Only seek and endeavour to serve Christ honestly and heartily, and you will have shown to you more and more, in your daily experience, his care over, and his watchful love for you. You will find that there is invariably one way by which He will prove this to you, that this world becomes not so attractive to you, as once it was, and that while you can still enjoy any blessings and comforts it may, through the mercy of God have for you, you are becoming less attached to it. The more your own souls find a sweetness in religion, and in communion with God, the less worldly satisfactions will have hold of you. Who can keep up the intercourse of his soul with the ascended Jesus, and yet cling to the vanities of the world and of life? All must endure them, and in some degree all of us have somewhat to do with many of these trifles and empty pursuits. Else, as Saint Paul says, you must needs go out of this world. But if we strive and pray, that He who has so true and perfect claim to our most loving affections, Christ, may have it, and that our wills and aims and desires may be subject to the claims of his truth and grace, He will not fail to answer such prayers, and to bless such endeavours on our part. It is a rich mercy when our dear loving Lord brings us to live less and less soiled and injured by the sins, follies, and vanities we see around us, and more entirely His people.
And if some things I do not ask
In my cup of blessing be,
I would have my spirit fill'd the more
With grateful love to Thee;
More careful not to serve Thee much,
But to please Thee perfectly.
- text taken from Daily Bread - Bring a Few Morning Meditations for the Use of Catholic Christians by Father Richard Waldo Sibthorp