Perfection consists in one thing alone, which is doing the will of God. For, according to Our Lord's words, it suffices for perfection to deny self, to take up the cross and to follow Him. Now, who denies himself and takes up his cross and follows Christ better than he who seeks not to do his own will, but always that of God? Behold, now, how little is needed to become a Saint! Nothing more than to acquire the habit of willing, on every occasion, what God wills. - Saint Vincent de Paul
More than in anything else the Saint just quoted showed the purity and solidity of his virtue, in always aiming to follow and obey the will of God. This was the great principle on which all his resolutions were founded, and by which he faithfully and firmly carried them into practice, trampling underfoot his own interest, and preferring the Divine Will and the glory and service of God to anything else, without exception.
The Lord said of David that he was a man after His own heart, and the foundation for such high praise is given in these words: "for in all things he will do My will."
Saint Mary Magdalen de' Pazzi was so much attached to this practice that she often said that she would never determine upon anything, however trivial, such as going from one room to another, if she thought it not in conformity with the Divine Will, nor would she omit to do anything she believed in conformity with it. And she added that if it came into her mind while she was in the midst of an action that such an act was contrary to the will of God, she would abandon it on the instant, though to do so might cost her life.
Taulerus relates of a certain holy and learned man that when his friends entreated him, on his deathbed, to leave them some good precept, he said: "The sum and substance of all instruction is to take all that comes as from the hand of God, and to wish for nothing different, but to do in all things His Divine Will."
The Venerable Seraphina of God had so great a love for the Divine Will that she often entreated her director to manifest it to her, saying, "Counsel me, Father, as to what I am to do, and do not let me do anything of myself, that I may please the Divine Majesty. For to see God ever so little displeased would be worse than the loss of a thousand worlds." One day there came to her so great a desire to do nothing according to her own will, but only according to that of God, that with the consent of her director, she made a vow to that effect.
- text taken from A Year with the Saints, composed by an unknown Italian, translated by a member of the Order of Mercy; it has the Imprimatur of Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan, Archdiocese of New York, New York, 21 January 1891