The Lord is not satisfied with a lukewarm interior life and a half-hearted dedication. He cleanses everyone who bears fruit so that he may bear more fruit. This is why the Master purifies his own, allowing trials and contradictions. "If the goldsmith repeatedly hammers the gold, it is to remove the dross from it; if the metal is rubbed again and again with the file, it is to increase its luster. The furnace tests the potter's vessel, man is tested in tribulation". Every pain - physical or moral - that God permits, serves to purify the soul and to make us bear greater fruit. This is how we must always see it, as a grace from Heaven.
All times are good for us to enter into deep paths of holiness, all circumstances are opportune for us to love God more, because the interior life is nourished, with the constant help of the Holy Spirit, by the events that occur around us, in a similar way to the way plants do. They do not choose the place or the medium, but the sower drops the seeds in the ground, and there they develop, converting into their own substance, with the help of the water that comes to them from heaven, the useful elements that they find in the earth. Thus they come forth and grow strong.
All the more reason for us to emerge strengthened, for it is our Father God who has chosen the soil and gives us graces so that we may bear fruit. The land where the Lord has placed us is the concrete family of which we are a part, and no other, with the characters, virtues, defects and ways of being of the people who are part of it. The earth is our work, which we must love so that it may sanctify us, our companions in the same company or in the same class, our neighbors.... The land, where we have to bear fruits of sanctity, is the country, the region, the prevailing social or political system, our own way of being... and no other. It is there, in that environment, in the midst of the world, where the Lord tells us that we can and must live all the Christian virtues, without cutting them back, with all their demands. God calls us to holiness in every circumstance: in war and in peace, in sickness and in health, when we seem to have triumphed and when there is unexpected failure, when we have plenty of time and when we barely manage to do what is necessary. The Lord wants us to be saints at all times. Those who do not count on grace and see things with a purely human vision are constantly saying: this is not the time for holiness.
Let us not think that in another place and in another situation we would follow the Lord more closely and carry out a more fruitful apostolate. Let us leave aside the mysticism of the eyelids. The fruits of holiness that the Lord expects are those produced by the earth where we are, here and now: fatigue, sickness, family, work, workmates or fellow students.... "Let us leave behind dreams, false idealism, fantasies, what I usually call wishful mysticism - I wish I had not married, I wish I did not have this profession, I wish I had more health, I wish I were young, I wish I were old... - and instead, soberly, pay attention to the most material and immediate reality, which is where the Lord is (...)". This is the environment in which our love for God must grow and develop, using precisely these opportunities. Let us not let them pass us by; Jesus is waiting for us there.