An Analysis of Spiritual Formation and the Universal Call to Holiness

Jean Khoury

Summary: This article examines the evolution of Christian spiritual life from the medieval monastic tradition through contemporary approaches, arguing that the universal call to holiness proclaimed by Vatican II necessitates a fundamental reorientation of spiritual formation. Moving beyond institutional structures that once guaranteed external conditions for holiness—enclosure, stability, communal rhythm—the article demonstrates how authentic spiritual development must now be reconstituted at the interior level, through an interiorised stability of the heart. By tracing the trajectory from Benedictine monasticism through Ignatian discernment, Carmelite interiority, and the incarnate spirituality of Charles de Foucauld, this essay shows that contemporary spiritual life requires not new forms but rather the recovery of a rigorous, structured pedagogy of interiority adapted to conditions of dispersion and pluralism. The article concludes that the Church’s capacity to respond to the universal call to holiness depends fundamentally on spiritual formation as a systematic science—not as luxury, but as structural necessity.

Introduction

The spiritual traditions of the medieval Church rested on what we might call external certainties. The Benedictine and Cistercian “vow of stability” anchored the search for God in place, in rhythm, and in a visible order of life. The monk possessed a cell, an enclosure, a horarium, and a community within whose structure sanctity became possible. The spiritual life was, in a profound sense, guaranteed by structure. This model served the Church well for centuries and produced extraordinary fruits—the transformation of hearts, the deepening of prayer, and the witness of holiness.

Yet the twentieth century witnessed a series of theological and pastoral developments that fundamentally altered this landscape. The Second Vatican Council, particularly in its teaching on the universal call to holiness, proclaimed that sanctity was no longer the privilege of the vowed religious. All the baptised, in whatever “rank or status,” were called to “the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity.” Simultaneously, the rise of Ignatian spirituality offered a model of spiritual discernment “on the go”; the Carmelite tradition, renewed through mystics like Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, showed that the decisive locus of transformation was not the monastery but the soul itself; and figures like Charles de Foucauld demonstrated that God could be found not in enclosure but in the midst of ordinary work and hidden life.

What emerges from this history is a fundamental question: if the external structures that once made spiritual life possible are no longer available or desirable, how is holiness to be cultivated today? And more pointedly, if the universal call to holiness is authentic doctrine, why does the Church lack a corresponding pedagogy—a structured method by which ordinary believers can reliably progress toward union with God? This article addresses these questions by first tracing the theological and spiritual trajectory that led to the current situation, then articulating the characteristics that contemporary spiritual formation must embody, and finally arguing that spiritual formation itself—systematic, rigorous, and incarnate—represents the Church’s most urgent task.

1. The Evolution of Spiritual Forms: From External Structure to Interior Principle

The monastic tradition did not emerge in a vacuum. It represented, in the context of late antiquity and the medieval period, a deliberate choice to create conditions in which the pursuit of God could be sustained over time. The Benedictine Rule itself—that remarkable document of wisdom—was not primarily theoretical. It was practical: it prescribed times for prayer and work, patterns of community life, the structuring of the day around the opus Dei. The monastery was, in essence, the attempt to materialise a spiritual vision.

Importantly, however, the tradition was never purely external. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, writing in the twelfth century, already articulated a crucial insight: the true cell is not the enclosed space but the “cell of the heart.” While Bernard revered the physical monastery, he recognised that without interior recollection, the external structure remained merely architectural. In one of his striking formulations, he insisted that “many are in the cell, but few are in the heart.” This distinction—between exterior form and interior reality—would become increasingly central as the tradition developed.

This interior turn reaches its full articulation in the Spanish Carmelite tradition of the sixteenth century. Teresa of Ávila’s “Interior Castle” represents a decisive moment: the geography of holiness is now explicitly interiorised. The soul itself becomes the “palace of the greatest magnificence,” and Christ the “Divine Guest” at its centre. The external cloister, while not rejected, is relativised. What matters supremely is the journey of the soul through the mansions of prayer toward complete union with God. This is not a rejection of community or structure—Teresa established convents and wrote rules—but a profound reorientation: the decisive movement is inward.

Ignatian spirituality introduces another crucial element: the possibility of finding God not despite activity and movement, but through them. The Exercises train the exercitant to “find God in all things,” and the spirituality of the active order—the Society of Jesus—makes apostolic availability a constitutive dimension of the spiritual life. One need not be in a monastery to be transformed by God; one can be “on the go,” engaged in the world, and still pursue holiness. The vow of stability takes on a new meaning: stability of heart and commitment, not of place.

