Recognizing my uniqueness as a human being and having a desire to be holy doesn’t make me holy. While these are essential for my quest for holiness, they have to also be augmented by deliberate action.
By deliberate action I mean this: the development and implementation of a conscious and purposeful plan to become holy. Such a plan must include the things that I will do in order to achieve my goal.
When you read the lives of the saints you find that they all set about doing certain things that they felt would lead them to holiness. The things they have typically included are:
(1) prayer;
(2) acts of kindness;
(3) periodic fasting;
(4) Scripture and other spiritual reading;
(5) almsgiving;
(6) spiritual direction; and
(7) acts of mercy.
Most saints have included a mixture of these acts, specifically done with the intention of growing in holiness.
It is important that we are not misguided in our attempts to become holy. Just giving up things or doing things will not lead to holiness if we don’t engage in these actions with the specific intention of growing in holiness. In fact I would caution the idea of giving up things. Too frequently this approach tends to engender the idea that if I suffer or punish myself that God will love me more or that I will atone for my sins and be holy.
The fact of the matter is that I need to choose to do acts that I believe will lead to holiness.
It is also important, I believe, that we should feel comfortable in actually choosing the actions that we believe will focus our efforts in becoming holy. When we have a desire to be holy, God never second guesses our choice of actions. Our intention is critical. Like all Church actions and rituals, they are conducive to holiness if we intend to do them for the sake helping us in becoming holy.
I am also aware of the fact that in order to develop a conscious and purposeful plan to become holy I must also give up my human fear that holiness will change me so much that I won’t recognize myself. I truly believe that many people are afraid of becoming holy because they have misguided notions of what holiness is and also very misguided notions of who the saints are. Remember that holiness will not result in you becoming perfect!
Only one human is perfect. His name is Jesus, the Christ!