- Spiritual Development should have pride of place. Our faith is foundational to everything else we do. For good or ill.
Section II – Spiritual Development Should Have Pride of Place
In every age, the Church has taught that the spiritual life is not an accessory to human existence. It is the organizing principle of a well-ordered life. To say that spiritual development should have pride of place is to make a theological and anthropological claim. It affirms that the human person is created for a supernatural end and that all created goods bear fruit only when placed in right relation to that end. Faith is not one category among many; it is the foundation upon which every other dimension of life stands or falls.
Placing spiritual development first is an acknowledgment that the most important work of every Christian is interior. This does not diminish the weight of our vocational, familial, or civic responsibilities. Instead, it orders them. When the interior life is starved, relationships strain, work becomes burdensome, and our reactions are shaped by fear or self-protection. When the interior life is nourished, the same external circumstances are received with greater freedom, patience, clarity, and charity. What has changed is not the situation but the soul.
Scripture gives this truth with striking simplicity: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”¹ This is not a spiritual suggestion but a law. When the kingdom is first, everything else finds its measure. When it becomes second, nothing holds together. The heart divides easily, even while pursuing goods that appear admirable. Lesser goods slide quietly into the place meant for God, and the result is a rise in anxiety, a loss of joy, and a subtle erosion of interior coherence.
The Catholic tradition articulates this dynamic with metaphysical clarity. Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches that a person’s ultimate end shapes every choice leading toward it.² If our end is communion with God, then every action of the day can become an expression of that orientation. If the ultimate end shifts—even slightly—toward comfort, control, reputation, or self-reliance, the interior life fractures. Aquinas insists that the highest act of the human person is contemplation of God, because in this act the intellect and will rest in their true object.³ To prioritize spiritual development is therefore to prioritize the flourishing of the human faculties as God designed them.
Modern life resists this ordering. It trains us toward efficiency, achievement, and measurable productivity. In such an environment, the spiritual life can seem intangible, quiet, and unproductive. Yet the saints bear witness that it is the only place where real transformation occurs. Saint John Henry Newman observed that authentic growth unfolds slowly, hidden before it becomes visible: “Knowledge and virtue… are growths; they proceed by degrees; they expand, and they strengthen.”⁴ This hidden growth is the fruit of grace received and cooperated with through prayer, sacrament, and fidelity. When interior growth is primary, exterior fruit follows in its time.
[Giving primacy to the spiritual life also protects us from treating faith merely as private consolation. Every vocation is elevated and strengthened when rooted in prayer. Marriage becomes a school of charity rather than a battleground of unmet expectations. Parenting becomes a participation in God’s own care for His children. Professional work becomes a sphere of justice, generosity, and quiet witness. Even suffering becomes a place where grace works steadily. None of these transformations occur automatically; they unfold as a soul is conformed to Christ through daily fidelity.
To say that faith is foundational “for good or ill” acknowledges both the promise and the danger. When faith is central, life is rightly ordered. When it becomes peripheral, disorder enters quickly. We may continue to speak of faith, attend Mass, and perform good actions, while interiorly placing trust in self-reliance or control. The heart cannot serve two masters. When faith is not first, something else will take its place. The result is fragmentation. The language of faith remains, but its power diminishes because the interior posture has shifted.
For this reason, the Christian tradition treasures daily prayer. Not because prayer earns favor, but because prayer places God in His rightful place in the human heart. Prayer reorders our loves. It renews first principles each day. It acknowledges, in humility and trust, that God is God and we are not. In prayer, His presence reshapes our desires, our choices, and our interpretation of reality. Daily prayer is not one resolution among many; it is the resolution that gives coherence to all others.]
A life ordered by spiritual development is not removed from ordinary responsibilities. It is ordinary life illuminated from within. It is marked by clarity about what matters, by peace not dependent on circumstances, and by the steady formation characteristic of true discipleship. The Christian who places spiritual growth at the center does not retreat from the world but engages it with a freedom and generosity that cannot be produced by effort alone. It is the fruit of grace received, interiorly assimilated, and lived outwardly.
To give the spiritual life pride of place is not an added burden at the beginning of a new year. It is the only way to live a life of ordered love, resilient peace, and credible Christian witness. Everything else either flows from it or collapses without it.
Reflection Question
Where have I allowed secondary goods to overshadow the primacy of God, and what small act of prayer or surrender is God inviting me to offer today?
Citations
¹ Matthew 6:33 (NABRE).
² Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I–II, q. 1, a. 2.
³ Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I–II, q. 3, a. 5.
⁴ John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 1 (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1891), 25.
First episode, necessity of silence. In a world so focused on productivity. Silence, nothing being measurable productive. Entirely reductive of the human person. God gives Adam some level work. Work was a restoration of man’s dignity, the contemplation of God.
So we are in the state where only good is measurable.
Spiritual life not measured. Give time to God, consolations are a mercy from Him, not a right.
Growth in the spiritual may not have a corollary in the physical life.