Charles de Foucauld carries this trajectory to its logical conclusion. After his radical conversion, Foucauld did not withdraw into enclosure. Instead, he went to the Sahara Desert, not to hide but to disappear into the ordinariness of Nazareth-like life. He wanted to live, work, and be unknown—to undergo the very humiliation and hiddenness that characterised Christ’s hidden years. In his letters, he emphasised that “our whole existence should be a preaching of the Gospel by example.” His spirituality shows that one need not withdraw from the world to seek holiness; one enters the world differently—with an inner transformation that makes ordinary labour itself into a form of communion with Christ.

What emerges from this trajectory is not a succession of incompatible spiritualities but a progressive interiorisation and universalisation of a single evangelical impulse: the transformation of the heart in union with Christ. What was once embodied in external structures—the monastery, the enclosure, the fixed horarium—is progressively relocated to the inner life. And what was once the privilege of the vowed religious becomes, with Vatican II, the calling of all the baptised.

2. Vatican II and the Universal Call to Holiness: Doctrine and the Problem of Method

The Second Vatican Council represents the ecclesial moment in which this trajectory reached explicit doctrinal form. The constitution Lumen Gentium articulates with unprecedented clarity that holiness is not a state reserved for religious or clergy, but the vocation of the entire baptised community. “Thus it is evident to everyone,” the Council declares, “that all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity.” And it immediately adds: “in the various kinds of life and occupation, one and the same holiness is cultivated by all.”

This teaching is revolutionary in its implications. If all are called to holiness, then holiness cannot be the fruit of special conditions available only to the few. It must be available within the ordinary conditions of lay life—within marriage, professional work, parenting, civic engagement, and the thousand ordinary circumstances that constitute contemporary existence. But here the Council’s insight creates a profound pastoral problem: while the doctrine is clear, the method was not supplied.

For centuries, the Church possessed in its monastic and religious traditions a “science of the spiritual life”—a systematic, structured, tested pedagogy by which souls could be formed toward holiness. The novitiate, the horarium, the direction of conscience, the sequence of stages in spiritual growth, the practices of prayer and mortification—all of this was transmitted with considerable care within religious communities. When Vatican II proclaimed the universal call to holiness, it did not at the same time provide the Church with a comparable, systematic pedagogy for lay spiritual formation. As a result, in much of the Church’s pastoral life, there has emerged a significant gap between doctrine and practice: the universal call to holiness remains, for many, a principle without a method.

This is not to say that the Council was in error. Rather, it is to recognise that the Council issued a summons but left to the post-conciliar Church the labour of working out its concrete implications. And this labour—the development of a systematic, rigorous spiritual formation for lay believers—remains today the Church’s most urgent pedagogical task.

3. Five Characteristics of Contemporary Spiritual Formation

If spiritual formation is to respond adequately to the universal call to holiness as lived in contemporary conditions, it must embody several decisive characteristics. These are not innovations, but rather the articulation of principles that were always present in the tradition, now applied to new circumstances.

3.1 Interiority as Non-Negotiable Foundation

In a fragmented and accelerated culture, interiority—the stable inner dimension where God is encountered—becomes structurally necessary. Without it, spiritual life dissolves into activism or sentimentality. This was Teresa of Ávila’s fundamental insight: “Do not think that He is far away; He is very near you.” In contemporary conditions of mobility and constant external stimulus, the cultivation of an interior “cell”—a recollected, inhabited space of the heart—becomes the foundation of all genuine spiritual growth.

The key insight from Bernard of Clairvaux remains crucial: what was once guaranteed by the external structures of the monastery must now be reconstituted interiorly. One must learn to carry one’s “cell” within—to maintain, even amidst activity and dispersion, a stable heart, recollected and available to God. This is not escape from the world but rather the necessary interior condition for genuine engagement with it.

3.2 Integration of Life without Dispersion of Prayer

A second characteristic is the integration of the whole of life—work, family, relationships, civic participation—into a unified spiritual vision. The older monastic model separated spaces: choir, cloister, field. Contemporary spirituality must cultivate unity within dispersion. This does not mean abandoning set times of prayer or treating all moments as equally constitutive of prayer. Rather, it means so ordering one’s life that the whole of existence becomes oriented toward God and permeable to His presence.

Here a crucial clarification is necessary. The slogan “the whole of life becomes prayer” can easily be misunderstood as a justification for dispensing with dedicated times of formal prayer. But the Christian tradition is unequivocal on this point: continuous, living prayer presupposes and depends upon structured, deliberate moments of entering into prayer. As Paul commands, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), yet this presupposes the foundation of set times in which one actually enters into sustained encounter with God. The state of prayer flowing through the day is the fruit of moments when one stops, listens, and receives. Without those moments, the aspiration to “live in prayer” becomes an abstraction or self-deception.

