To advance on this path of holiness, it is necessary to foster interior recollection (avoiding living with the senses overly awakened, being scattered in external things, without the presence of God...), the mortification of the internal senses (imagination, memories, and useless thoughts...) and of the external ones, and to strive daily for the presence of God, taking occasion from the events and mishaps of each day.
It is essential to purify the heart, for only the pure in heart have the capacity to see God. Impurity, attachment to earthly goods, and granting the body all its whims blunt the soul toward the things of God. The unspiritual man does not perceive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot know them because they can only be judged according to the Spirit. The spiritual man is the Christian who carries the Holy Spirit in his soul through grace and has his mind and thoughts set on Christ. His clean, sober, and mortified life is the best preparation to be a worthy dwelling for the Spirit, who will inhabit him with all His gifts.
When the Holy Spirit finds a well-disposed soul, He gradually takes possession of it and leads it through paths of increasingly deeper prayer, until "words become poor... and way is made for divine intimacy, in looking at God without rest and without weariness. We then live as captives, as prisoners. While we perform, as perfectly as possible within our mistakes and limitations, the tasks proper to our condition and office, the soul longs to escape. It goes toward God like iron attracted by the force of a magnet. One begins to love Jesus more effectively, with a sweet startle."
Saint Josemaría Escrivá described the path of souls—amidst the most normal occupations of life and regardless of their culture, profession, status, etc.—until reaching contemplative prayer. For many, the path begins with the frequent consideration of the Most Holy Humanity of the Lord, whom one reaches through the Virgin—necessarily passing through the Cross—and ends in the Most Holy Trinity. "The heart then needs to distinguish and adore each of the Divine Persons. In a way, it is a discovery that the soul makes in the supernatural life, like those of a little child opening its eyes to existence. And it converses lovingly with the Father and with the Son and with the Holy Spirit, and easily submits to the activity of the life-giving Paraclete, who is given to us without our deserving it: the supernatural gifts and virtues!"
At the end of our prayer, we turn to the Virgin, who possessed the fullness of faith and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and we ask her to teach us to treat and love the Paraclete in our soul always, but particularly during this Decenary, and that we do not stop halfway on that path leading to the holiness to which we have been called.
HCD