Vigilance

Luke 12:35-38

"St. John Chrysostom once wrote to someone who had fallen away from the Faith: The worse thing is not that the warrior has fallen in battle. The worse thing would be that he remain down. It is bit the end when someone falls wounded in the fray. What is lamentable is when the wounded person does not go to get proper treatment for his wound.

Let us not forget that our 'struggle in little things' serves to strengthen the soul and enhance its docility to the action of the Holy Spirit. The other side of the coin is that our neglect of little things provides the breach in our defences where the enemy frequently has us at disadvantage: we may be neglectful or careless in matters of punctuality, in the quality of our prayer, in remembering the value of little mortifications at meals, in the guarding of our senses...The greatest danger for a Christian is to underestimate the importance of fighting skirmishes. The refusal to fight the little battles can, little by little, leave him soft, weak and indifferent, insensitive to the accents of God's voice."
--from In Conversation with God, vol.5, p. 288