Delighting in God's will

It is such a gift to be able to reflect upon the will of God at a time of night when all the children are tucked in and the swooshing of the dishwasher is the only sound in the house. Last year, I had the opportunity to read Uniformity With God's Will by St. Alphonsus de Liguori. It is so calming to contemplate the will of God in everything. We go through life making decisions and many times the outcome is not what we expect. God's will in our lives brings us to venture outside of where we are comfortable and to become stronger in our faith than we ever thought we could be. It is our conformity with God's will that is the key to great joy in our lives.

"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."

"Furthurmore, 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 while 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."

And that is why the man is a saint. Pray for us, St. Alphonsus de Liguori, that we might embrace God's will with your same delight.