At this spiritual age we need a mother. Devotion to the Virgin Mary has proved to be an inspiration to people at this stage. We need someone to carry us, console us, teach us to walk, pick us up when we fall down, and dry our tears. The response of faith to the events of life is the sign of spiritual adolescence. We stop trying to solve our emotional problems by means of selfish motives and try to solve them after the manner of the people we have been observing in the gospel.
Victory is never a hundred percent, but a more or less affair with innumerable regressions.
In the crisis of faith, God asks of us two sacrifices. One is the sacrifice of the desert, and the other is to sacrifice of praise. We saw both of these at work in the incidents already described. The sacrifice of the desert is the sacrifice of bearing with temptation. When we experience the rebellion of our passions we offer ourselves to God in that state of weakness, misery, and apparent defeat.