What is the Spiritual Life?
What does it really mean to live the spiritual life?
Is it prayer? Good behavior? Going to Mass every Sunday? Feeling close to God?
We often confuse the spiritual life with religious activity or emotional experience. But we can find examples everywhere of people engaged in religious activities who do not have the peace or dispositions that overflow from a soul filled with God’s grace. We all experience emotional movements at times and feel those movements fade away. The spiritual life is not something we build by effort. It is not something that depends on emotional feelings. Rather, it’s a gift that we receive and learn to cooperate with. The spiritual life is God’s own life living within the soul.
You already share in this life. From baptism onward, grace has been at work within you. Through every confession, every communion, every prayer made in faith, the divine life grows. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit truly dwell in you.
St. Peter describes it this way:
“He has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature.”
-2 Peter 1:4
The Church’s entire definition of the spiritual life can be summed up in that single phrase, “partakers of the divine nature”. This divine life is always available for us to receive. The task before us now is learning to live in constant openness to that grace and allow it to shape every part of our lives.
“If this divine life were better understood, we should realize that it is infinitely superior to any natural perfection of the soul, and that our greatest duty is to guard and increase it by fidelity.”
-Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life, Vol. 1, Ch. 1
Lagrange confronts us with an important challenge.
The spiritual life isn’t just moral improvement or an emotion of devotion. It’s the surrendering of your life to God. It’s an openness to His grace that allows a transformation to take place within you. This isn’t something that can be done by natural means or by any effort on our part alone. We will make efforts in the spiritual life, but all of those will fail without an offering and response to grace.
Sometimes we will have to struggle through this for long periods of time. We’re not going to overcome or achieve these advancements quickly. In the beginning, perfection doesn’t come about by simply doing the right things and avoiding the wrong things. It comes from perseverance and staying with God’s grace when things are difficult, when we’re failing, when we don’t feel anything at all. That’s what keeps the divine life alive and growing in us. Fidelity in those moments is what allows grace to do its hidden work of transformation in the soul and ultimately achieve the levels of perfection we so desperately desire.
A Note Before You Reflect
When you work through these reflection questions, don’t be afraid of the answers. Answer them honestly, even if you think they’re not the “right” answers or the ones you should be giving. You need to start building the habit of letting yourself recognize things as they really are.
God already knows your heart. But a lot of times we hold things back from Him because we don’t feel like they’re fit to bring into prayer, or we think we should already be somewhere else spiritually. The problem is, when we hold these things back, we’re not allowing God to get in there and do anything with them.
By this, you’re not telling God anything He doesn’t already know. But, you are giving Him access to parts of you He doesn’t yet have. You have to learn how to be vulnerable and honest especially if you’re not where you want to be. Your ability to acknowledge the truth and lay it before Him is absolutely necessary for real transformation to begin.
Reflection:
How have I tended to think about the spiritual life—mostly as effort, emotion, or something else?
What does it look like for me to be open and responsive to God’s grace right now, in the middle of ordinary life?
When have I experienced times of struggle or dryness in my prayer or faith? How did I respond, and what might fidelity look like in those moments?
Do I truly believe that God’s grace can transform me, even when I don’t see or feel progress?