3.3 Primacy of the Holy Spirit Consciously Received and Cooperated With

Spiritual life is fundamentally an action of God, not the achievement of the individual will. Paul’s exhortation captures the dialectic: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you” (Philippians 2:12–13). A third essential characteristic of contemporary spiritual formation, therefore, is that it must cultivate a practical, operative understanding of how the Holy Spirit acts and how the believer cooperates with that action. Without this lived understanding, the universal call to holiness remains abstract doctrine. With it, the believer gradually learns to recognise God’s action in the circumstances of ordinary life and to align the movements of the heart with the work of grace.

3.4 Hiddenness and Paradoxical Fruitfulness

Charles de Foucauld exemplified a fourth essential characteristic: true spiritual fruitfulness often passes through obscurity and apparent insignificance. In a culture of exposure, performance, and self-assertion, the evangelical paradox becomes sharper. Real transformation and authentic influence often issue not from visibility but from hiddenness, from fidelity to duty in the midst of obscurity, and from a life that is not outwardly remarkable. This was, for Foucauld, the deepest meaning of the Gospel—to preach it by the witness of example, not by words, and to be willing to remain unknown and hidden in service of God’s purposes.

3.5 Ecclesiality Within Pluralism and Differentiation of Charisms

Finally, contemporary spiritual life is characterised by a multiplication of movements, communities, and charisms within the Church. This plurality is not accidental but corresponds to the diverse conditions and vocations of believers. Yet this diversity requires careful discernment. John Paul II articulated the principle: “The Church expects from these movements a renewed commitment to holiness.” The criterion is neither conformity nor novelty, but rather whether a given form truly leads toward authentic transformation in Christ or merely toward group identity and belonging. Ecclesiality—remaining rooted in and accountable to the Church’s tradition—must be maintained even as plurality is affirmed.

4. Spiritual Formation as Structural Necessity

“Jesus wants to be helped in his Divine cultivation of souls” (St. Therese)

Having identified the characteristics that contemporary spiritual formation must embody, we must now address the most pressing pastoral question: How is such formation to be systematically provided? And what does genuine spiritual formation entail?

Spiritual formation is not, first and foremost, information about the spiritual life. It is not a body of doctrine to be learned or a set of techniques to be mastered. Rather, it is transformation—the actual, lived reorientation of a person’s heart, will, and understanding toward union with Christ. As the tradition distinguishes, there is an essential difference between “information and formation.” Information can be transmitted through teaching; formation requires lived encounter, practice, repetition, and the long labour of habit-formation.

Historically, this formation was provided in religious communities through a comprehensive ecosystem: a clear purpose (union with God), structured practices (hours of prayer, lectio divina, silence, community life), guidance from a formation director, participation in the sacraments, and long-term accompaniment. What made this effective was not any single element but the coherence of the whole—the way in which every aspect of the horarium and the community’s life was ordered toward a single end.

In contemporary circumstances, with lay believers immersed in family, work, and social life, this intensive, enclosed model cannot be replicated. Yet the principles upon which it rested remain valid and necessary. Any adequate programme of spiritual formation for lay believers must embody at minimum: (1) a clear teleology—an understanding of the end toward which formation aims (union with Christ, perfection of charity); (2) a structured path—a staged progression through which growth can be systematically cultivated; (3) essential practices—those classical means (lectio divina, contemplative prayer, examination of conscience) through which grace ordinarily works; (4) an operative understanding of the action of the Holy Spirit; and (5) sustained accompaniment—not just initial instruction, but ongoing guidance and direction.

Moreover, spiritual formation cannot be reduced to a curriculum or a course. It requires a living ecosystem: formators who themselves embody the transformation they are seeking to transmit; spiritual directors capable of reading the movements of a soul; access to the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist and confession; insertion into a genuine ecclesial community; and often, long-term accompaniment through the stages of spiritual growth. In other words, what was once provided within the walls of the monastery must now be woven into the fabric of the local Church itself.

It is precisely at this point that the gap between the Council’s doctrine and the Church’s capacity to implement it becomes evident. The universal call to holiness remains, in many places, a principle without a corresponding method. And this is not a minor deficiency. If all are truly called to holiness, but the Church lacks a structured, systematic, and widely accessible pedagogy by which that holiness can be reliably cultivated, then the universal call remains formally proclaimed but practically unattainable for the majority. This constitutes, in the deepest sense, a structural weakness in the Church’s current situation.

