Jean Khoury
Summary: This article examines a critical fracture in contemporary Christian spiritual formation: the absence of explicit, pedagogical instruction in how to perform the fundamental acts of faith, hope, and charity. While classical theology affirms that virtues are generated and preserved through acts, and that the act of faith constitutes a real union with God, the modern transmission of spiritual doctrine has become detached from its operational dimension. The present work isolates this rupture, demonstrates why existing scholarly treatments remain inadequate, and articulates the distinctive theoretical and practical contribution required to restore spiritual formation to its proper ground. The argument proceeds through a systematic critique of abstract definitions, a recovery of classical precision on the nature of the act, and a proposal for how the Church might recover and systematically transmit the ‘grammar of the act’—the concrete interior operations by which grace and human freedom cooperate in the life of the virtues.
Initial Note: This article focuses primarily on the theological acts—faith, hope, and charity—because they alone establish a direct contact with God Himself. Through these acts, the tip of the soul (the spirit) is not merely reflecting on God, but truly entering into contact with Him: being touched by Him, united to Him, receiving His action, and being transformed by His grace. If one is not taught how to exercise this direct adhesion and union with God, then spiritual formation, in its proper sense, does not take place.
These acts must not remain vague or indistinct. They are real, they are concrete, and they must be explained from a practical point of view. As the tradition affirms, “faith is the proximate and proportionate means of union with God” (St John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel II, 9). This means that the contact is not symbolic but effective, even if it remains obscure.
One could say, by way of analogy, that it is like learning to extend one’s hand to God and to receive His: the contact must truly occur, and the exchange must take place. It is therefore essential to understand how this contact operates, and what corresponds to our cooperation within the act.
I. Introduction: A Diagnosis of Rupture
The Church faces a crisis in spiritual formation that is rarely named with precision, and yet its effects are visible across seminaries, novitiates, and diocesan programs: the practical knowledge of how to make the theological acts (act of faith, an act of hope, an act of love—the fundamental interior operations through which the spiritual life is either deepened or remains stunted) has largely been severed from the formal transmission of spiritual doctrine. This is not to say that the doctrine itself has disappeared. The classical authors remain available. The teachings on virtue, on grace, on the stages of spiritual life are accessible in books. Yet something crucial has been lost: the mediating experiential/practical knowledge that translates doctrine into lived practice, that renders the act itself teachable and transmissible, that enables a formator to guide a formandi seminarian or a contemplative not merely to understand what faith is, but to perform the act of faith in a way that genuinely connects the human spirit with the Living God.
This rupture is masked by the proliferation of spiritual literature. Books on prayer abound. Retreats are offered. Yet if one asks a straightforward question—‘What is the concrete, interior operation by which I make an act of faith? What steps does it involve? How is it to be repeated? How do I verify that it is genuine and not merely sentiment?’—the silence is profound. Spiritual theology has become either academic, treating the acts in abstract speculative language, or devotional, offering encouragement and exhortation without showing the mechanics. The practical, ordered, experiential knowledge that the classical masters insisted upon—the traditio viva, the living transmission—has become fragmented and has largely ceased to be pedagogically articulated.
The present article attempts to articulate, with theological precision and practical clarity, the nature of the gap that has opened in contemporary formation, to show why the standard objections to this diagnosis are themselves symptoms of the problem, and to propose the foundations for recovery. The argument proceeds in three stages: first, a clarification of what is actually at stake when we speak of the ‘act of faith’; second, a demonstration of why existing scholarly and pedagogical approaches fail to address the real issue; and third, a strategic framework for how the Church might recover and systematically transmit this lost dimension of its own tradition.
II. The Distinction Between Virtue and Act: Why It Matters
The first and most fundamental confusion that obscures the present discussion is the conflation of virtue with the act through which virtue is exercised. This is not a minor semantic distinction. It is, rather, the point where the entire structure of spiritual formation either stands or falls.
