That man with the paralyzed hand was docile to the words of Jesus: he stood among them all, as the Lord had asked him, and then he listened to his words when he told him to stretch out that sick hand. The personal spiritual direction is linked with the intimate action of the Holy Spirit in the soul, which continuously suggests those little victories that effectively help us to dispose of new graces. When a Christian does his best so that virtues may develop in his soul -by removing obstacles, by moving away from occasions of sin, and by fighting resolutely in the beginning of temptation- God turns over with new helps to strengthen those incipient virtues and gives the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which perfect those habits formed by grace.
The Lord wants us with effective, concrete desires to be holy; in the interior life general ideas are not enough. "Have you seen how they erected that building of imposing grandeur? -One brick, and another. Thousands of them. But, one by one. -And bags of cement, one by one. And ashlars, which are of little consequence, in the face of the mass of the whole. -And pieces of iron. -And workers who work, day by day, the same hours...
"Did you see how they raised that building of imposing grandeur? -By dint of small things!
Often, when speaking of holiness, some striking aspects are noted: great trials, extraordinary circumstances, martyrdom; as if the Christian life lived with all its consequences necessarily consisted of these facts and was the undertaking of a few, of exceptional people; and as if the Lord was satisfied, in most people, with a second-rate Christian life. On the contrary, we must meditate deeply that the Lord calls us all to holiness: the mother of a busy family because she barely has time to get by, the businessman, the student, the sales clerk in a department store and the one in charge of a vegetable stand. The Holy Spirit tells us all: this is God's will, your sanctification. And it is an effective will, because God has all the circumstances through which life will pass and gives the necessary graces to act in a holy way.
To grow in virtue, we must pay attention to what the Lord tells us, often through intermediaries, and put it into practice. "A 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 today to help us to be ever more docile to the Holy Spirit, to grow in virtue and to strive for the little goals of this day.