‘He must increase, but I must decrease’ – there is a more intimate sense in which the words concern us. For the business of our life in this world, after all, is not to leave a mark on it behind us or to take an honored name away from it with us, but to make our peace with God before he calls us to a better one. And what is it, making our peace with God, but letting the influence of our Lord grow more and more in us, dominating our lives and throwing self into the background. He must increase; whenever he comes to me in Holy Communion, whenever he draws close to me in prayer, what is his purpose but that my will should be more his will, my life more his life. ‘I must decrease’ – this self that struggles so against the supernatural influence of his grace, that makes me so proud, so grasping, so quick to take offence: only as it decreases will he increase; only as he increases will it decrease. Thus would I live, yet now not I, but he in all his power and love henceforth alive in me.

– Msgr. Ronald Knox