You can compare spiritual life with a long journey to the Holy City of God. So, the disciple must go forward and learn how to travel through it patiently and constantly, without return or deviation, always on a fixed route.
You cannot start the Path of Perfection if you are not born to a new life.
The past of the disciple and everything that is left behind are an obstacle. He must forget both his good and bad actions.
The one that some time was visited by the Divine Master and gave ear to His Voice, never can forget it.
He desires continuously to be in His presence and to talk to Him in order to understand Him and love Him every time better.
When the Apostle Saint Paul says: “We all shall be transformed”, and Christ says to Peter: “You are Peter, and upon this stone I shall build my church”, they teach upon the stone of our own being, such as it is, with its mistakes and its past, God wants to build His Temple.
A Son that desires peace and quietness finds a source of continuous sorrow in the atmosphere of a city. Then he looks at the sky in quest of the Divine Master, and finally confesses sorrowfully:
Under the Divine Master’s loving glance, the Son wakes from his lethargy, with his eyes dazzled by this Divine glance.
But as soon as his initial enthusiasm decreases and becomes stable, he discovers he still is very far away from the ideal he dreamed.