Spiritual Maturity

When a child asks, “Who do we most look up to in the Church?” The answer is not the Pope, but the Saints. It is those who shared God’s desires — and lived them out — that we most seek to emulate.

If this is true of the heights of holiness and hierarchy, it must also be true of our ordinary vision of the Church’s life. While Holy Orders changes the nature of a man’s soul to conform to Christ the Priest, personal holiness— our attunement with God’s desires— is open to all. I propose moving from thinking in terms of Clerical / Lay to thinking in terms of Spiritually Mature / Disciples. This will more accurately reflect the nature of holiness in the Church and allow those who are spiritually mature to rely less on priests to carry forward their mission contributing to the growth of the faith.

If the Church is to move from a privatized-interior life to a relational-ecclesial growth in holiness, it is helpful for spiritual leaders to understand clearly the different kinds of relationship that foster this growth. A spiritually mature person is one who has experienced deep spiritual healing and lives her/his life moved by the desire to grow the life of grace in others. These persons can generally name their deepest wounds and describe the experience of receiving Jesus into that place. Among the spiritually mature, there are more open spiritual conversations as they care for one another. The way of relating changes based on the state-in-life and personal characteristics, but these are the freest forms of relationship in the Church.

When the spiritually mature are speaking to a disciple, they relate to the disciple in such a way as to foster the life of grace in the heart of the disciple. If you are at a place of spiritual maturity, the Lord is calling you to invest in others that “your life may bear fruit”. If you are still new to spiritual things, seek out those who are more mature! They can walk with you to a place of greater interior freedom and habits that support the joy of a holy life.