Finding Peace in the Storm

We are excited to share an excerpt of Dan Burke’s “Finding Peace in the Storm” by Sophia Institute Press.

Sometimes discernment seems complicated, and we struggle to “be still” to listen to God’s voice. Following the death of his spiritual director, St. Alphonsus Liguori penned timeless advice in a letter to one of his spiritual daughters, and it became the famous work titled Uniformity with God’s Will. Now Dan Burke breaks open St. Alphonsus’s eighteenth-century classic for you. He intersperses relevant explanations and insights within the text of this great saint and includes reflection questions for each chapter.

Excerpt from St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Uniformity with God’s Will:

The more one unites his will with the divine will, the greater will be his love of God. Mortification, meditation, receiving Holy Communion, and acts of fraternal charity are all certainly pleasing to God — but only when they are in accordance with His will. When they do not accord with God’s will, He not only finds no pleasure in them, but He even rejects them utterly and punishes them.

To illustrate: A man has two servants. One works hard and diligently all day long but according to his own devices. The other, conceivably, works less, but he does what is requested of him. This latter, of course, is going to find favor in the eyes of his master; the other will not. Now, in applying this example, we may ask: Why should we perform actions for God’s glory if they are not going to be acceptable to Him? God does not want sacrifices, the prophet Samuel told King Saul, but He does want obedience to His will:

Doth the Lord desire holocausts and victims, and not

rather that the voice of the Lord should be obeyed? For

obedience is better than sacrifices; and to hearken, rather

than to offer the fat of rams. Because it is like the sin

of witchcraft to rebel; and like the crime of idolatry to

refuse to obey.

Dan Burke’s Reflection, from Finding Peace in the storm: Reflections on St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Uniformity with God’s Will:

The astute reader here may protest, “But wasn’t the sacrificial system established by God Himself? How, then, can this assertion be true that God doesn’t want our sacrifices? If sacrifice is God’s will, and it clearly is, isn’t it obedience to God’s will to offer sacrifice?” This is a challenging dilemma but one that Jesus helps us to clear up. 

For the answer, we can look to Jesus in Matthew 7, where He works to correct this same problem in His disciples. He clearly sees that some who are following Him are doing so for the wrong reasons. He says to them (in general), “Let me show you what your final judgment will look like. You will call me Lord. You will have prophesied in my name. You will have cast out demons in my name. You will have done mighty works in my name.” He then says, “I will say to you: Depart from me, I never knew you; depart from me, evildoers.” 

Here we have the same fundamental dilemma that St. Alphonsus proposes. Is it not God’s will to call Jesus Lord? Is it not God’s will to foretell and forthtell the truths of God? Is it not God’s will to cast out demons and do mighty works in His name? The answer can be found in one word of this passage in the twenty-third verse: the word knew. The word in Greek is the same word that the Jews used to translate the love and union of Adam and Eve in Genesis (“Adam knew Eve”). Adam and Eve joined together because of their love. This joining was a union of love in the sacrament of Marriage, and this oneness produced an even deeper love: a knowing of each other, a desire to please and serve each other, an authentic union in love. 

What Liguori and Jesus reveal is that, when we pursue “godly” or “religious” things that are truly and objectively good, but we are not motivated by love and an authentic desire to follow God and His will, then we are doing things from other, unhealthy motivations. How can this be so? 

A few years ago, following a retreat that I gave at a parish, a woman who appeared to be in her sixties came up to me grinning from ear to ear. Let’s call her Martha. Martha said to me with tears in her eyes, “I finally get it. I have been hiding in religious activities all my life. I am part of the altar society and this and that group in the parish. I do it all because I can’t stand the silence. I work myself to death to avoid dealing with my wounds. I can see now that in all my religious activities, I have actually been hiding from God. I have come to realize that He wants to heal me. He wants my heart, not my scurrying around on the pretense that I am doing it all for love of Him. I do it to hide, not for Him. But I see it all so clearly now. He loves me. I want to love Him back. I want to give Him what time I have left but in a way that is truly worship of Him and not a hiding in my wounds.” 

Martha had a breakthrough that led to a true conversion. All her running around “for God” was really for her — to hide, to inebriate herself in activity. So God could rightly say to her, “I don’t want all of your scurrying around in the parish doing all that ‘good.’ I want your heart.” In all her activities, Martha was constructing a salvation of her own — one in which she was god and determined what was right and wrong. God was constantly calling her to allow Him to heal her, but she was rejecting that call. She didn’t know Him because, until her conversion, she didn’t want His love. She wanted her self-justification in anger and bitterness. Thus, if she were to die in that sin, she would have heard, “I don’t know you.” Did God want her to do good? Of course, but He wanted her to do it out of love of Him, not a false worship of self. 

Martha’s “good works” before she came to know and love God were not pleasing to Him. They were a very dangerous distraction from God. They didn’t please God, because He didn’t want the activity. He wanted Martha. Now she is in a place to come to know Him and to give herself to Him because she loves Him.

Author Bio – Dan Burke

Dan Burke is the founder and president of the Avila Institute for Spiritual Formation (Avila-
Institute.com), which offers graduate and personal enrichment studies in spiritual theology to priests,
deacons, religious, and laity in more than ninety countries and prepares men for seminary in more than
forty dioceses (MyHighCalling.com). Dan is the author and editor of many books on authentic Catholic
spirituality and, with his wife, Stephanie, hosts the Divine Intimacy Radio show, which is broadcast
weekly on EWTN Radio. Past episodes can be found, along with thousands of articles on the interior life,
at SpiritualDirection.com.