Look: If you want what you want in the spiritual life, you’ll never have a spiritual life, because you’ll only end up with your own imagination of your own desires. Not much spiritual with that now, is there?
Forget about having goals in the spiritual life. We can’t get there from here. The Lord has to draw us out of here from there. I think I wrote a something about this using the horrifically “nice” imagery of wild-eyed Salvador Dali to bring this point home some time ago. HERE! YIKES!
I mean, I don’t know what it is to be a saint, do I? Do I know what it means to have total un-self-serving respect and love for another? Do I know what it means to behold God our Heavenly Father face to Face, to know as I am known, through, with and in Jesus, by the firey firey firey enthusiastic unity of the Holy Spirit? Do I know what it means never ever to even be tempted to project what rubbish I perceive in myself unto others but instead to see their good as my own good because that good is my good because that Good is God Himself? Do I know what it means to totally love the entire Mystical Body of Christ in all of its members throughout the ages from Adam until the last of us is conceived and love precisely all the members as the Body of Christ, of Him who said what you have done to the least of these you have done to me? Well, do I?
Nah. As soon as I look to myself for what it takes, I sink to the point of drowning. What a storm! Lord! Save me!
So, I know I can’t get there from here, but have to be drawn by Him out of here from there. So, with utter simplicity, with humble thanksgiving, I just end up doing what it strikes me Jesus Himself must have done for His Immaculate Mother: pick her a few flowers! Here’s today’s bouquet, reflecting all sorts of different kinds of saints, starting off with that which is a bit bold:
…and followed by the more refined:
…and followed by the glorious:
…and the stalwart:
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter. 
Let’s keep picking those flowers, and, and; have that over-reaching, overwhelming desire to be a saint; to desire Him and His Will above all things.
And HIS WILL above all things, yes!
How often, left to my own devices, do I find myself totally self aware of all but the ditch. Thanks be to God for His Church and even greater gift of alter Christus.
If you look at enough pictures of blood and bugs (and hoarfrost, in season), amazing beautiful flowers look even MORE amazingly beautiful.
I think that would make sense to Our Lady.
True Fr. We can’t reach there( where we desire to be) with out God drawing us from here. Our “here” is in total storm.