Overcoming sin is the first step leading to what St. Francis de Sales calls "the devout life." It is also the most difficult step, one never fully completed in this lifetime.

No one expressed this better than St. Augustine. His Confessions describes an ongoing war on many fronts to overcome sin. Augustine simply would not be baptized so that he could become a lukewarm Catholic. If he was going to be a Christian, it would only be when he made a commitment to obliterate sin and its vestiges from his life.

In 1935, a 34-year-old tailor, Jan Tyranowski, heard a sermon by a Salesian priest in his parish in Krakow, Poland. The priest's message was, "It's not difficult to be a saint."

Tyranowski took the message to heart. He regulated his daily life to make prayer its central aspect and most frequent act. He studied the writings of the great spiritual masters and gradually, methodically, reoriented his whole life to be freedom thoughts and images so that he was continually in the presence of God.

St. Francis de Sales is not the spiritual guide one would run to when burning with the fire of a recent conversion. At that point, one really believes that holiness and complete intimacy with God is possible. Now! Not only possible, but expected. And demanded.

Somewhere along the line, the penny drops. This business of being one with God is simple, but also demanding. It is not a matter of keeping an emotional fire stoked and raging. Try that and you become a problem, both to yourself and to others around you.