The following is extracted from The Spiritual Life by Tanqeuery, Chapter V, the General Means of Perfection, III.
Conformity to the Divine Will
Conformity to the divine will unites us intimately and directly to Him Who is the source of all perfection. In fact, it subordinates and unites our will to God, thus placing our ruling faculty at the service of the Sovereign Master.
It may be said that our degree of perfection corresponds to the extent to which we conform to the will of God.
By conformity to the divine will we understand the absolute and loving submission of our will to that of God, whether it be His “signified will” or by His will of “good pleasure.”
In practice, conformity to God’s will means doing God's will and submitting to God's will.
God's will manifests itself to us under a twofold aspect.
I. The signified will of God proclaims in clear terms what we must do in virtue of His commandments or His counsels.
“Christian doctrine clearly proposes unto us the truths which God wills that we should believe, the goods He will have us hope for, the pains He will have us dread, what He -will have us love, the commandments He will have us observe and the counsels He desires us to follow. And this is called God’s signified will, because He has signified and made manifest unto us that it is His will and intention that all this should be believed, hoped for, feared, loved and practiced.” - St. Francis de Sales
This will of God, then, according to St. Fracis includes four things: the commandments of God and of the Church, the counsels, the inspirations of grace, and, for Religious, the Constitutions and the Rules.
Sanctification, then, is impossible without the observance of the commandments and the fulfilment of the duties of our state.
To neglect them under the pretext of performing works of supererogation is a dangerous illusion, a veritable aberration, for it is evident that commands take precedence over counsels.
Obedience to God’s signified will is the normal way of attaining perfection.
II. The good pleasure of God is manifested by providential events to which we must submit.
This is the ruling principle that governs all things with wisdom, directing the course of events so as to make them work together unto His glory and the salvation of men, and made known to us by the providential events that take place in or about us.
This conformity consists in submitting oneself to all providential events willed or allowed by God for our own greater good, and chiefly for our sanctification.
It rests upon this basis: that nothing happens without God’s order or permission, and that God, being infinite Perfection and infinite, Goodness, cannot will or permit anything but for the good of the souls He has created, although this is not always apparent to our eyes.
In order to understand this teaching we must take the point of view of faith and of eternity, of the glory of God and the salvation of men. If we look only at the present life and its earthly happiness, we cannot understand the designs of God, Who has willed that we undergo trials here below in order to reward us in Heaven. All things are subordinated to this end. Present evils are but means of purifying our soul, of grounding it in virtue, and occasions of acquiring merits, all in view of God’s glory, the ultimate end of all creation.
It is our duty, then, to submit ourselves to God in all the events of life, happy or unhappy, midst public calamities or private ills, whether we are lashed by the hand of nature or gripped by that of want and suffering, in sorrows or in joys, in the unequal distribution of gifts natural and supernatural, in failure or success, in desolation or in consolation, in sickness or in health, in life or in death with its attendant suffering and uncertainties.
Conformity to God's will cannot but sanctify us, since it makes our will one with God's and, by that very fact, unites all our other faculties to Him, Who is the source of all sanctity
“The sole concern of him who has but entered into the way of prayer, — keep it in mind, it is very important — must be to strive courageously to conform his will to that of God... Herein lies, whole and entire, the highest perfection to which we can attain. The more perfect this accord is, the more do we receive from the Lord and the greater is our progress.” - St. Teresa of Avila
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