Thomas Aquinas is remarkably precise on this point, precisely because he is addressing the question from within a framework that takes the act seriously. He writes: ‘Virtues are generated and preserved by acts’ (‘Virtutes ex actibus causantur et per actus conservantur’, ST I–II, q.63, a.2). The principle is simple and radical: without the repeated performance of the act, the virtue does not form. More specifically, on faith itself, he states: ‘To believe is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth at the command of the will moved by God through grace’ (‘Credere est actus intellectus assentientis veritati divinae ex imperio voluntatis a Deo motae per gratiam’, ST II–II, q.2, a.9).
Here we encounter a critical problem. This definition of the act is theologically accurate but pedagogically sterile. It identifies what the act is—what faculties are involved, what its formal structure is, what its cause is—but it does nothing to initiate a person into the actual performance of that act. One can read Aquinas (or his disciples), understand his definition perfectly, and remain utterly incapable of making an act of faith. The definition remains at the level of formal causality. It does not bridge the gap between knowing what something is and being able to do it.
This is the precise point at which contemporary formation breaks down. People are taught the doctrine of faith. They are taught what faith contains, what it demands morally, how it relates to reason and revelation. Yet they are never taught the grammar of the act itself—the concrete interior operations through which faith is actually performed.
III. The Classical Sources and Their Hidden Pedagogy
A common objection at this point is to insist that the classical sources, properly read, do contain what is needed. One need only turn to St. John of the Cross, or to the spiritual masters of the Carmelite tradition, and one will find the pedagogy. This objection has a grain of truth—but only a grain, and it itself reveals the problem.
John of the Cross does indeed speak of the act of faith in language that is far more operational than Aquinas’s definitions. He writes: ‘The soul must be brought into this state by acts of faith’ (‘ha de ser puesta en esta desnudez por actos de fe’, Ascent of Mount Carmel II, 4). And again: ‘The more the soul exercises itself in faith, the more it is united with God’ (‘cuanto más el alma se ejercita en la fe, tanto más se une con Dios’, II, 9). Here the emphasis falls unmistakably on repetition, on exercise, on the progressive transformation that comes through the repeated making of the act.
Furthermore, John speaks of the act not in abstract speculative language, but in a way that already hints at concrete interior operations: ‘The soul must not rely on what it understands, experiences, or imagines, but must remain in pure faith’ (Ascent II, 4). That formulation is already procedural. It tells the person what not to do (rely on sensible supports) and what to do instead (remain in pure faith). It is a movement, not a concept.
Yet when one examines how John of the Cross is actually taught in contemporary seminaries and programmes of spiritual formation—if he is taught at all—the gap becomes evident. His texts may be read, his doctrines explained, and his theology of transformation discussed; but the concrete, repeatable operations he proposes are not extracted, not analysed, not made explicit, and above all not transmitted in a systematic and practical way as a true method.
This reveals a deeper problem with the objection. The classical sources do contain a living pedagogy, but it was traditionally transmitted not primarily through texts but through lived guidance. A master would work with a disciple. Through example, through correction, through the patient repetition of acts under the master’s discernment, the disciple would gradually learn how to make the acts. The texts of John of the Cross or Teresa of Ávila were used to confirm and illuminate what was being lived in that direct transmission. Once that living mediation weakened—once spiritual direction became sporadic, once monastic communities ceased to be schools of disciplined practice, once the texts were read in isolation from a living tradition—the operative knowledge that the texts presumed began to disappear.
IV. The Real Contact with God: Union as the Measure
But there is a deeper question that must be faced. The objection that comes from the most serious practitioners is not about method; it is about reality. Does the act of faith, as it is typically described in contemporary texts, actually connect the human spirit with God Himself? Or does it remain a movement within the sphere of the human mind and will, ultimately separated from the Living Reality that is the proper object of faith?
This question is often dismissed or evaded, precisely because answering it honestly requires acknowledging that most contemporary presentations of faith lack the ontological realism that would answer it affirmatively. When faith is presented as assent to propositions, or as trust in God’s goodness, or as a response to revelation—all of which can be true at one level—the listener is left with the impression that faith is, fundamentally, a human act directed toward something external to the act itself. That is not union. That is not contact with God. That is, in a certain sense, psychology.
