The Practices

Concrete disciplines for the pursuit of perfection.

The spiritual life is not an abstraction. It is lived in the daily choices of the tongue, the mind, the will, and the body. These practices are not a program—they are the shape of a life surrendered to God.

Silence

Overall, speak less.
Guard your tongue against gossip, boasting, deceit, and vainglory.
Make time for silence. Unplug and learn to hear your inner thoughts, including how self-centered, prideful, defensive, and judgmental they can be.
Allow only information that makes you better to enter your mind. Waste no time entertaining sinful thoughts, whether they come from yourself, others, or the media.

Stop Judging Others

Except when judgment falls within your legitimate jurisdiction and is necessary for the good of others and the sake of fairness.
Your sins and imperfections are enough to spend the time correcting. Work on yourself and cooperate with God's grace.
Regard others as more important than you. Humility is the antidote to judgment.
Learn to beg God to make you love Him perfectly. Do not pray for this casually. Plead with Him earnestly and persistently, recognizing that only His grace can accomplish it in you.

Trade

When faced with temptation: "God of mercy and abundance, I trade the desired good of this temptation for your infinite gifts and joy in heaven."
You are not truly giving anything up when you refuse to act on temptation. On the contrary, you are storing up treasure in heaven.

Pray

Learn how to pray. Do not assume you already know how. Most people don't, and you may be one of them.
Study the nine levels of prayer, which unfold across the three ways: purgative, illuminative, and unitive.
Spend at least 30 minutes in mental prayer each day.
Meditate often on Christ's Passion.
Tell Jesus often that you love Him.
Remain close to Our Lady and ask for her intercession.
Pray the Rosary daily.

Sacramental and devotional life

The ordinary means of grace.

Mass

Work toward attending Mass daily. If you sincerely desire it, God will make possible what is possible. That's all you need.

Adoration

Make a Holy Hour or short visit whenever you can.

Confession

Go to Confession at least monthly, although weekly is best.

A guide for self-examination

The Nine Levels of the Spiritual Life

In The Soul of the Apostolate, Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard provides spiritual directors with guidance for assessing the spiritual progress of those entrusted to their care. His framework can be considered alongside the Pipeline of Grace as a helpful measure of one's own spiritual progress.

Complete Sanctity

Imperfections

Hardly apparent.

Prayer

Usually, transforming union. Spiritual marriage. Purifications by love. Ardent thirst for sufferings and humiliations.

Heroic Perfection

Imperfections

Nothing but the first impulse.

Prayer

Supernatural graces of contemplation, sometimes accompanied by extraordinary phenomena. Pronounced passive purifications. Contempt of self to the point of complete self-forgetfulness. Prefers suffering to joys.

Relative Perfection

Imperfections

Guards against them energetically and with much love. They only happen with half-advertence.

Prayer

Habitual life of prayer, even when occupied in external works. Thirst for self-renunciation, annihilation, detachment, and divine love. Hunger for the Eucharist and for Heaven. Graces of infused prayer, of different degree. Often passive purification.

Fervor

Imperfections

Wants nothing to do with them. Watches over them, fights them with courage. Sometimes accepted, however, but regretted at once. Frequent acts of renunciation.

Prayer

Mental prayer gladly prolonged. Prayer on the affective side, or even prayer of simplicity. Alternation between powerful consolations and fierce trials.

Sustained Piety

Imperfections

The soul either avoids uncovering them, so as not to have to fight them, or else easily excuses them.

Prayer

Always faithful to prayer, no matter what happens. Often affective. Alternating consolations and dryness, the latter endured with considerable hardship.

Intermittent Piety

Imperfections

Puts up a weak fight. Sorrow only superficial.

Prayer

Not firmly resolved to remain faithful to meditation. Gives it up as soon as dryness is felt, or as soon as there is business to attend to.

Mediocre Piety

Imperfections

Complete acceptance of venial sin, which is considered as insignificant. Does nothing to prevent, extirpate, or uncover it.

Prayer

From time to time, prays well. Momentary fits of fervor.

Surface Christianity

Imperfections

Mortal sin considered as a trifling evil, easily forgiven. Confession almost without contrition.

Prayer

Mechanical; either inattentive, or always dictated by temporal interest. Such souls enter into themselves very rarely and superficially.

Hardened in Sin

Imperfections

Stubborn persistence in sin, either out of ignorance or because of a maliciously warped conscience.

Prayer

Deliberate refusal to have any recourse to God.

Excerpted and reordered from Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O., The Soul of the Apostolate, "Action Made Fruitful," pp. 180–183.