Many parents remember their babies’ first step. I’m just as fascinated by a child’s first jump. Our sixteen-month-old has recently been attempting to jump for the first time. The older siblings make a circle around her, cheering her on and modeling for her how to do it. They all bend their knees, get low to the ground, and then suddenly spring upward while exhorting their little sister, “Jump! You can do it! Jump!”

The child just loves all the attention and excitement! She smiles, laughs, and then tries to imitate them. She bends her knees, too. She gets low to the ground. She locks into position and attempts the great launch upward. And then? Nothing. Her two feet never leave the ground.

She smiles and tries a second time. Still no takeoff. After three or four more attempts, she’s not laughing anymore. Her smile has turned to a look of frustration. The more her siblings encourage her, the sadder she becomes with each failed attempt. She simply can’t do this jumping thing.

We disciples can sometimes feel the same. We want to be better at prayer. We want to root out our bad habits and sins. We sincerely strive to imitate Christ. But we can’t. No matter how hard we try, we find ourselves struggling with the same weaknesses. We want to rise up to God, but feel stuck and frustrated and wonder if our spiritual life will ever take off.

Indeed, the process of being conformed to Christ is not an easy one. And it doesn’t happen overnight. Through the course of life, we slowly learn what it means to live like Jesus, how to follow him, and how to be more virtuous and grow in holiness.. And all along the way, we learn a most important lesson: the whole process of being changed into Christ’s likeness is ultimately God’s work.

“Apart from me you can do nothing.” (Jn 15:5)

We may know this in our heads, “Yes, I am a sinner, filled with many weaknesses. I need God’s help. I can’t do this on my own.” But do we know this deep in our hearts? Do we live from this conviction day by day, moment by moment, in all we do? Being formed as Christian disciples involves learning how to live from this fundamental truth about how we are completely dependent on God and learning how to rely on God’s grace for all we do, not just “in times of need.” After all, Jesus didn’t say, “Apart from me you can do only fifty percent.” He said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5, emphasis added). Only someone who is utterly convinced of this truth and who lives from this truth—not just in his head but at the core of his being—can fully progress as a disciple of the Lord.

A Masterpiece in Three Movements

God’s work of conforming us to the image of his Son usually takes a lifetime. But we can discern three ongoing movements in this beautiful process of discipleship. These are not stages or levels in the spiritual life, but movements that many saints in various ways describe as happening time after time throughout their lives as they sought deeper union with God. Think of these as three movements in the spiritual life that are part of our ongoing conversion, our ever-deeper transformation in imitating Christ.

1. The Upward Struggle

2. Falling Back

3. Lifted by God’s Grace

Let’s now look at the first two movements: our struggle up to God (our earnest striving to live like Christ) and our falling back in failure and weakness. No matter how hard we try, we come face-to-face with our inability to live the Christian life as well as we’d like to. We will see that it is here that God wants to meet us—in our weakness, as we really are, not as we’d like to be.

And if we allow God to meet us here in our poverty, at this low point with all our faults and weaknesses, we can discover a third crucial movement in the spiritual life— one that is a surer and more direct way up to God: being lifted by God’s grace. Indeed, if we allow ourselves to meet God in such humility, we can encounter him in a powerful way that changes us and lifts us up to him.

The Upward Struggle

First, the upward struggle. Before living as disciples of Jesus, most of us didn’t truly recognize the extent of our sins and weaknesses and how they were affecting our lives. We weren’t intentionally striving to improve our spiritual lives and imitate Christ. We just muddled through life, either sincerely having no idea how far off we were or desperately trying to convince ourselves that we were living a good enough life and that we were happy.

But something changes when Jesus becomes more of a priority. Our faith takes off, and we start trying to live a better life. We want to follow Jesus and take his message seriously. We learn new things about the faith and begin to notice areas in our lives that need to be different.

We want to change. We want to be better. We set out to do whatever we can to root out these sins and grow in virtue. We make new resolutions. “I’ll never do that again.” We pray for God’s help. We sincerely want to do whatever it takes to shake off these bad habits and live like Christ.

This is the upward movement that is sparked inside the disciple. We’re seeking God, intentionally striving to live more like Jesus. Indeed, this is the crucial first step in Christian discipleship: the disciple purposely seeking to imitate the Master.

Falling Back

But this first step up isn’t enough. No matter how much we set our minds to it and try with all our might to change, we will still run up against our own limitations and weaknesses. Even if we adopt a Nike spirituality (“Just do it!”), we won’t be able to conquer all the vices that weigh us down. And even if we develop a three-year strategic plan to grow in holiness, we’re probably not going to gain two-and-a-half virtues each month. This is the second step -.falling back.

Once we sincerely start trying to walk in Jesus’s footsteps as disciples, we quickly realize how far we are falling behind. We make some improvements but then fall back into our old patterns. We try hard to stop committing certain sins but find ourselves unable to change.

Why is this happening? We’re supposed to be serious Christians: committed disciples, “on-fire” Catholics, dynamic followers of the Lord. We even pray, frequent the Sacraments, and take time to learn more about the Faith. Why are we not as holy as we should be? We still get impatient with our spouses and kids. We still struggle with purity. We’re not as generous with our time and our possessions as we know we should be. We still get discouraged when things aren’t going well, complain when we’re uncomfortable, and gossip about other people when they frustrate us. I sincerely want to be more Christ-like. Why can’t I change?

