One of the secrets of the spirit is to recognize the bond of love that exists because God has reached out to us, has loved us so much that he asked his Son to die for us. Once we have a sense of how inexhaustible, how great, how limitless that love is, then we can open ourselves up, then we can truly invite the Holy Spirit into our lives.

There may have been no more exciting—and frightening!—time to be alive in Europe than on the eve of the invention of the printing press, with the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation already blowing winds of change through the Church. Perhaps it is precisely because of those winds howling outside that the young Thomas à Kempis (his name simply means Thomas from Kempis) wanted above all a quiet life. He was determined, it is said, that nothing would happen to him in his life...