Imagine what was a beautiful garden, which has been abandoned for years. The undergrowth took over and now covers everything. It is hard to guess where those flowering plants survive and the aromatic ones are hidden among the thistles. Everything seems lost. Where to appreciate beauty in this opulent chaos of weeds and vermin of all kinds?
Try to find a small sample of the former beauty. Search well, calmly go reviewing part by part until you find a small flower or one of those plants that you appreciated so much. So, put the general clutter aside. Put all your attention on this little wonder and little by little remove from its environment what is hindering growth. Create for her a space free of danger and that allows her to rise and let herself be caressed by the sun.
Clear its boundaries, remove dry and hardened soil and give it nutrients with pure water. It will not be bad that you also caress its leaves and that you control it avoiding that ants or insects damage it. And from there, from that small clean place he rebuilds the garden. Be patient, it will take days, months or even years. It does not matter how fast you advance but the direction you take. Who goes to her destination walks firm and you can be indifferent to the speed of the march. Establishing the purpose is the important thing and taking it as a north.
Make an effort not to let yourself be carried away by haste, this is the enemy of good work. Anxiety about the final achievement is a mirage that deceives us and ends up draining our forces. In the rest of your life areas it is the same. Apply the garden thing. The ego often deceives us by offering us big and radical goals. They can be very holy goals, but that from so high then they drop us below where we were. We have to accept that we are not special. We are a person like all the others. With our qualities, defects and peculiarities, but we are like everyone else.
Grace knows how to lead us. Attend to the heart as a criterion to decide situations in which we doubt. What is caring for the heart? Not paying much attention to the mental story about ourselves. Rather, attend to those actions that leave us warm in the heart. If we stop for a moment, if we breathe and invoke God, the deep voice of grace that lives in us will tell us what to say, what to do and how to position ourselves in the face of what is happening.
The Holy Name 