We fail to achieve holiness because we waste our opportunities. We have a lack of faith; we fail to live on a supernatural plane. What we all need is to see God's hand in the people and events around us. God wills or permits all that happens - we have heard this a thousand times. But do we really believe it? We are frustrated by some event, annoyed by some personality and we look at what happened and say, "Why was that done this way?" or "What did she do that for?" for we think: if I had been somewhere else... Or: if conditions were different... And these are all things that did not happen and that will not happen and they keep us from adjusting to what really happened. And we lose grace by giving way to complaint or irritation or jealousy or carelessness or some other error and we waste our lives. WE LOSE SIGHT OF THE DIVINE ELEMENT THAT IS IN REALITY. We are never sanctified by supposition or possibility, never! We are sanctified only by reality. The person next to you, the thing that just happened is your opportunity for holiness given by God. To look for your holiness anywhere else is to depart from truth.

--Fr. Thomas Kilduff, OCD