SPIRITUAL PROGRESS
Where Am I Actually?
The Path explains where the Catholic spiritual life is going. The Principles give practical guidance for remaining on that path. Spiritual Progress asks a more uncomfortable question: Where am I actually?
Real progress appears in what we permit, what we resist, what we love, and how faithfully we turn to God in prayer. It can be seen in the weakening of deliberate sin, the growth of virtue, the surrender of attachments, and an increasingly steady union with God.
MORE THAN APPEARANCES
Knowledge and Activity Do Not Prove Holiness
It is easy to think we are making progress because we know more, feel more religious, attend more events, or have become interested in serious spiritual books. Those things can help, but none of them proves that the soul is becoming holy.
Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard examines spiritual progress principally through a person's relationship to sin, imperfections, and prayer. These realities expose the condition of the will. Sin reveals what we still choose against God. Prayer reveals whether we actually live in dependence upon Him.
“The deepest measure of progress is charity: loving God above all things for His own sake and loving our neighbor for God's sake.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1822
A GUIDE FOR SELF-EXAMINATION
Approach the Levels With Humility
The Nine Levels are not official grades assigned by the Catholic Church. They are a traditional ascetical framework drawn from Chautard's guidance concerning sin, imperfection, and prayer.
Every soul is its own world. A person may show signs of two adjacent levels, advance in one area while remaining weak in another, or briefly act above or below his usual condition. The proper question is not, "Which description matched my best day?" It is, "What pattern has governed my life over time?"
Read slowly and resist the urge to choose a flattering label.
Look for stable habits rather than isolated successes or failures.
Pay special attention to what you knowingly excuse.
Bring serious uncertainty about sin to Confession.
Bring questions about advanced prayer, passive purification, or unusual spiritual experiences to a competent spiritual director.
End by choosing the next act of fidelity, not merely by naming a level.
Do not use the levels to diagnose other people. Exterior appearances reveal very little about knowledge, consent, temptation, interior struggle, repentance, or grace. God alone sees the whole soul.
TERMS THAT MUST BE CLEAR
Sin, Imperfection, and Prayer
Mortal Sin
Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart and turns the person away from God as his final end. The first movements of the spiritual life therefore concern conversion, repentance, Confession, and a decisive break with grave sin.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1855Venial Sin
Venial sin does not destroy the life of grace, but it wounds charity, weakens the will, and disposes the soul toward greater sin. The concern is not scrupulous fear of accidental faults, but the deliberate willingness to say no to God.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1862–1863Imperfections
Imperfections are faults, attachments, or resisted invitations that keep charity from becoming more generous. Not every imperfection is a distinct sin. The concern is whatever obstructs a fuller love of God.
Prayer
Prayer is not one item among many. Spiritual growth is impossible without grace, and prayer is the habitual turning of the soul toward the God who gives that grace.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2098FROM RESISTANCE TO UNION
The Nine Levels of the Spiritual Life
The early levels concern rescue from spiritual death and instability. The middle levels concern fidelity, purification, and the movement from merely avoiding sin toward seeking perfection. The final levels concern deep union, passive purification, and the transformation of the soul by love.
Hardened in Sin
Stubborn persistence in sin and a deliberate refusal to have recourse to God.
Surface Christianity
Mortal sin is treated lightly, Confession lacks contrition, and prayer remains mechanical, inattentive, or primarily concerned with temporal interests.
Mediocre Piety
There is weak resistance to mortal sin, acceptance of deliberate venial sin, and only occasional prayer or momentary fervor.
Intermittent Piety
Mortal sin is resisted more loyally, but deliberate venial faults remain and meditation is abandoned during dryness or pressure of business.
Sustained Piety
Prayer has become faithful and mortal sin is no longer ordinarily accepted. Venial sin is resisted, but imperfections and attachments may still be excused.
Fervor
Deliberate venial sin is rejected, imperfections are fought courageously, mental prayer is gladly prolonged, and the soul begins to practice more generous renunciation.
Relative Perfection
The soul guards energetically against imperfections, lives habitually in prayer, thirsts for self-renunciation and divine love, and may begin to receive infused graces of prayer.
