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.

And here is why that “uniformity of will” is worth pursuing:

If souls resigned to God’s will are humiliated, says Salvian, “they want to be humiliated; if they are poor, they want to be poor; in short, whatever happens is acceptable to them, hence they are truly at peace in this life. In cold and heat, in rain and wind, the soul united to God says: “I want it to be warm, to be cold, windy, to rain, because God wills it.”

This is the beautiful freedom of the sons of God, and it is worth vastly more than all the rank and distinction of blood and birth, more than all the kingdoms in the world.

This is the abiding peace which, in the experience of the saints, “surpasseth all understanding.” (Phil. 4:7). It surpasses all pleasures rising from gratification of the senses, from social gatherings, banquets and other worldly amusements; vain and deceiving as they are, they captivate the senses for the time being, but bring no lasting contentment; rather they afflict man in the depth of his soul where alone true peace can reside.

Solomon, who tasted to satiety all the pleasures of the world and found them bitter, voiced his disillusionment thus: “But this also is vanity and vexation of spirit.” (Eccles. 4:16). “A fool,” says the Holy Spirit, “is changed as the moon; but a holy man continueth in wisdom as the sun.” (Eccus. 27:12). The fool, that is, the sinner, is as changeable as the moon, which today waxes and tomorrow wanes; today he laughs, tomorrow he cries; today he is meek as a lamb, tomorrow cross as a bear. Why? **Because his peace of mind depends on the prosperity or the adversity he meets; he changes with the changes in the things that happened to him. **

The just man is like the sun, constant in its serenity, no matter what betides him. **His calmness of soul is founded on his union with the will of God; hence he enjoys unruffled peace. **

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.