Readiness to change, taken in this sense, is the first prerequisite for the transformation in Christ. But, in addition thereto, more is needed: a glowing desire to become a new man in Christ; a passionate will to give oneself over to Christ, And this, again, presupposes a state of fluidity, as it were: that we should be like soft wax, ready to receive the imprint of the features of Christ. We must be determined not to entrench ourselves in our nature, not to maintain or assert ourselves, and above all, not to set up beforehand—however unconsciously—a framework of limiting or qualifying factors for the pervasive and re-creative light of Christ. Rather we must be filled with an unquenchable thirst for regeneration in all things. We must fully experience the bliss of flying into Christ’s arms, who will transform us by His light beyond any measure we might ourselves intend. We must say as did St. Paul on the road to Damascus; “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?”

Moral progress requires unqualified readiness to change

But the unreserved readiness to change, as here outlined, is not merely the condition for embarking on our journey towards our supernatural goal. It also constitutes the permanent basis for continual progress on our road. It is an attitude we must always preserve so long as we are in statu viae—until we have reached the safe harbor of the status finales, where there is no longer any task proposed to our will, and where our souls will rest unchangeably in the boundless bliss of communion with God. Should that readiness to change and that passionate will to surrender ever cease, we would no longer have the proper religious disposition. That unlimited readiness to change is not only necessary for the transformation in Christ: even as such, it represents the basic and relevant response to God. It reflects our unreserved devotion to God, our consciousness of our infinite weakness before Him, our habitude of living by the Faith, our love and yearning for God. It finds its highest expression in these words of the Blessed Virgin: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38).

In his Discourses for Mixed Congregations, Cardinal Newman points out the danger inherent in believing oneself to have attained a satisfactory degree of spiritual progress—no matter how high a degree it actually is—and to be entitled now to discontinue the struggle against one’s own nature. The example of the saints teaches us that spiritual progress implies no hardening of that fluidity of which we have spoken, no weakening of the steady will for transformation by Christ. The more one is transformed in Christ, the deeper and more unlimited his readiness to change beyond the point reached, the more he understands the dimension of depth in which that transformation must extend, and the necessity for him to place himself anew in God’s hands, again and again, so as to lie shaped anew by Christ.