Heroic Perfection
Imperfections remain chiefly as involuntary first impulses. Passive purification and supernatural contemplation may be present, accompanied by profound self-forgetfulness.
Complete Sanctity
Imperfections are hardly apparent. Prayer is usually transforming union or spiritual marriage, and the soul is deeply conformed to God through perfected charity.
Excerpted and reordered from Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O., The Soul of the Apostolate, "Action Made Fruitful," pp. 180–183.
HONEST SELF-EXAMINATION
Look for the Pattern That Governs Your Life
The Nine Levels become useful only when they produce honest action. Avoid both presumption and despair. Presumption chooses a high level because its description is attractive. Despair chooses a low level and treats it as a permanent identity.
A level describes a present pattern, not a permanent destiny. Examine a period of months rather than a single day.
What Do I Permit?
Do I knowingly remain in mortal sin? Do I remove near occasions? Do I make peace with deliberate venial sin because it seems small? Do I avoid discovering attachments and imperfections?
What Happens After I Fall?
Do I rationalize, hide, or blame? Does sorrow lead to a good Confession, reparation, practical change, and stronger resistance?
What Happens to Prayer Under Pressure?
Is prayer absent, mechanical, occasional, regular, faithful in dryness, willingly prolonged, or habitual throughout the day? When life becomes busy, is prayer the first duty removed?
What Is the Direction of My Love?
Am I merely trying to avoid punishment or meet minimum obligations? Do I desire to please God in small things? Do I seek virtue, accept renunciation, desire the Eucharist, and remember God during exterior work?
“The central issue is not the number of temptations. A saint may be fiercely tempted. The issue is consent: what does the will deliberately permit, excuse, or protect?”
DO NOT STOP AT A NUMBER
Let Examination Produce Action
Stop defending grave sin. Ask for the desire to repent and seek Confession.
Move from outward appearance to interior conversion through examination, contrition, and daily prayer.
Remove near occasions, establish a stable rule, and fight one tolerated venial sin.
Protect mental prayer during dryness and business. Give the particular examination of conscience a real method.
Move beyond merely avoiding sin into generous virtue and concrete renunciation.
Allow mental prayer to deepen into love. Receive consolation and trial without becoming attached to either.
Remain faithful during passive purification and receive infused graces without trying to manufacture them.
Forget self, hide graces, and prefer God's will to both suffering and consolation.
Consent to God's transforming work until charity governs the whole life.
Progress is usually slow, repetitive, and hidden. A person may spend years learning fidelity at one decisive point, and a person may also regress. The proper response to regression is immediate return to God, not dramatic self-condemnation.
OBJECTIVE GUIDANCE
Do Not Rely Entirely on Your Own Judgment
A faithful spiritual director can provide objective guidance through self-deception, dryness, difficulties in prayer, passive purification, and more advanced movements of the interior life.
Serious questions about mortal sin belong in Confession. Questions about unusual spiritual experiences, infused prayer, or passive purification should be brought to a competent spiritual director rather than interpreted alone.
Nor should a person constantly inspect his soul in a way that turns attention away from God. Examination has a purpose: to identify what must be surrendered. Once a clear duty is seen, perform it and return your gaze to Christ.
GRACE COMES FIRST
Complete Sanctity Is Beyond Your Strength
No one advances through the spiritual life by raw willpower. Discipline matters, but discipline cannot create sanctifying grace, infused charity, contemplation, or transforming union. God gives the life and God gives the growth.
Our responsibility is to stop resisting, use the means He has established, and cooperate with the grace actually offered. That cooperation includes Confession, reparation, prayer in dryness, renunciation, obedience, patient virtue, and acceptance of purification.
“See where you are. Admit what must change. Take the next faithful step. Then let God do in you what you could never do alone.”
CONTINUE THE JOURNEY
Examination Must Lead Back to God
The purpose of examining spiritual progress is not to become preoccupied with ourselves. It is to recognize what must be surrendered, respond faithfully to grace, and return our attention to Christ.