Note: It is true that, with Vatican II, the understanding of the act of faith is expressed no longer primarily in terms of intellectual assent alone, but as the total self-gift of the person to God. As Dei Verbum states: “By faith man freely commits his entire self to God, making ‘the full submission of his intellect and will to God who reveals’ and willingly assenting to the revelation given by Him” (Dei Verbum, 5). This shift does not deny the role of the intellect, but integrates it within a more complete act: an act involving the whole person—intellect, will, and indeed the entire being—in a living and personal adherence to God. However, the concrete dynamics of this self-offering are not made explicit, nor is it indicated whether this gift of oneself is to be repeated as a lived act, and in what manner such repetition is to be understood or practised.
The classical tradition knows better, but it has ceased to be clearly transmitted. Thomas Aquinas, for all his speculative precision, is explicit on this point. He states: ‘The act of the believer does not terminate in the enunciable, but in the reality itself’ (‘Actus credentis non terminatur ad enuntiabile, sed ad rem’, ST II–II, q.1, a.2, ad 2). That distinction is decisive. It means that faith is not fundamentally about assenting to propositions; it is about adhering to the reality that those propositions disclose—namely, God Himself.
But here again the classical account requires completion. How is the act is made, how is the contact with God actually established? The answer lies in understanding the role of grace and more precisely the use of the general help of the grace of God (see St. Teresa of Avila and Thomas Aquinas). The contact is produced by God through the general help of the grace of God, always readily present to help us make the act. Also St. John of the Cross expresses it in its strongest form: ‘Faith is the proximate and proportionate means of union with God’ (‘la fe es el medio próximo y proporcionado para la unión con Dios’, Ascent II, 9). This is not merely about knowing; it is already a mode of union, a real participation in God’s own life.
The mechanics of this union can be described as follows: God is already present and acting in the centre of the soul through sanctifying grace. The act of faith is the adhesion of the human spirit to this God who is present but hidden from sensible perception. Through using the general help of the grace of God, one can offer himself to Him, and as a response, God’s grace, the particular help of the grace of God, the personal and direct intervention of the Holy Spirit, unites the spirit of the person to God. This occurs in the spirit, ie above perception or consciousness. This union is established not through feeling or through intellectual clarity, but through this offering of oneself. one can say that the act of oblation of St. Therese synthesises this teaching (see here) (see also all the teaching of St. Teresa of Avila regarding Prayer of Quiet (Way of Perfection 26-31) but it has to be understood with St. John of the Cross supernatural anthropology, distinguishing spirit and soul).
This account can be restated operationally, in terms that orient the practitioner: the act of faith is not first an assent to truths, but an interior adhesion to God present and acting, through a self offering and beyond what is grasped by senses and intellect; this adhesion is already a real contact with God, because it responds to a grace that is itself a participation in His life; and the obscurity is not a defect, but the very condition of this contact, because God is not proportionate to our natural faculties. The darkness of faith is the space in which union occurs – darkness for the conscious mind – precisely because in that darkness, all reliance on our own powers is stripped away, and we are left naked before the God who sustains us.
The acts of Faith, Hope and Love are the core of Spiritual Life, the core of Prayer life… any prayer. This means that prayer can be done outwardly only, without the inner adhesion… and this makes it of lesser value.
V. The Operative Knowledge: Describing the Act as a Teachable Operation
If one accepts that the act of faith is real, that it constitutes genuine contact with God, and that it is the fundamental means by which the spiritual life either deepens or remains at an initial stage, then one arrives at the inescapable conclusion: this act must be capable of being taught. And if it is to be taught, it must be capable of being described in terms that are concrete, verifiable, and repeatable.
The classical tradition does contain the elements of such a description, but they have been scattered across different contexts and have never been systematically gathered into an explicit pedagogy. What would such a pedagogy look like?
