the readings every day, but even if you only focus on the Sunday readings it is still beneficial for entering into the readings more deeply.

The Two Parts of Advent 

(from Creighton University's Online Ministries)

Part 1: up until December 16
While most liturgical seasons have the gospel as their main focus, during the first weeks of Advent, the Church gives us daily readings from the prophet Isaiah.  With the eyes of faith, these foretell the coming of the Messiah. Rather than a continuous gospel narrative familiar to us for most of the year, this part of Advent offers a wide variety of gospel readings that support the first reading of the day. 

After almost two weeks of Isaiah readings, we hear the foretelling of a Messiah from other prophets from the Hebrew scriptures - in Sirach, Numbers, Zephaniah and returning to Isaiah. With each passing week, the prophets speak more clearly of the coming of a Savior. 

So, in reading the first reading, for the first part of Advent, we listen to the anticipation, expectation, hope and promise.  In listening to the second reading, we listen for the fulfillment or connection with the gospel.

Part 2: December 17 - 24

In these last eight days before Christmas, the relationship between the readings changes.  Now the gospel brings us to our celebration of Christmas.  The gospels are taken from the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke. 

Each of these days, the first reading is taken from the Hebrew scriptures, and chosen to match the gospel.  In many cases we can imagine Matthew or Luke having the first reading open on their desks while they wrote the gospel.

So, we can read the gospel first and then read the first reading.  The sense of anticipation and fulfillment builds as we read the story of the preparation for Jesus' first coming into this world for us.

Interior Desert

Desert spirituality has been very important in my spiritual life, and it is something that has been coming up consistently over the past two weeks. And what does this look like?

I wish!

The desert is a place of solitude, which makes it a place of encounter with 1) self, 2) God, and 3) evil.

It is a place that has loomed large in the spiritualities of monasticism and especially the Christian East, but there are many levels of interpretation and understanding the desert.

Fuge, tace, quiesce (be alone, be silent, be still)

In the Bible, the desert is a place where Israel is courted and betrothed to God, but also a place of temptations and trials. It becomes a battleground of the eschatological battle of Christ against the powers of the world. Defeating Satan means weakening him by spreading the kingdom of God and supporting other Christians through prayer. In the desert, the means to fight are acquired: mortification and penance used systematically for the practice of virtue keep the individual focused on the "narrow gate" of the Gospel, the asceticism (askesis, "exercise") essential for seeking union with God. By fasting and penance, it is also shown that man "shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Mt 4:4, Deut 8:3; cf. Vita Consecrata 7b).

The desert is a place to flee to "live alone for God alone," a place of radical detachment, an exhortation to the Church and contemporaries never to lose sight of the supreme vocation: to be always with the Lord (cf. Vita Consecrata 7b). The first encounter is with self: the discovery of how far one is from God and the difficulty of return. It thus becomes a place of spiritual combat, struggle against the passions and the devil that oppose union with God, against the evil in the world that begins in the individual heart. True knowledge of the human heart is attained in the desert. Its weaknesses and foibles are revealed and it is strengthened for spiritual battles. Herein lies the importance of controlling "thoughts" (custodia sensuum), understanding virtue and vice, and honing weapons: continuous prayer, nourishment by Scripture, humility, and mortification.

The importance of purifying the heart and the senses from passions (apatheia, "equanimity") is paramount: "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God" (Mt 5:8).

In addition to this negative interpretation, there is also a positive one. The desert is a place of God's providence, where Elijah was nourished (1 Kings 19:7) and a place prepared for God's people (Exodus, cf. Rev 12:6). In Thomas Merton's book Thoughts in Solitude, he described the desert as a place dear to God precisely because it is useless to man, where there is nothing attractive and nothing to be exploited; it was made to be nothing but itself, the perfect place for man who seeks to be nothing but himself.

This was my primary experience of "interior desert" over the past week. It is a place of profound silence and imperturbable solitude, a place of refreshment where food and water are forsaken for nourishment on God alone. It has been a place of rest with God, but also pilgrimage: no one who takes a long look at himself in the presence of God can be satisfied. The pilgrimage that begins and ends in the world must at some point pass through the dry wasteland where there is nothing to depend on but God and no one to blame but the self, and thus there is purgation. But beyond every desert is a promised land, beyond the teaching is the goal of the lesson, and beyond the pilgrimage is rest. 

Novice Life: Bunker Hill

This week was one of the last warm days of the season and we had the afternoon off from conferences and readings. We decided to hike to the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown. None of us had ever been before and we enjoyed the climb up 296 steps to the top of the monument.

It was a great day to get out, enjoy the weather, and have some time off to hang out. 

The Year of Consecrated Life

Today is the official beginning of the Year of Consecrated Life, which extends until the World Day of Consecrated Life on the Presentation of the Lord (2 February 2016). Just yesterday I finished reading Vita Consecrata, Saint John Paul II's post-synodal exhortation on religious and consecrated life promulgated in 1996.

The main image used in the exhortation is the Transfiguration: that in its contemplative aspect, all consecrated life is a participation in the Transfiguration and likewise a sign of future glory.


The evangelical basis of consecrated life is to be sought in the special relationship which Jesus, in his earthly life, established with some of his disciples. He called them not only to welcome the Kingdom of God into their own lives, but also to put their lives at its service, leaving everything behind and closely imitating his own way of life.

This mystery is constantly relived by the Church... Like the three chosen disciples, the Church contemplates the transfigured face of Christ in order to be confirmed in faith and to avoid being dismayed at his disfigured face on the Cross. All are equally called to follow Christ, to discover in him the ultimate meaning of their lives… but those who are called to the consecrated life have a special experience of the light which shines forth from the Incarnate Word. For the profession of the evangelical counsels makes them a kind of sign and prophetic statement for the community of the brethren and for the world; consequently they can echo in a particular way the ecstatic words spoken by Peter: "Lord, it is well that we are here" (Mt 17:4). These words eloquently express the radical nature of the vocation to the consecrated life: how good it is for us to be with you, to devote ourselves to you, to make you the one focus of our lives! 

The three disciples caught up in ecstasy hear the Father's call to listen to Christ, to place all their trust in him, to make him the centre of their lives. The words from on high give new depth to the invitation by which Jesus himself, at the beginning of his public life, called them to follow him, to leave their ordinary lives behind and to enter into a close relationship to him. It is precisely this special grace of intimacy which, in the consecrated life, makes possible and even demands the total gift of self in the profession of the evangelical counsels. The counsels, more than a simple renunciation, are a specific acceptance of the mystery of Christ, lived within the Church.

Vita Consecrata 14, 15, 16

Accessed from iconreader.wordpress.com

For more information on the Year of Consecrated Life, there are USCCB resources here and Vatican  resources here.

Saint Maximus the Confessor on Virtues

I have been reading some writings of Saint Maximus the Confessor recently, including something that speaks about the theological virtues. I especially liked the last part, in which he says it is absurd to try to separate God's love from God's essence. This reminded me of a retreat conference on prayer two years ago that I have never forgotten: remember that the goal of the spiritual life is God, not the consolations of God.



Love is a holy state of the soul, disposing it to value knowledge of God above all created things.

We cannot attain lasting possession of such love while we are still attached to anything worldly.

Dispassion engenders love, hope in God engenders dispassion, and patience and forbearance engender hope in God.

These in turn are the product of complete self-control, which itself springs from fear of God. Fear of God is the result of faith in God.

If you have faith in the Lord you will fear punishment, and this fear will lead you to control the passions.

Once you control the passions you will accept affliction patiently, and through such acceptance you will acquire hope in God.

Hope in God separates the intellect (nous) from every worldly attachment, and when the intellect is detached in this way it will acquire love for God.

The person who loves God values knowledge of God more than anything created by God, and pursues such knowledge ardently and ceaselessly.

If everything that exists was made by God and for God, and God is superior to the things made by Him, he who abandons what is superior and devotes himself to what is inferior shows that he values things made by God more than God Himself.

When your intellect is concentrated on the love of God you will pay little attention to visible things and will regard even your own body as something alien.

Since the soul is more noble than the body and God incom­parably more noble than the world created by Him, he who values the body more than the soul and the world created by God more than the Creator Himself is simply a worshipper of idols.

If you distract your intellect from its love for God and concentrate it, not on God, but on some sensible object, you thereby show that you value the body more than the soul and the things made by God more than God Himself.

Since the light of spiritual knowledge is the intellect’s life, and since this light is engendered by love for God, it is rightly said that nothing is greater than divine love (cf. 1 Cor. 13:13).

