It is necessary to fight every single day, often in small details, because every day we will encounter obstacles that separate us from God. Many times, the effort to maintain this state of vigilance—so opposite to lukewarmness—will take the form of fortitude in fulfilling our acts of piety: those encounters with the Lord that fill us with strength and peace. We must be attentive not to abandon them for any unforeseen event that arises, without letting ourselves be carried away by the mood of that day or that moment.
At other times, our struggle will be more focused on how we live charity: correcting sharp edge aspects of our character (of bad temper), striving to be warm, to serve others, to keep a good humor... or we will have to make an effort to do our work better, to be more punctual, to put the proper means so that our human, professional, and spiritual formation does not stagnate... This state of vigilance, like that of a sentinel guarding the city, does not guarantee that we will always overcome: along with victories, we will also have defeats (goals we do not reach, resolutions we do not fully fulfill...). Many of these failures will ordinary lack importance; others will have it, but atonement and contrition will bring us even closer to the Lord, and will give us strength to start afresh... "The serious thing," writes Saint John Chrysostom to someone who had strayed from the faith, "is not that he who fights should fall, but that he should remain fallen; the serious thing is not that one is wounded in battle, but to despair after receiving the blow and not heal the wound."
Let us not forget that in the small struggles, the soul grows stronger and prepares itself to hear the continuous inspirations and promptings of the Holy Spirit. And it is also there, in the neglect of what seems of little importance (punctuality, giving the Lord the best time for prayer, small mortifications at meals, guarding the senses...), where the enemy becomes dangerous and difficult to overcome. "We must convince ourselves that the greatest enemy of the rock is not the pick or the axe, nor the strike of any other instrument, however heavy it may be: it is that fine water that seeps, drop by drop, into the cracks of the cliff, until it ruins its structure. The greatest danger for the Christian is to despise fighting in those skirmishes, which soak into the soul little by little, until it becomes soft, brittle, and indifferent, insensitive to the voices of God."
HCD