The Path of Spiritual Growth

What exactly is Catholic spiritual growth? So let’s say you are working on creating a habit of prayer. You’ve found your prayer language. You are becoming more and more focused on your relationship with the Three Persons of the Trinity. First of all – go You! That’s just a slice of awesomeness! But does that mean that you have mastered Catholic spirituality?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but – ahem – the truth is that you just got started.

There are two points that you need to consider next:

1. Because prayer is a relationship with God, there is no end to how deep you can go. There is always room for growth in your prayer life.

2. Prayer is a very important part of Catholic spirituality, but it is only part of Catholic spirituality. Think of it as a human relationship. Communication is always part of a healthy relationship. But there are other parts too. Good relationships are also built on all of the little sacrifices you make for each other, changes you make to serve each other better, the ways you serve each other. These are all important parts of a good relationship. The same is true in our relationship with God. Conversion and acts of charity are as much a part of spirituality as prayer.

The Path to Holiness

Many spiritual masters and saints teach about a progression of spiritual growth.

• Saint Teresa of Avila
• Saint Francis de Sales
• Saint John of the Cross

Each of these saints has a slightly different version of the path to holiness. But they all have basically the same progression. However, the steps aren’t necessarily rigid. Most of us will go back and forth between them as we grow. But being able to measure where you are for the most part will help you to gauge the health of your spiritual project.

The Progression of Spiritual Growth

1. Conquer mortal sin
To mortally sin means to do freely do something that is gravely opposed to love even though you know that it is wrong. Obviously you can’t have a relationship with God if you purposely do what is opposed to love.

2. Get rid of all grave sin
Even if you don’t freely choose to commit serious sin, it is still a major problem. Sin means to “miss the mark” – to miss out on the goodness that God wants in our lives. So while non-mortal grave sin may not be directly opposed to love because we’re not choosing to do evil, it sill gets in the way of living a full life as a child of God. It still gets in the way of our spiritual growth.

3. Conquer venial sin
Officially, a grave sin that is not freely done with full knowledge is considered a venial sin. But there is also the kind of sin that is not so serious. These are the kinds of little sins we perform due to our weaknesses. Saint Francis de Sales tells us that if we laugh at the size of our little sins, we should tremble at their number. Think of venial sins like little weights that weigh you down, keeping you from soaring to the heights.

4. Grow in natural virtue
We don’t necessarily have to conquer all of our sin before we start to grow in virtue. In fact, they often go hand-in-hand as we replace our vices with new virtues. But once our lives are free of the habits that lead us away from God and his plan for our lives, we can focus all of our energy on becoming who God wants us to be. Grace builds on nature. So to prepare ourselves to receive grace more completely, we want to become the best human persons that we can be. That’s where natural virtues come in. Natural virtues help us to maximize the human potential that God gave you. The purpose of becoming the best you can be isn’t for self-gratification. God made us to love. The closer we become to who God created us to be, the better we will be able to love.

5 Grow in supernatural virtue
Love is exactly where supernatural virtue comes in. Supernatural virtues help us to have a relationship with God and to live more perfectly as members of God’s family. So, whereas natural temperance helps us to find balance in our life so our reason is always in control of our desires, supernatural temperance helps us to see all authentically good things as signs of God’s love for us.

6. Love
As we grow in supernatural virtue, we grow in love. Love is a very complex concept (one that we’ll cover more completely another time, perhaps). But ultimately, when we talk about loving as Christ loves we mean to freely give ourselves to God as a gift. We love God when we give him everything that we are. By getting rid of sin and growing in virtue, we offer God the best that we can be.

7. Devotion
Saint Francis de Sales defines devotion as a love for God that is so intense that it makes acts of love and prayer easy, pleasurable and spontaneous. In other words, devotion is the point at which we have completely formed our lives around God. It is the point at which we live in the heart of God, and he truly lives in our hearts. Devotion is complete, unmitigated love. This is the goal of the spiritual life.

Once again, let me reinforce the fact that our journey down this path is not often a straight line from one stage to the next. We tend to jump around, sometimes due to human weakness and sinfulness and sometimes because of a specific plan for spiritual growth. And that’s OK. But this path does give us a measure of spiritual progress. Where do you find yourself most of the time? Me? I’m somewhere between stages 2 and 3 most of the time. But that’s going to change. I’m going to get back on the path and start growing.

Your Homework

I’m not going to ask you to confess where you are in this process. That’s between you and God. Feel free to share if you want to, but you don’t have to. Instead, your homework is to tell us what your next step will be in the progression! Will you make another commitment in one of the Keys to Spiritual Growth and join us for another round? Will you purchase one of From the Abbey’s courses and dive deeper? You could certainly do both. Or have you found another aid in your journey that you can share with us? Maybe a book or a spiritual director or another teacher has entered your life. Please share whatever you choose to do. But do something! Don’t rest here. Keep growing in your faith!

Brought to you by Jeffrey S. Arrowood at From the Abbey, dedicated to helping you rediscover the JOY of learning and living your faith so you can grow in intimacy with God.