Memorial of St. Francis Xavier Cabrini

There is a “diaspora,” a dispersion, even within ourselves. If Jesus were to ask me, as He did that poor demonic in the Gospel: “What is your name?” I too would have to reply: “My name is legion, for there are many of us. There are many of us as there are desires, plans and regrets which we harbor, each one different from and contrary to others which pull us in opposite directions. They literally dis-tract us, drag us apart. Virginity is a powerful aid to progress toward interior unity, in virtue of the fact that it enables us to live united to the Lord, and able to devote ourselves to Him “without distractions.” St. Augustine has written: “Through continence, in fact, we are gathered in and returned to the One, from which we have flowed out into many. For he loves You less who loves something else along with You, which he does not love for Your sake.”
This unity is what Jesus calls “purity of heart,” and it is realized most of all at the level of the will. It consists in wanting fewer and fewer things, until eventually one wants “one thing only”…that one thing being God.
--Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap