"As a priest, people often talk to me about their lives and their problems.  Inevitably, I ask them how their relationship with God is.  I can usually tell from their response if they have a long-distance relationship with the Lord.  The language they use reveals that a deep, personal friendship with God is somewhat of a foreign concept.  For example, they’ll say, “Well, I say my prayers at night before I go to bed,” or “I go to church,” or, my favorite, “I talk to the Big Guy in the sky; we’re tight.”

Great.  Saying prayers at night and going to church is a wonderful way to deepen our relationship with God.  But saying prayers at night and going to church does not necessarily mean that we have a deep, personal friendship with the Lord either.  And as for “talking to the Big Guy in the sky,” that’s simply not Christian spirituality; it’s deism.  In fact, therein lay the problem: too many people think God is “out there somewhere” rather than very close to them.

"The following article is adapted from Discovering God Together:  The Catholic Guide to Raising Faithful Kids

​Most people think that faith is something you either have or you don’t.  But research by Emory University’s Dr. James Fowler revealed that faith evolves in discernible stages throughout our lifespan.  At each stage, a person’s faith needs to be nourished in different ways if it is to grow and mature into the next stage. If we don’t receive the right kind of support, faith development can stall or even wither.  Because Fowler viewed faith as a natural and essential part of every human person’s search for meaning, significance, and transcendence, Fowler’s Stages of Faith track with other developmental stages you might remember from your Psych 101 class, such as Erik Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development and Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development. What Stage of Faith are you at?  And what do you need to do to more effectively continue your search for meaning, significance, and transcendence?
 
STAGE 0: Primal Faith (Infancy)–  People might be surprised to realize that babies have faith.  It’s true that they don’t have a conscious experience of faith and can’t articulate specific beliefs,  but this stage is tremendously important because it sets the stage for baby’s view of God and the world.  If parents respond to baby’s needs promptly, generously, and consistently, baby learns the basic, gut-level sense of trust that is necessary to believe that when I call out, God will answer. If parents delay responding to baby’s cries, baby develops gut-level insecurity that anyone will respond when I cry out or that there is anyone to bother crying out to in the first place.
 

​A rule of life is a discerned commitment to the Lord, specifying the “tools” one will use to grow closer to Him. The first rule of life was set forth in the monasteries as groups of men and women joined in community to love and serve the Lord: they knew when they would wake, eat, pray, study, and work throughout the day. Religious congregations (including third order members and lay members of movements) still have specified obligations that orient them to the Lord according to their specific charism and mission. However, all lay people are encouraged to pray about and utilize a rule of life … according to their state in life and personal spirituality. For Catholics, the Church provides a “skeletal” rule of life via its precepts: Sunday Mass, annual confession, reception of Eucharist during the Easter season, days of fast/abstinence, and tithing (Catechism of the Catholic Church # 241-243). Yet, anyone who desires to grow in holiness should do more than the bare minimum, just as a marathon aspirant will need to do more than walk a mile a day.

Growth in holiness occurs with regular correspondence to the Lord’s desire to be with us and for us. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3: 20).  The rule of life makes the spiritual life fruitful because one is intentional about opening the door to the Lord.