MARY, OUR MOTHER

Reflection #37

Everything Should Be Endured
to Please God

This has been the one only and dearest endeavor of all the Saints, to desire with their whole heart to endure every toil, all contempt, every pain, in order to give pleasure to God and thus to please that Divine Heart which so much deserves to be loved and loves us so much.
In this consists all perfection and the love of a soul for God--in its always seeking the pleasure of God and doing that which most pleases God. Oh blessed is he who can say with Jesus Christ: "I do always the things that please Him!" (John 8:29). And what greater honor, what greater consolation can a soul have than to go through some fatigue or to accept some affliction with the thought of giving pleasure to God? Too great is our obligation to give pleasure to that God who has loved us so much, who has given us all that we possess and who, not content with giving us so many good things, has gone so far as to give Himself to us, first on the Cross, dying upon it for love of us, and afterwards in the Sacrament of the Altar, where He gives Himself entirely to us in Holy Communion, so that He has nothing more that He can give us.
On this account, the Saints knew not what more they could do in order to give pleasure to God. How many young nobles have left the world in order to give themselves wholly to God! How many young maidens, even of royal blood, have renounced marriage with the great in order to shut themselves up in a cloister! How many anchorites have gone to hide themselves in deserts and caves in order to meditate upon God alone! How many martyrs have embraced scourges and red-hot iron plates and the most cruel torments of tyrants in order to please God! In a word, in order to give pleasure to God, the Saints have stripped themselves of their possessions, have renounced the greatest earthly dignities and have accepted as treasures, infirmities, persecutions, the loss of their goods and a death the most painful and desolate.
The good pleasure of God, therefore, if we truly love it, ought to be preferred by us to the acquisition of all the riches, of all the honors, of all the delights of earth, and even of Paradise itself. Yes, for it is certain that all the Blessed, if they were to know that it would please God more that they should burn in Hell, one and all, even the Mother of God, would cast themselves into that abyss of fire and suffer eternally in order to give greater pleasure to God.
For this end God has placed us in the world, in order that we may labor to please Him and give Him glory. Wherefore, to give satisfaction to God ought to be the one object of all our desires, of all our thoughts and actions. Well does that Heart deserve to be pleased in all things which has so greatly loved us and is so anxious for our good.

But how is it, O Lord, that I, an ungrateful wretch, instead of seeking to give Thee pleasure, have so often displeased Thee? Yet the detestation which Thou makest me feel for the sins I have committed against Thee causes me to hope that Thou art willing to pardon me. Pardon me, then, and suffer me not to be ungrateful to Thee any more. Grant that I may overcome everything to give Thee pleasure. "In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped; I shall not be confounded forever." (Psalms 30:1).
O Queen of Heaven and my mother, draw me entirely to God.
[Excepted from 'Devout Reflections and Meditations' by St. Alphonsus Liguori] (Public domain)