When in the intensity of its love for God the intellect goes out of itself, then it has no sense of itself or of any created thing.

For when it is illumined by the infinite light of God, it becomes insensible to everything made by Him, just as the eye becomes insensible to the stars when the sun rises.

Maximus the Confessor (580-662): Four Hundred Texts on Love 1-10

Asceticism and Mysticism: Origen on the Kingdom of God

Asceticism and mysticism are essential elements of every spirituality, yet these words are widely misunderstood and therefore feared by many. Among Roman Catholics in particular, they are thought of as extremely unusual, confined to either the eccentric or the elite.

But they are simply the two facets of the spiritual life: asceticism is striving to reach the perfection attainable by human nature (human virtue), while mysticism is receiving the gift of what is beyond human nature (divine virtue).

This is illustrated by the second reading of the Office for the Solemnity of Christ the King, which addresses both the unmerited gift of the kingdom of God in us (the indwelling of the Trinity conferred by sacraments and actual graces) and the impetus for human nature to be completely subjected to it (by mortification and discipline).  

Second reading
From a notebook On Prayer by Origen, priest

Your kingdom come

The kingdom of God, in the words of our Lord and Savior, does not come for all to see; nor shall they say: Behold, here it is, or behold, there it is, but the kingdom of God is within us, for the word of God is very near, in our mouth and in our heart. Thus it is clear that he who prays for the coming of God’s kingdom prays rightly to have it within himself, that there it may grow and bear fruit and become perfect. For God reigns in each of his holy ones. Anyone who is holy obeys the spiritual laws of God, who dwells in him as in a well-ordered city. The Father is present in the perfect soul, and with him Christ reigns, according to the words: We shall come to him and make our home with him.

Thus the kingdom of God within us, as we continue to make progress, will reach its highest point when the Apostle’s words are fulfilled, and Christ, having subjected all his enemies to himself, will hand over his kingdom to God the Father, that God may be all in all. Therefore, let us pray unceasingly with that disposition of soul which the Word may make divine, saying to our Father who is in heaven: Hallowed by thy name; thy kingdom come.

Note this too about the kingdom of God. It is not a sharing of justice with iniquity, nor a society of light with darkness, nor a meeting of Christ with Belial. The kingdom of God cannot exist alongside the reign of sin.

Therefore, if we wish God to reign in us, in no way should sin reign in our mortal body; rather we should mortify our members which are upon the earth and bear fruit in the Spirit. There should be in us a kind of spiritual paradise where God may walk and be our sole ruler with his Christ. In us the Lord will sit at the right hand of that spiritual power which we wish to receive. And he will sit there until all his enemies who are within us become his footstool, and every principality, power and virtue in us is cast out.

All this can happen in each one of us, and the last enemy, death, can be destroyed; then Christ will say in us: O death, where is your sting? O hell, where is your victory? And so, what is corruptible in us must be clothed in holiness and incorruptibility; and what is mortal must be clothed, now that death has been conquered, in the Father’s immortality. Then God will reign in us, and we shall enjoy even now the blessings of rebirth and resurrection. 

The Counsels in Daily Life

This week, the evangelical counsels have been prominent in both our novitiate conferences and in the Gospel readings. The Wednesday Gospel, for example, is one in which the counsels really stood out to me even though they are hidden in the parable: the servants received an extravagant gift (one talent was about fifteen years' wages) that is unmerited (chastity), given to them in trust for another (poverty) to use according to the master's will (obedience).

In meditating on this, what came up was living these counsels in daily life. Not having taken public vows can seem to make living the counsels a lofty goal in the future; as a novice I am obliged to live the counsels now in a 'hidden' way, but my daily life (custody of the senses, material dependence on others, fulfilling my obligations and obeying superiors willingly) is that of religious life, of living the counsels in the ordinary actions of everyday life.

I also reflected on responsibility, that those faithful in small matters are to be entrusted with greater matters. In the human mind, responsibility is something to be earned, something given after trustworthiness has been proven. But what I had from this Gospel was a sense of divine pedagogy: we do not prove ourselves to God in order to earn gifts but rather he trains us for greater responsibilities through lesser ones. It is for our own sake, for our own growth that some things are withheld and others allowed, that growing pains occur before new doors are opened and we are given our food in the proper season.