5. Spiritual Formation and the Future of the Church

What, then, is the direction toward which spiritual formation must move? Several conclusions emerge from our analysis.

First, the Church must recover what one might call a “science of the spiritual life”—not in any sense of technical expertise or reductionist mechanism, but rather as a structured, transmissible, tested knowledge of how souls are ordinarily transformed toward union with God. This science was preserved in the monastic tradition and articulated with precision by the great Spanish mystics of the sixteenth century. Today it must be recovered and adapted, not for enclosed communities but for believers in the world. It must be systematic enough to provide genuine guidance, but flexible enough to honour the diversity of vocations and charisms. And it must be as rigorous internally as the monastic horarium was rigorous externally.

Second, the Church must invest substantially in the formation of formators—in preparing men and women capable of accompanying others through the stages of spiritual growth. This is not primarily an academic task, though intellectual formation has its place. It is, rather, the formation of those who themselves have been transformed and who can, through their own lived witness and careful accompaniment, help others to enter into the reality of union with God. As Saint Thérèse of Lisieux observed with piercing clarity, “How many souls would arrive at holiness if they were well directed.” The converse is also true: many souls languish in mediocrity for lack of genuine spiritual guidance.

Third, the primary venue for this formation must be the local Church—the parish, the diocese, the concrete communities in which ordinary believers worship and live. While movements and special communities have a crucial role, they cannot substitute for the ordinary structures of Church life. The renewal of spiritual formation must therefore involve a renewal of the parish as a place of genuine spiritual accompaniment, not merely sacramental provision.

Fourth, the integration of the essential practices—lectio divina, contemplative prayer, the sacrament of reconciliation, the Eucharist—must be central to any programme of formation. These are not options or devotional extras. They are the ordinary channels through which transformation occurs. A programme of spiritual formation that neglects these classics practices in favour of more innovative approaches is unlikely to bear genuine fruit.

Finally, the Church must have the courage to insist that spiritual formation is not optional, not a luxury for the spiritually ambitious, but essential. It is the ordinary path by which the baptised are drawn into the reality of the Gospel and transformed toward perfection of charity. John of the Cross expressed this with characteristic severity: “It is a great misery not to desire to attain to this perfection.” If his judgment seems harsh to modern ears, it is worth considering whether the contemporary Church’s widespread accommodation with mediocrity—the assumption that ordinary believers cannot be seriously called to holiness—is truly more merciful than demanding that all should aspire to genuine transformation.

Conclusion

“all pastoral initiatives must be set in relation to holiness.” (John Paul II, NMI, 30)

The evolution of Christian spiritual life from the medieval monastery to the contemporary world represents neither decline nor irrelevance but rather the progressive interiorisation and universalisation of a single evangelical impulse: the transformation of the human heart in union with Christ. Vatican II brought this trajectory into explicit doctrinal form by proclaiming that all the baptised, in whatever circumstances, are called to the fullness of holiness. This was not a watering down of the Christian ideal, but rather its liberation from conditions that were particular to specific states of life and its universal application.

Yet this liberation came at a cost. The external structures that once made spiritual transformation possible—enclosure, stability, communal rhythm, the guidance of trained formators—were no longer available. The external sources of formation were removed, yet the Church did not simultaneously develop the internal resources, the systematic pedagogy, by which lay believers could be reliably formed toward holiness. As a result, the universal call to holiness has remained, in much of the Church’s pastoral practice, an inspiring principle without a corresponding method.

The path forward is clear: the Church must recover and adapt the science of the spiritual life for contemporary conditions. This does not require inventing new spiritualities or departing from the tested wisdom of the tradition. Rather, it requires the labour of articulating, in systematic and pedagogically sound form, how souls ordinarily progress toward union with God in conditions of dispersion and pluralism. It requires the formation of guides capable of accompanying others through this journey. And it requires the conviction that this formation is not optional but essential—the ordinary pathway by which the baptised become what they are called to be.

In the end, the future of the Church’s spiritual vitality does not depend on creating novel forms of prayer or discovering new spiritual movements. It depends rather on whether the Church will develop, with genuine rigour and clear purpose, a structured formation capable of bringing believers, through the centuries-tested means of grace, into authentic union with Christ. This is the task of our time. And it is a task not less urgent than any the Church has faced, for upon it depends the very possibility of the universal call to holiness becoming a reality in the lives of the faithful.

“to place pastoral planning under the heading of holiness is a choice filled with consequences” (John Paul II, NMI 31)

Read Also

An Example of a Gateway into Spiritual Formation: The Solid Foundations Course (see the Syllabus here)

Duc in Altum, The Call to Holiness, A Letter to the Pope

Articles on Spiritual Formation

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