Paths to Holiness

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There are more differences between people’s souls than between people’s faces. Each person’s relationship with God is unique, and therefore each person’s prayer is unique. No one can map out a path or method that applies to everyone, because that would mean disregarding people’s freedom and the diversity of their spiritual journeys. It is up to each believer to discover, in response to the Spirit’s movement and in the freedom of the Spirit, the path along which God wishes to lead him or her.
- Time for God, p.44

For God, each person is absolutely unique. Holiness is not the realization of a given model of perfection that is identical for everyone. It is the emergence of an absolutely unique reality that God alone knows, and that he alone brings to fruition. No individual knows what his own holiness consists of. Holiness is only revealed to us by degrees, as we journey on, and it is often something very different from what we imagine, so much so that the greatest obstacle on the path to holiness may be to cling too closely to the image we have of our own perfection.
- In the School of the Holy Spirit, p.18

It is impossible to attain holiness by our own power. The whole of Scripture teaches us that it can only be the fruit of God’s grace. Jesus tells us: “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” And St. Paul says: “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.”
- In the School of the Holy Spirit, p.14