Three Options

It’s with this difficult realization that the soul has the opportunity to grow like never before. But we must be careful to choose the right path forward. Three options lie ahead of us.

One path to avoid is the way of despair: We are so overwhelmed by our weaknesses that we think we can never change. We’ve tried and tried, but nothing works. We think that our sins are too great and that we are somehow unforgivable. Or we’re just not confident that God can help us do what we can’t do on our own. So we give up. We stop trying. We give in to our weaknesses and stop following Jesus as disciples. St. Bernard of Clairvaux explains that this is what happens when people don’t know how much God loves them and wants to help them. “If he does not know how good God is, how kind and gentle, how willing to pardon, will not his sensually-inspired reason argue with him and say: ‘What are you doing?… Your sins are too grave. A lifetime’s habits are not easily conquered.’ Dismayed by these and similar arguments, the unhappy man quits the struggle, not knowing how easily God’s omnipotent goodness could overthrow all these obstacles.”

A second path to avoid is the way of impatience. We can be impatient with our weaknesses and beat ourselves up for our many shortcomings. Sometimes we wish we didn’t have to depend on God’s mercy so much. We wish we were better. We wish we could present ourselves to God “pure and spotless,” already holy, not needing his forgiveness, mercy, and healing. “I know I need God’s help a little, but I wish I didn’t need it this much!” We’re discouraged and upset when we’re not as virtuous as we’d like to be, when we’re not making the spiritual progress we’d like to be making, and when we’re still plagued by the same old sins that won’t go away.

On the surface, this frustration with self might appear to be noble: a sign of a soul longing for deeper union with God, a sign of humility as the soul recognizes his faults: “I can’t believe I did that again! Why am I not getting any better? I keep falling into the same sins.” But we also must see that this agitation might be less about sorrow over one’s sins and more about pride. In some cases, as spiritual writer Father Jacques Philippe explains, “We are not sad and discouraged so much because God was offended, but because the ideal image that we have of ourselves has been brutally shaken. Our pain is very often that of wounded pride!” In fact, notice how much attention is on self. “I can’t believe I did that.” The spiritually proud soul is not looking up to God and throwing himself into the Father’s merciful arms. Rather, he’s dismayed that he’s not performing at the spiritual level to which he aspires. His image of himself as a more advanced Christian has been shattered.

Let’s not follow this path of impatience, which gets us to focus too much on self and might have spiritual pride at its roots. Instead, when we face our many sins and failures, let’s humbly accept our poverty and turn all our attention to God in loving surrender:

“Jesus, I’m sorry. I’ve sinned again. But this is the truth of who I am: a weak sinner who can do nothing on his own. I ask your forgiveness. I’ll sincerely try to do better next time. And I trust in your grace to heal me in the future. In the meantime, I pray that my stumbles along the way will make me even more aware of my need for you, more grateful for your mercy, and more patient and compassionate with others when I’m affected by their faults.”

Lifted by God’s Grace

This leads us to the third path, the path of true humility, which is the way of the disciple. Something St. Therese once wrote to her sister Celine illuminates this path.

Like many Christians, Celine came to that moment of feeling discouraged by her many faults and weaknesses that kept her from a closer relationship with God. She was overwhelmed by the long way she knew she had yet to go in her pursuit of holiness. It was like climbing a steep mountain that reached into the clouds. But Therese encouraged her and helped her to see she didn’t have to climb the tall mountain up to God. God would come down to meet her—if she let him: “You wish to scale a mountain and the good God wants to make you descend; he is waiting for you low down in the fertile valley of humility.”

What a beautiful image! Too often, we want to climb the mountain of sanctity and present ourselves to God in some ideal way—perfect, holy, virtuous, devout. But God wants to meet us right now as we really are, not as we’d like to be. He wants to meet the real me, as I really am, filled with some noble qualities but also tainted by many imperfections, wounds, and sins—not some other idyllic version of myself that doesn’t exist yet. That’s why the first step up the mountain of sanctity is actually a step down—down to “the fertile valley of humility.”

When we dare to go to the valley of humility and allow ourselves to meet God as we are, we can ascend the mountain in a most secure and direct way. For God is not waiting up at the summit for you to find your way up to him. He’s waiting down in the valley to meet you as you are, so that he can lift you up to the heights of the spiritual life, far beyond what you could ever do on your own. This is the third movement in the spiritual life: being lifted by God’s grace.

Indeed, three amazing things can happen when we encounter God in the valley this way. First, we come to know at a much deeper level how loved we are by God—not for what we do, but for who we are even with all our frailty and weakness. Second, we experience God’s forgiveness. And third, we learn ever more to rely on his grace, his healing power. Indeed, the fastest and surest way up the mountain of sanctity is not arduous ascending by one’s own effort but allowing God to lift you up.

From Edward Sri, Into His Likeness, Chapter 6
Photo by Fabrizio Conti on Unsplash