7 daily habits for those who want to be holy

Nobody is born a saint. Holiness is achieved with a lot of effort, but also with the help and grace of God. All, without exclusion, are called to reproduce in themselves the life and example of Jesus Christ, to follow in his footsteps.

You are reading this article because you are interested in taking your spiritual life more seriously, from now on accepting one of the key points of Vatican Council II: the importance of the doctrine of the universal call to holiness. You also know that Jesus is the only way to holiness: "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life".

The secret of holiness is constant prayer, which can be defined as continuous contact with the Holy Trinity: "pray always, without getting tired" (Lk 18: 1). There are various ways to get to know Jesus. In this article we will briefly address some of them. If you want to get to know, love and serve Jesus in the same way you learn to love and fall in love with other people - your wife, your family members and close friends -, for example, you need to spend a considerable amount of time with him on a regular basis. , and in this case basically every day. Return is the only true happiness in this life and the vision of God in the next. There is no substitute for this.

Sanctification is a life-long work and requires our determined effort to cooperate with the sanctifying grace of God that comes through the sacraments.

The seven daily habits that I propose consist in the offer of the morning, in the spiritual reading (New Testament and a spiritual book suggested by your spiritual director), in the Holy Rosary, in the Holy Mass and in Communion, in at least fifteen minutes of mental prayer, in the recites the Angelus at noon and in a brief examination of conscience in the evening. These are the primary means of achieving holiness. If you are a person who wants to bring Christ to others through friendship, they are tools with which you will store the spiritual energy that will allow you to do it. Apostolic action without the sacraments will make a solid and profound interior life ineffective. You can be sure that the saints have incorporated all these habits into their daily lives. Your goal is to be like them, contemplative in the world.

Here are 3 important aspects to prepare for respecting these habits:

1. Remember that growth in these daily habits is like a diet or exercise program, it is gradual work. Don't expect to enter all seven of them immediately, or even just two or three. You can't run five kilometers if you haven't trained before. You can't even play Liszt in the third piano lesson. Haste invites you to failure, and God wants you to be successful in both your rhythm and His.

You must work closely with your spiritual director and gradually incorporate these habits into your life over the time period related to your particular situation. It may be that the changing of the seven habits is required for the circumstances of your life.

2. At the same time, you must make firm resolve, with the help of the Holy Spirit and your special intercessors, to make these the priority of your life - something more important than eating, sleeping, working and resting. I want to clarify that these habits cannot be acquired in a hurry. It is not the way we want to treat those we love. They must take each other when we are more careful during the day, in a silent and distraction-free place, where it is easy to put ourselves in the presence of God and be with Him. After all, is our eternal life no more important than the temporal one? All of this will culminate at the time of our judgment as a love account for God in our hearts.

3. I want to make it clear that living these habits is not a waste of time. You're not wasting time, you actually buy it. You will never know a person who lives them all on a daily basis who is less productive as a worker or a worse husband or who has less time for his friends or is unable to cultivate his intellectual life. On the contrary, God always rewards those who put Him first.

Our Lord will multiply your time in an astonishing way as he has multiplied the loaves and fishes and fed the crowd until he is satisfied. You can be sure that Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa or St. Maximilian Kolbe prayed much more than the hour and a half that is suggested in these habits diluted throughout the day.