A Year with the Saints - 23 March

Make it your constant effort to mortify and trample underfoot your own will, to such a degree as not to satisfy it in anything, if it be possible. Be careful, therefore, to desire and rejoice that it may be often crossed; and when you see anyone oppose it either in temporal or spiritual things, follow his will rather than your own, if only his be good, even though your own be better. For, contending with another, by lessening your humility, tranquillity, and peace, will always inflict upon you a loss greater than the advantage brought by any exercise of virtue performed through your own will, in opposition to another's. - Saint Vincent Ferrer

Saint Catherine of Genoa practiced this. She loved to submit her preference to that of others, in all things; and if a wish to pursue any course arose in her own mind, it was sufficient to make her avoid it.

When Father Thomas Sanchez would to go his Superiors to make a request, he used first to ask God, if it might be according to His pleasure, to move their hearts to refuse it.

- 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