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 your success and happiness. In order to make a happy choice, follow the good advice offered you in the preceding chapter, and make use of the effectual means, which I am about to point out to you.

2. In the first place, keep your heart constantly directed toward heaven. Have but one desire, namely, to know and to do the will of God. God will then bestow his grace upon you, and you will be certain to make a wise choice. No one ought to wait for an extraordinary call, such as the apostles and many great saints received. However, if you keep your heart constantly directed toward God, He will enlighten you with His grace. He will give you prudent counselors, and so ordain external circumstances that you may be led as if by the hand of your guardian angel to the state of life God intends for you.

Truly the ways of God are wonderful and manifold. Sometimes He impresses on the heart of a young child a desire for a particular state. Consequently, later on in life there can arise no question as to making a choice, the question having already been decided. To others He signifies His will only when a choice has to be made; and these often enter with joy of spirit into a state for which they had long experienced a rooted aversion.

3. In the second place, keep your soul pure. Very much - everything, indeed - depends upon this. The brighter and more transparent is the glass of a window, the more readily do the rays of the sun penetrate into the room; but the dimmer the glass, the darker will the apartment be. The soul may be compared to glass, to a mirror, into which the beams of divine grace