CONSECRATION TO DIVINE WILL

SAINT ALPHONSUS MARY DE’ LIGUORI, BISHOP, DOCTOR  

Jer 26:11-16,24; Ps 69:15-16,30-31,33-34; Mt 14:1-12

Conformity with the Divine Will

Our relationship with God is both communal and personal. He relates to us as a community of people he has called to be his own possession. He manifests his word and his will to us, the acceptance of which establishes us as his people. The divine manifestation or revelation of God, as we have previously noted, is an opening or door through which we enter the presence of God or share his life. Because the encounter is personal, the communal relationship is based on the personal. Since God is a trinity of three divine persons, our relationship with God is on a person-to-person basis. The word of God is addressed to our understanding, his love to our hearts, and He summons our wills and enables them thereby to obey the divine will in worship and adoration. Thus, the quality of the communal relationship and worship of God depends on the quality of the individual relationship and worship of God. If the foundation is weak, the structure resting on it would be weak and unstable. If each of us lacks concrete devotion to the word of God, it would invariably reflect in our communal worship of God. When the worship or relationship of each of us to God is hypocritical, the communal worship and relationship with God will also be hypocritical.

Lack of attention to the word of God usually causes the devotion of our hearts to dry up. When we cease to pay attention to the word of God and the divine presence among us, God’s love will usually send his prophets to wake us up from our spiritual stupor. Just as our bodies grow weak when we feed sparsely, our hearts grow cold, and our spirits languish when we neglect to feed enough on the word of God. This situation prompted God to send the prophet Jeremiah to the people of Judah and Jerusalem, who worshiped God in the Temple. They arrested him for prophesying against them and the city, for they were unwilling to change their ways. They rather attempted to enforce their own will on God and his prophet. The world will always attempt to enforce its will on us when we proclaim the Gospel to the people. Like Jeremiah, we must never back down, but trust in God, whose will would come to pass. “The Lord himself sent me to say all the things you have heard against this Temple and this city. So now amend your behaviour and actions, listen to the voice of the Lord your God: if you do, he will relent and not bring down on you the disaster he has pronounced against you. For myself, I am as you see in your hands. Do whatever you please or think right with me.” When we do the will of God, we will remain in the hand of God, and never in men’s hands. Nothing happens without the divine will permitting it.

John the Baptist was one of the most prominent in proclaiming the will of God to his people without equivocation. When he proclaimed truth to Herod, he was arrested and subsequently beheaded through the scheming of Herodias, it would seem. We believe that the incident was according to God’s permission. So, while Jeremiah was rescued from the plot of the priests and prophets to kill him, John the Baptist did not escape the plot of Herodias. Are these different outcomes for two prophets of God saying contradictory things about God and his infinite power and love? Not at all, for God’s will for us is a mystery because the end to which he calls us is also a mystery. Among the great teachings of our dear Saint Alphonsus Mary de’ Liguori is his teaching that our perfection lies in the conformity of our will to God’s will. He was born in Marianella near Naples on September 27, 1696. He came from a large and noble family. He was educated in humanities, classical and modern languages, painting, and music, and he had a Doctorate in both civil and canon law. He abandoned his legal career and entered the seminary in 1723. He was ordained a priest in 1726 at the age of 30. He tended to the homeless and marginalised in Naples and founded the ‘Evening Chapels’, as centres of prayer, community, the word of God, social activities, and education. The chapels were run by young people themselves. He founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (the Redemptorists) in 1732 to preach the Gospel to the poor and abandoned. He wrote many spiritual books and contributed to the foundation of Moral Theology. He died on August 1, 1787.

Let us pray: O God, who constantly raise up in your Church new examples of virtue, grant that we may follow so closely in the footsteps of the Bishop Saint Alphonsus in his zeal for souls as to attain the same rewards that are his in heaven. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.