You are, I am sure, aware that for you penitence is now no longer limited to disclosing your sins to your confessor, but that you must now bear your sins in mind always, until your heart nearly breaks with their ugly load; and would break, were it not for your firm faith in the mercy of our Lord.
Pray that you may be granted the grace to read the Fathers with the right understanding, the grace to live up to the standards they put before you, and the grace clearly to see your own frailty. You will not long be left wanting and waiting. God will give you help.
For this present life is but a way by which we travel towards our heavenly home. And because of this we are, in the inscrutable wisdom of God, wearied by frequent disquiet, so that we may not come to love the way more than our home. For there are travelers who when on their way see some smiling field, while they delight in its beauty, they slow their steps and turn aside from the straight path they had begun. The Lord therefore has made the way of this world hard for His Elect in their journey to Him, so that none of them may take his rest in this life, enjoying the beauty of the way, but may hasten speedily towards Him rather than linger by the way; or lest, delighting in the way, they come to forget they once longed for their heavenly home.
You ask for some way of completely eradicating irritability. The inclination to irritability is given us to use against sin, and we were never meant to use it against our fellow men. When we do, we act contrary to our true nature.
Prayer requires the inseparable presence and cooperation of the attention. With attention, prayer becomes the inalienable property of the person praying; in the absence of attention, it is extraneous to the person praying. With attention, it bears abundant fruit; without attention, it produces thorns and thistles. The fruit of prayer consists in illumination of mind and compunction of heart; in the quickening of the soul with the life of the Spirit. Thorns and thistles are a sign of deadness of soul and pharisaical self-esteem which springs from the hardening of a heart which is contented and elated by the quantity of the prayers and the time spent in reciting those prayers.
Our achievements must never loom large in our eyes; only our failures. But this must never lead us to despondency - the constant temptation - only to humility.
If the highest aim of virtue is that which aims at the advancement of most, gentleness is the most lovely of all, which does not hurt even those whom it condemns, and usually renders them whom it condemns worthy of absolution.
He stands, then - but not alone, for before Him go angels, saying: 'Lift up the gates, O ye the princes.' What gates? Even those of which the Psalmist sings in another place also: 'Open to me the gates of righteousness.' Open, then, thy gates to Christ, that He may come into thee - open the gates of righteousness, the gates of chastity, the gates of courage and wisdom. Believe the message of the angels: 'Be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in, the Lord of Sabaoth.'
Not one of us can boast of having acquired humility: our actions, the whole of our life, prove the contrary. And where there is a lack of humility, pride is always present. Where light is wanting, darkness reigns.
Mary's life should be for you a pictorial image of virginity. Her life is like a mirror reflecting the face of chastity and the form of virtue. Therein you may find a model for your own life... showing what to improve, what to imitate, what to hold fast to.
