The man with the paralyzed hand was docile to the words of Jesus: he placed himself in the midst of all, as the Lord had asked him, and then he heeded his words when he told him to stretch out his sick hand. Personal spiritual direction is linked to the intimate action of the Holy Spirit in the soul, who continually suggests those little overcomings that effectively help us to dispose ourselves to new graces. When a Christian does all he can to help the virtues to develop in his soul - removing obstacles, turning away from the occasions of sin, fighting resolutely at the beginning of temptation - God turns with new help to strengthen these incipient virtues and gives the gifts of the Holy Spirit, who perfects these habits formed by grace.
The Lord wants us to have effective, concrete desires to be saints; in the interior life, general ideas are not enough. "Did you see how they erected that building of imposing grandeur? -One brick, and another. Thousands. But one by one. -And sacks of cement, one by one. And ashlars, which are little before the mass of the whole. -And pieces of iron. -And workers who work, day after day, the same hours...
"Did you see how they erected that building of imposing grandeur? -By dint of small things!"5.
When we speak of holiness, we often notice certain striking aspects: great trials, extraordinary circumstances, martyrdom; as if the Christian life, lived with all its consequences, necessarily consisted of these facts and was the work of a few, of exceptional people; and as if the Lord was satisfied, in the majority of people, with a second-rate Christian life. On the contrary, we must meditate deeply that the Lord calls us all to holiness: the busy mother who barely has time to run the household, the businessman, the student, the saleswoman in a department store and the one who runs a vegetable stand. The Holy Spirit tells us all: this is the will of God, your sanctification6. And it is an effective will, because God takes into account all the circumstances through which life will pass and gives the necessary graces to act in a holy way.
To grow in the virtues, we must pay attention to what the Lord tells us, often through intermediaries, and put it into practice. "The sublime example of this docility is for all of us the Blessed Virgin Mary of Nazareth, who pronounced the fiat of her total availability to God's designs, so that the Spirit could begin in her the concrete realization of the plan of salvation. We ask our Blessed Mother Mary today to help us to be ever more docile to the Holy Spirit, to grow in the virtues, struggling in the small goals of this day.