Today’s quote:

And so when a soul begins to pray, and has considered some motive, which suffices to inflame the will with the desire of virtue or the avoidance of vice, and is sufficient to enable it to see the beauty of the former, or the ugliness of the latter, tell me, pray, what reason has such a one to look for motives elsewhere? All that serves only to upset them, and to give them pains in the head and stomach. After that, what remains to be done? Should one rest there and be content at being aroused and convinced on the subject of the meditation?

No, by no means; we should go on to make resolutions, and consider the means of acquiring the virtue, or avoiding the vice we are mediating on: if it be a virtue, we should then foresee the obstacles, the occasions that might cause us to fall into the opposite vice, and then take suitable means to carry them out; ‘from this very day, I am resolved to begin again, and hence I resolved to act in such and such a way.’

Vincent de Paul (Volume: 11 | Page#: 235) Repetition of Prayer, 16 August, 1655

How alert am I to the pitfalls of carrying out good intentions?