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 in order to please ourselves without seeing that they are not conformable to the divine will. How often do we act through self-love, saying: But what I wish to do is conducive to the glory of God. But let us be persuaded that the greatest glory that we can give to God is to conform ourselves to his divine will. Blessed Henry Suso used to say: "God is not so much glorified when we abound in lights and spiritual consolations as when we submit to the divine will and pleasure." Hence Blessed Stephana of Soncino saw among the seraphim certain souls whom she had known on earth; and she learned by revelation that they had attained that sublime elevation by the perfect union of their will in this life with the will of God.

All the malice of sin consists in wishing what God does not will; for then, says St. Anselm, we in a certain manner endeavor to rob God of his crown. He who wishes to follow his own will against the will of God takes, as it were forcibly, from God his crown; for as the crown belongs only to the sovereign, so to do his own will (without dependence on others) belongs to God only. Samuel said to Saul that to refuse to conform to the divine will is a species of idolatry. It is like the crime of idolatry to refuse to obey! It is called idolatry because, in refusing to conform to the divine will, man, instead of adoring the will of God, adores his own will. Now, since all the malice of a creature consists in contradicting the Creator, so all the goodness of the creature consists in a union with the will of the Creator. He who conforms himself to the divine will becomes, as the Lord said of David, a man according to God's own heart. ''I have found David. . . a man according to my own''