When Faith Grows Up: The Blessing of Dry Spells, Limping Saints, and the Audacity of Hope
Spiritual maturity, contrary to popular imagination, is not conferred by advancing years, nor bestowed with each recitation of a rosary or tick-mark on a parish sign-in sheet. If that were the case, I would have achieved saintly enlightenment after enduring half a century of parish coffee hours and middle-school youth ministry. But no, friends—maturity in the spiritual life comes like rainfall in the high desert: in fits and starts, sometimes deluge, sometimes drought, and often with the sort of slow, awkward growth that is undetectable until, blessedly, you look back and see the wildflowers stubbornly peeking through the stony ground.
Spiritual maturity, says Scripture (and James, who knew a bit about trial and error), is not a question of years tallied or spiritual acrobatics performed, but endurance forged in longing and trust. “Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. And let perseverance be perfect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2–4, NRSV). Not by the length of your prayers or the height of your candle but by how you walk with a limp through the dark.
Even Paul, in his rhetorical tour de force to the Corinthians, puts it plainly: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child … when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways … and now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:11–13, NRSV). The Catechism nods, too, reminding us: “By the working of grace, the Holy Spirit educates us in spiritual freedom in order to make us free collaborators in his work in the Church and in the world” (CCC 1742). True maturity in the faith? To love stubbornly, trust courageously, endure quietly, and hope audaciously, even when all external signs point to spiritual bankruptcy.
Now, there’s no shortcut here. The road to deeper faith, say the saints, meanders through boredom, bafflement, and bleak, arid stretches. St. John of the Cross (he of the poetic midnight soul-scrubbing) insisted that the “dark night” is not God forgetting us but rather God forging us, refining immature affections for comfort into the steel of untamed, trusting love. Like winter in the soul, the dark night is the necessary barrenness that hides and prepares for spring.
St. Teresa of Avila, in her own house of spiritual mirrors, cheerfully lamented how she so often found herself in the kitchen when all she wanted was to be in the chapel—or in the chapel only to be assaulted by distractions of the kitchen variety. Yet, through dryness and vexation, she found that fidelity—showing up, praying when nothing happens, forgiving despite inner storms—these were the true signs of growing up spiritually. The great paradox: God’s closeness cloaked in absence, the seed’s bursting open in the silent darkness of dirt.
What does this all look like in flesh and bone and breakfast cereal? Simple, ordinary acts, repeated in love, stitched together into the frank patchwork of the Christian life:
Choosing to forgive when the world counsels retaliation
Practicing humility by listening rather than opining
Persevering in prayer, especially when it feels like dialing a disconnected number
Serving quietly, anonymously, lovingly, not because it is noticed but because it is needed
Discerning the good, gently, over time, in community, rather than relying on spiritual fireworks or moral lone-rangering
As one weighty study on formation puts it, Christian maturity “is the manifestation of docility to the working of the Holy Spirit,” which looks like a life “marked by humility, selfless service, and openness to growth”. That’s less “sage on the stage” and more “loving soul in the lunch line.”
Permit me a personal footnote, stitched with affection: Spiritual growth feels, in my experience, like realizing half your holiness is held together by grace and duct tape. There have been seasons—oh, how long—when prayer was as dry as a Montana hay field in July, when Mass felt like reciting the encyclopedia in a foreign language, and faith walked with all the elegance of a goose on ice. Yet, looking back, it’s in those winters that roots grew deep, unseen. The capacity to persevere, to cling to hope, to forgive and begin again—these grew, not from feasts of spiritual feeling, but from famine endured in company with Christ.
The genius of the Christian tradition, distilled by the saints, is that spiritual maturity has less to do with achievement and more to do with accompaniment: God’s with-ness outlasting our wobbles of will and seasons of drought. Maturity means realizing “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20, NRSV)—and if Christ’s preferred abode is a messy, grief-streaked, hope-haunted, servant-hearted humanity, then maybe, just maybe, even the next dry spell is inching us closer to home.
References
Catechism of the Catholic Church. (1994). United States Catholic Conference.
Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version.
Intruthshedelights.com. (2025). Spiritual Maturity According to the Bible.
Catholic Stand. (2017). Church and Spiritual Maturity in Christian Life.
Catholic Faith Store. (2020). Spiritual Maturity.
Matthew Root. (2025). St. John of the Cross and the Way of the Dark Night.
Digital Commons, Andrews University. (2021). A Strategy To Increase Spiritual Maturity by Practicing Spiritual Disciplines.
Measuring Christian Maturation Across Distinct Traditions of Christian Formation.
