I have chosen you for the Movement of my priests: you must live for this: you must pray, work, suffer; you must become holy. This is the wonderful purpose, O son, that I am giving to your life!
Blue Book #11c
If we work to satisfy ourselves, so that we have a yardstick to measure our productivity (today I wrote one hundred letters and yesterday ninety-eight, and tomorrow, I’ll write one hundred and two) and be useful to the church, well, brother, we won’t! And not to God either.
Grace in Every Season (January 23)
Suffering in This Life, is Not Optional
Suffering vs. sacrifice… These two words are often so entangled in our Catholic mindset, that they’ve become one and the same for many. But we know the Lord tells us that obedience is better than sacrifice. We also know that both can be painful, but they are not both equally meritorious.
Obedience requires dying to our own self will and as we all know that can be excruciating, but leads to holiness. Sacrifice however, although also painful, retains a bit of our own will. It’s ‘here Lord, this is what I’m going to do for you today’… instead of, ‘here I’m am Lord, I’ve come to do your will’.
In Conformity to the Will of God by St. Alphonsus Ligouri we read. “ — 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.” The man who follows his own will independently of God’s, is guilty of a kind of idolatry. Instead of adoring God’s will, he, in a certain sense, adores his own.”