I’m sure that if you have been following this article you have come to realize that the “call to holiness” is a call to become the person that God intended when He created you. It is a call to become a genuine human being who is making every attempt to grow in your likeness of God as seen in the Person of Jesus. It is a call to “put on Christ”, as we say during a person’s initiation into the Church.

I put on Christ when I make every effort to “think” and “act” like Jesus did when He was here on earth. I put on Christ when I begin to realize that this earthly life is given to me to learn how to unconditionally love others and myself.

Is this a challenge? It certainly is but there are no gains in life without certain challenges. Life’s challenges are meant to help us develop the courage, strength and fortitude to always place our trust in God regardless of how difficult the challenge might be.

One of the first steps we have to take, however, in this process is to become convinced that with God’s help we can truly accomplish this task. If you tell yourself you could never be more like Jesus, you never will. What we must say to ourselves is that: With God’s help I can accomplish the task of actualizing my potential to become more like God as seen in the Person of Jesus. God’s Spirit, which is within us, will give us the strength to accomplish what we desire to accomplish and believe we can accomplish.

One of the bad things about our society is that many have been fooled to think that “life is supposed to be easy”, that “pain is bad,” and that “challenges are bad.” This type of thinking paralyzes our spirits and keeps us from directing our attention to the task of spiritually growing and becoming the persons that God intended when He created us. Think about this!