In his 16th-century masterpiece The Spiritual Combat, Dom Lorenzo Scupoli tackled a core problem: our disordered desires. The solution is to retrain our hearts to find their deepest joy in God.
The will is like a muscle. It must be exercised constantly toward what is right. It is in willing rightly that we participate in God’s freedom and reject the tyranny of the passions.
Every small, deliberate choice for the good — choosing patience in a frustrating line, offering a kind word when we feel irritable — strengthens our spiritual core.
St. Therese of Lisieux wrote, “When I feel nothing, when I am incapable of praying or practising virtue, it is then that I seek small occasions, trifles that please Jesus: a smile, a kind word, when I would prefer to remain silent.”
In addition to strengthening our will, we should guide its direction. Scupoli taught us to make God’s pleasure our only aim.
All our works must have as their end the will of God. Nothing done for self or vanity can prosper in the spiritual life.
As Cardinal Robert Sarah wrote, “When man ceases to refer everything to God, he becomes fragmented and exhausted by his own projects. True peace comes only when every act begins and ends in Him.”
St. Teresa of Avila wrote, “Let us endeavour to do everything for His glory and to keep our eyes fixed upon Him in all our actions. This is the important point; for if we do this, everything we do will be of great value.”
Her spiritual daughter, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, expanded this idea: “Everything is a sacrament that gives God to us, provided we go to it in faith.”
The Eastern spiritual writer St. Theophan the Recluse advised continual self-examination. He wrote, “The beginning of the spiritual life is to turn the gaze of the heart inward and examine every movement: for whom am I doing this? for God or for myself?”
He also wrote, “At every step, test yourself: what is the motive of this thought, of this word, of this action? If it is self-love, vanity, or passion, reject it. If it is for God — accept it.”
Eastern Orthodox monk Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou said that “purity of heart is the ability to live every moment ‘before the face of God.’ When we remember God in all things, our heart becomes simple and unified, no longer divided.”
Scupoli reminded us that the soul divided against itself cannot stand firm. Only when one will dominates — the will of God — does the soul find strength and peace.
For 15 years as a nun, St. Teresa of Avila “lived a divided life, with little genuine prayer or desire for God, and she fell into a worldly spirit, externally doing religious things but internally she wasn’t focussed on God and doing his will wholeheartedly.” Only when she returned to single-hearted devotion did she find strength and peace.
Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, wrote, “The purified soul has but one principle of activity — the divine good pleasure. All self-seeking has been consumed in the fire of charity.”
A powerful model for this is St. Ignatius of Loyola. He developed a simple but profound prayer called the Daily Examen, a practice of regularly reviewing the day to see where God was present and where we followed or resisted his will. This practice trains the soul to spot its conflicting desires and consciously choose repeatedly to align with the one, unifying will of God.
Father Timothy Gallagher, OMV, pointed out that this Ignatian exercise is not primarily about fault-finding but about love: “We review the day with the eyes of love, recognizing the gentle invitations of God and our responses, so that tomorrow we may love Him more.”
Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, OCD, wrote, “The soul which habitually seeks God’s will above all things finds peace even in suffering, for every event becomes an opportunity to love.”
In her final retreat notes, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity wrote that she wished to live “as if already in Heaven,” because heaven is nothing other than perfect union with the will of God.
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