Any special drawing in devotion is a great gift from God

"A spiritual man may be defined to be one who has received a second life from God, a life which he lives privately with God, and which is itself a kind of Divine law to his outward life, standing in the relation of supremacy to it, and at the same time leaving free play to circumstances. This second life is heavenly. Its vitality is from Heaven. Its powers are Heavenly. It is conversant with heavenly things, and deals with earthly things only to transmute them into Heavenly things by the alchemy of grace. In nothing is this individual attraction of grace more observable than in a man's devotions; and, because of the relation in which devotion stands to virtue, in nothing is it more important. With some men it is the same all through life; with others it changes with the seasons and circumstances of life. Sometimes a man sees it plainly himself; at other times others can see it, while it remains invisible to himself; sometimes it is hidden altogether, yet not necessarily absent because it is hidden. In some souls it is so strong that it molds their entire life; with others it is so weak that their devotion seems to have no rule beyond that seemingly external rule, which is more mysterious and excellent than men believe, the Calendar of the Church.


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Any special drawing in devotion is a great gift from God. It is one of the most powerful of all the secret influences of the spiritual life. It is therefore of great importance to a man not to mistake or overlook such a Heavenly attraction. Such a mistake is like a man's missing his vocation. Every man, doubtless, has a vocation: so every spiritual man has a devotional attraction, or a succession of them. For a spiritual man is one who dwells inwardly in the supernatural world, amid God's mysteries and revealed grandeurs. He is not a mere tourist who is struck by the sublime or the picturesque of theology, and admires the scenery as a whole, and has not such a familiarity with it as to enable him to break it up into separate landscapes, nor time to brood tranquilly over any of them so as to have a rational predilection for them. He dwells in the world of theology. He is like one whose fixed abode is in grand scenery. He sees it in the morning light and in the sunset's glow. He knows how it looks when the misty calm of summer noon is wafting fragrance over wood and water . He is familiar with it in the vicissitudes of storm and calm. When the distant mountains are hidden by summer's impenetrable rampart of green leaves before his window, he feels that they are there, and that winter's leafless woods will let them in upon his sight. He knows how the faces of the mountains change, according as the light strikes them in the front or from behind, and how a stranger, who has seen them in the morning, would in the evening, spite of all landmarks, be doubtful of their identity. He cannot help having preferences. Predilections are almost a necessity to him. Or at least he must honor, like a true poet, each coming season with an admiration which seems, if it only seems, to do injustice to the season that is past, like the souls who in devotion follow the Calendar of the Church, and honor most the feast under whose shadow they are sitting. So it must be to those to whom the supernatural world is a genuine home. Their life is a life of loves, and therefore of predilections also."


-- Bethlehem by Fr Frederick William Faber