But now for the truth: we always wish to serve God in our own way, not in His; according to our own will, not according to His; and we love His will when it is comformable to ours, instead of loving ours only when and inasmuch as it is conformable to His.
When He wishes us to be sick, we wish to be well. When He desires us to serve Him by suffering, we desire to serve Him by action. When He wishes us to practice patience, we wish to practice humility, devotion, prayer, or some other virtue, not because it is more to His liking, but more to ours. We love virtue accompanied with sweet sauce, not when accompanied with vinegar and gall. Calvary does not agree so well with us as Thabor; it is not on the former mountain, but on the latter, we would wish to build our tabernacles.
In a word, we prefer health to sickness, and we do not love God the same in health and in sickness. We love Him better when He caresses us than when He strikes us, and thus we change, and, instead of loving the love of God, we love the sweetness of His love; for he who loves only God, loves Him equally at all times, in sickness and in health, in prosperity and in adversity, in suffering and in joy. God being always the same, the variation of our love towards Him cannot but proceed from something out of Him.
--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts
