June 3 Sat
Holiness; the following words of St Josemaría can help us increase our devotion to the Holy Spirit, from which we hope to receive so many graces.
“My children: the children of God must have one exclusive concern. And it is this: to be holy. Realize that our Lord has invited all Christians to holiness. He has said it to us in a special way: ‘He chose us in himself before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his presence.’ There is nothing greater than this! This particular choice which God has made of each one of us has a specific purpose: for us to be holy.

“To live according to the Holy Spirit means to live by faith and hope and charity – to allow God to take possession of our lives and to change our hearts, to make us resemble him more and more. A mature and profound Christian life cannot be improvised, because it is the result of the growth of God's grace in us. In the Acts of the Apostles, we find the early Christian community described in a single sentence, brief but full of meaning: ‘and they continued steadfastly in the teaching of the Apostles and in the communion of the breaking of the bread and in prayers.’
“This is how the early Christians lived, and this is how we too should live: meditating on the doctrine of our faith until it becomes part of us; receiving our Lord in the Eucharist; meeting him in the personal dialogue of our prayer, without trying to hide behind impersonal conduct, but face to face with him. These means should become the very substance of our attitude. If they are lacking, we will have, perhaps, the ability to think in an erudite manner, an activity that is more or less intense, some practices and devotions. But we will not have an authentically Christian way of life, because we will lack that personal relationship with Christ which is a real and living participation in the divine work of salvation.

“This is a teaching that applies to any Christian, because we are all equally called to sanctity. There are no second-class Christians, obliged to practice only a ‘simplified version’ of the Gospel. We have all received the same baptism, and although there is a great variety of spiritual gifts and human situations, there is only one Spirit who distributes God's gifts, only one faith, only one hope, only one love.
“We need to examine our souls during these days to see if we are in danger of setting limits to our sanctification, or subordinating it to other intentions. We must decide to turn our backs on everything opposed to our sanctity.”