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St. Alphonsus on Uniformity with God's Will

9/22/24

I stumbled upon this brief text at church today, written by the 18th century Italian St. Alphonsus de Liguori. His distinction between conformity with God’s will and uniformity is helpfully described in the definitions below. And in the illustration that follows he excellently explains why it matters—what is to be gained through the pursuit of uniformity. Conformity is bending our will to the will of God. Uniformity is making one will of God’s will and ours, so that we will only what God wills; that God’s will alone is our will.

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1/6/22 →

Since the beginning of recorded history, empires and civilizations have risen and fallen; sometimes they would seem to have completely disappeared. It would probably be truer to say that the races who have developed the varying civilizations have disappeared, but that their gifts to the world have survived, not always in the form in which they gave them, but in the form in which the world has needed them.

Dorothy Mills, on the fall of Rome in the introduction to her Book of the Middle Ages.