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The Excellence of This Virtue
aspire. This should be the goal of all our works, desires,
meditations, and prayers. To this end we should always
invoke the aid of our holy patrons, of our guardian angels,
and above all, of our mother Mary, the most perfect of
all the saints because she most perfectly embraced the
divine will.
Here St. Alphonsus speaks of our aspirations.
St. Teresa of Ávila, in her great work The Interior
Castle, argues that if we do not know that we can
be one with God, we will not aspire to it. If we
do not aspire to it, we will not pursue it. If we
do not pursue it, we will not know it. Thus, our
aspiration is the movement of our yes to God from
inaction to action, from desire to prayer. This
kind of prayer — “Show me Your will, Lord” — is a
prayer that He always answers. It rarely comes in a
moment like St. Paul’s confrontation in Acts but
is developed over time through a long, relentless
commitment to Him in mental prayer, meditation,
and listening. We begin this aspiration on our
knees and then rise to action that reflects what He
has revealed as we have come to know Him. As we
kneel and rise in Him each day, His voice and His
will become more and more clear to us.
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