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Finding Peace in the Storm<br />
uncomfortable being a boy, try being a girl. If you feel<br />
it, it must be true.<br />
But our faith calls us to love God, first by recognizing<br />
His truth with our minds and then by bringing<br />
into concert with that truth our wills and our lower<br />
nature. We embrace God out of love of Him and His<br />
truth; we order our will to that truth, and our feelings<br />
follow.<br />
This approach will allow the wisdom of St. Alphonsus’s<br />
teachings to transform us. Here we are<br />
confronted with a different vision of suffering. Will we<br />
allow our intellects to be formed by it? Will we ascent<br />
to it as truth? If we do, and we remind ourselves of it<br />
regularly, we will find that our minds begin to see and<br />
think differently. Then we must choose to respond differently.<br />
This is the ordering of our will to our intellect<br />
and to all that is true. As we do this, our emotions will<br />
typically follow, and they will eventually be formed<br />
in truth as well. As we pursue all of this out of love<br />
for God and His will, He meets us in this suffering<br />
and brings us to peace and joy, no matter the storm.<br />
He heals us through the divine surgery of suffering.<br />
He transforms us into our highest calling to love and<br />
union with Him.<br />
In her sufferings, however, the soul should always be<br />
resigned to God’s will. The saints have all experienced<br />
desolations and abandonment of soul. “How impervious<br />
to things spiritual, my heart!” cries St. Bernard. “No<br />
savor in pious reading, no pleasure in meditation or in<br />
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