God wants only the very best for us. Accordingly, He sets up every single day in such a way that we can live blissfully. If we need consolation, He sends in our direction an event that cheers us up. If we need an adjustment, He makes sure He gives us the right tonic…
This is why Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, wrote a valuable booklet called Uniformity to God’s Will. It is full of stories. Here are some…
Every year this farmer’s crops were more plentiful than those of his neighbors. On being asked how this happened with such unvarying regularity, he said he was not amazed because he always had the kind of weather he wanted. He was asked to explain. He said: “I want whatever kind of weather God wants, and because I do, He gives me the harvests I want.” In cold and heat, in rain and wind, the soul united to God says: “I want it to be warm, cold, windy, to rain, because and as God wills it.”
Late one night the St. Francis Borgia arrived unexpectedly at a Jesuit house, in a snowstorm. He knocked and knocked on the door, but all to no purpose because the community being asleep, no one heard him. When morning came, all were embarrassed for the discomfort he had experienced by having had to spend the night in the open. The saint, however, said he had enjoyed his time in the cold, imagining that he saw our Lord up in the sky dropping the snowflakes down upon him! Saints are full of imagination!
The story is told of a devotee of St. Thomas of Canterbury, who being sick, went to the saint’s tomb to obtain a cure. He returned home cured. But then he thought to himself: “Suppose it would be better for my soul’s salvation if I remained sick, what point then is there in being well?” In this frame of mind he went back and asked the saint to intercede with God that he grant what would be best for his eternal salvation. His illness returned and he was perfectly content with it! .
Saint Bonaventure in the Life of St. Francis that he wrote, mentions an anecdote when the saint was suffering serious physical pain. One of the friars, meaning to sympathize with him, said in his simplicity: “My Father, pray God that He treats you a little more gently, for his hand seems heavy upon you just now.” St. Francis strongly resented the unhappy remark of his well-meaning brother. In fact he told him, “My good brother, did I not know that what you have just said was spoken in all simplicity, without realizing the implication of your words, I should never see you again because of your rashness in passing judgment on the dispositions of divine providence!”
Whereupon, weak and wasted as he was by his illness, he got out of bed, knelt down, kissed the floor and prayed thus: “Lord, I thank you for the sufferings You are sending me. Send me more, if it be your good pleasure. My gratification is that you afflict me and spare me not, for the fulfillment of your holy will is the greatest consolation of my life.”
Mysterious knowledge of the saints!