Ask the Spirit to help you cultivate your gifts and offer them (and yourself) to Christ with greater and greater freedom so as to make your acts of obedience to the Father fruitful for both yourself and for others. At the core of this stage of conversion is the experience of a soul that, like the psalmist’s, “clings fast to you” (Ps 63:9) and can no longer be content with passivity or neutrality. Active works of attempted obedience to God’s will (even if they turn out to be mistaken or failures) are what the Spirit calls us to. In the words of C.S. Lewis, “Virtue—even attempted virtue—brings light; indulgence brings fog.”
Intensified prayer, a fruitful reading of the Christian spiritual classics, and a growing hunger for the sacraments can characterize this phase, as well as a desire to practice the works of mercy or otherwise live out the virtues.
—from St. Anthony Messenger‘s “Five Steps to Deeper Discipleship“
by Mark P. Shea
