Against this background the defects of any person will appear not as so many trivial irritants or repellent traits, but in their character as sins or consequences of sin, possibly as something terrible and monstrous, but at any rate as something that betokens the wretchedness of human nature in its universality, and above all, something that causes us to think of both the justice and the mercy of God. Moreover, even against the background of sin, the greatness of the spiritual person as an image of God, the fact of the Incarnation uniting and elevating—in an ineffable way—human nature to the Divine one, as well as the sublime beauty of a human soul in the state of grace, must remain present to our vision. Thus do we establish a decisive condition for charity and spontaneous kindliness to rise in our souls. How should love blossom in us, unless we penetrate the ultimate reality and grasp the beauty attached to every human soul?—a beauty that can never be definitively destroyed before the status viae is terminated.

The same consideration applies to all virtues. In regard to all of them, we must begin by liberating ourselves, again and again, from the unessential aspects inherent to the natural plane of vision, by rising to the truth of God, by endeavoring to see all things in their creational meaning and in the transfiguring light which Christ has spread above them. All virtues consist in a habit of the right response to God and the world of values: to place ourselves in the perspective of Truth complete is the prime condition for our acquiring them.

Transformation calls us continually to renew our surrender to God

The second thing we may do by our own will for the transformation of our nature is to renew from time to time our express act of surrender to God—an act leading to a prayer of petition. Again and again we must come to realize that we can do nothing by ourselves but may expect everything from God, and entrust our souls to His hands, saying with the Psalmist, “I am Thine” (Ps. 118:94). In the same breath, we must realize the insufficiency of this our act itself; our impotence, that is to say, to anchor ourselves in God once for all, by one act of devotion or surrender. Hence, that act itself will move us on to ask God for His freely granted help, continuing to speak with the Psalmist: “Save Thou me.”

Transformation calls us to ascetical practices

In the third place, we may contribute directly to our transformation by single salutary practices, particularly of asceticism. Renunciation of certain permissible pleasures will help us in dying unto ourselves and becoming empty so that God may enter in us.