An act of faith, understood operationally, can be described as involving the following identifiable steps or interior movements:
- The recognition—often implicit rather than explicit—of one’s inability to grasp or feel God in the present moment. This recognition is crucial because it strips away the illusion that one can connect with God through one’s own powers. It is the acknowledgment of emptiness, not as defeat, but as the necessary precondition for a genuine act of faith.
- The voluntary renunciation of reliance on perception or reasoning at that moment. This is not anti-intellectual; rather, it is the setting aside of a particular mode of knowing (sensible or conceptual) in order to make room for another. One deliberately ceases to attempt to grasp God through what one can see, feel, or understand, and instead opens the spirit to a different order of contact.
- A deliberate interior adhesion to God as present and acting, on the basis of His word and the affirmation of His reality. This is the positive movement. It is not a feeling; it is a positioning of the will and spirit toward the God in whom, by revelation, one knows one may trust. It is saying, in the depths of the spirit, even when all is dark: ‘You are here. You are acting. I adhere to You.’
- The repetition of this adhesion, especially when it is contradicted by experience or by the absence of sensible support. This repetition is not mechanical; it is the very exercise through which the virtue becomes stabilised and operative. Each renewal of the act deepens the habitus. Each time the soul chooses adhesion to God despite the absence of feeling, it is training the capacity for genuine faith.
This description is already a method, and it is a method that can be taught, guided, verified, and refined. Moreover, it can be verified not merely by introspection, but by its effects: a progressive detachment from the need to feel, a stabilisation of interior peace even amid external trial, and a deeper, more constant orientation of the whole person toward God that becomes independent of circumstance or sentiment.
Similar structures can be articulated for the act of hope and the act of charity. Each has its own interior grammar, its own progression, its own way of connecting the human spirit with the divine reality that is its true object. And each can be taught—not merely explained, but taught as a concrete practice that someone can be guided to perform.
VI. Lectio Divina and the Anthropology of Spiritual Operations
A particularly instructive example of the broader problem is the current state of teaching on Lectio Divina. This ancient practice, which is meant to be a school of formation in how the Word of God becomes operative in the human soul, has been reduced to a set of vague stages—‘listening,’ ‘meditating,’ ‘responding’—without any serious engagement with the anthropology of how these operations actually occur.
Modern presentations of Lectio Divina speak of ‘listening’ as though it were a simple thing, a matter of opening oneself and receiving what comes. Yet genuine listening—the kind through which the Word truly penetrates and transforms the human person—is not passive reception. It is a complex interior operation involving attention, renunciation of one’s own agenda, a certain emptying of one’s usual categories of understanding, an openness to the living presence of the Word beyond what the words themselves mean at a conceptual level. How does this listening occur? What exactly does the human spirit do? How does the natural reception of words become the supernatural reception of God’s living Word?
These are not obscure mystical questions. They are practical questions about the mechanics of spiritual formation. Yet they are rarely asked, let alone answered. As a result, people who practice Lectio Divina often remain at the level of emotional response to the text, or at the level of extracting a moral lesson, without ever descending into the deeper levels where the Word becomes truly operative—where it begins to reshape the person’s fundamental orientation toward God.
The same critique applies to every other spiritual practice. Contemplative prayer is spoken of in language that remains vague about what is actually happening in the person who prays. The spiritual life is treated as though it consists in exhortations to generosity, availability to grace, fidelity to practice—all of which are true—yet without any systematic analysis of the micro-dynamics by which grace and human freedom actually cooperate, moment by moment, in the transformation of the person.
VII. The Contemporary Silence: A Systematic Absence
One might ask: Is there a contemporary author who provides a systematic, coherent pedagogy of the fundamental acts of faith, hope, and charity? Who describes how to perform them interiorly, how to repeat them, how to verify them, and how to guide others in them? The answer, when one searches seriously, is uncomfortable: such a presentation, in fully articulated form, is effectively absent from contemporary theological and spiritual literature.
What one finds instead are fragments—sometimes very rich, but systematically unorganized. Father Jean C. J. d’Elbée, for instance, in his work I Believe in Love, comes close at moments to a more operational language of the act. He writes: ‘To make an act of faith is to say to God: I believe that Thou art here, though I do not see Thee.’ That formulation is already closer to practical pedagogy than most academic theology. It is an address, an interior positioning, something that someone can actually do. Yet even d’Elbée does not build a full, systematic pedagogy from such formulations. One finds the insight; one does not find the method that follows from it.
Similarly, within the Carmelite tradition—where one might expect the deepest pedagogical resources—one finds extraordinarily strong statements of principle, yet without methodical unfolding. The principle is clear: ‘The more the soul exercises itself in faith, the more it is united with God’ (John of the Cross, Ascent II, 9). Yet the path of how to exercise oneself in faith is left to individual discovery, or to the guidance of a master whose own formation presumably gave him this knowledge. The doctrine is not explicitly systematized for pedagogical transmission.
Even in more recent authors who are concerned with experience and transformation, the same gap appears. They describe psychological states, transitions in one’s relation to prayer, attitudes toward trial. But they rarely isolate the act itself as a teachable operation with its own internal structure and dynamics. It is as though writers feel free to describe where one is meant to arrive, but they avoid the difficult work of describing the precise interior movements through which one gets there.
This silence has a consequence: it leaves the person undertaking spiritual formation either to spontaneity—hoping that grace will somehow work in spite of the absence of guidance—or to sentiment, or to moralism (focusing on what one should do externally rather than on the interior adhesion that gives it meaning), or to pure intellectualism. What it does not do is initiate the person into the concrete pedagogy of cooperation with grace that alone makes the spiritual life truly transformative.
VIII. The Crisis in Formation: Seminaries, Novitiates, and Diocesan Programs
The practical consequences of this absence become sharply visible when one examines how spiritual formation is actually conducted in contemporary seminaries, novitiates, and diocesan programs. If the operative knowledge of how to make the fundamental acts does not exist in explicit, transmissible form, then those who are responsible for forming seminarians, novices, and new members of communities are at a loss.
They can teach doctrine. They can explain the faith. They can offer courses in moral theology, Church history, Scripture. They can provide retreats and homilies that exhort to generosity and fidelity. Yet when a seminarian comes to them and says, ‘I understand the doctrine of faith, but I do not know how to actually make an act of faith when I am in darkness’—the formator has no systematic response. He may offer encouragement. He may share his own experience. He may recommend prayer or the reading of the mystics. But he cannot teach the act, because the very knowledge of how to do so has been lost or never transmitted to him.
The result is predictable: many seminarians and novices emerge from years of formation without having ever been systematically initiated into the fundamental operations by which the spiritual life actually deepens. They have received instruction; they have not received the formation that transforms the person. They remain dependent, for their spiritual life, on what is felt or understood in any given moment. As trials deepen, as the consolations of piety fade, as the intellectual clarity of their earlier years gives way to darkness, they find themselves adrift. The bridge between conversion and genuine spiritual maturity has not been built, because the pedagogy that builds it does not exist in an explicitly transmissible form.
It is in precisely this context—the inability of the contemporary Church to transmit to its own members and future leaders the operational knowledge of how the spiritual life is actually lived—that one must locate the gravity of what has been lost.
IX. What Recovery Requires: A Preliminary Framework
If the diagnosis outlined above is correct, then recovery is possible, but it requires a specific and demanding kind of work. It is not enough to say that there is a gap; one must articulate what filling that gap actually entails.
Formalisation and Objectivity
The first requirement is formalisation. The operative knowledge of the acts must be rendered in a form that can be examined, taught, critiqued, and improved. Not merely as content, but as structure: identifiable stages, the internal movements of each act, the mechanism by which grace and freedom cooperate, the specific indicators by which one can verify that the act is genuine rather than counterfeit.
This level of objectivity is crucial because, once it is achieved, the knowledge becomes portable. A seminary rector, a novice master, a spiritual director can actually use such a pedagogy without the living presence of the master who articulated it. It ceases to be dependent on individual charisma or personal transmission, and becomes transmissible as a method.
Demonstrable Fruit
The second requirement is demonstrability. The Church, in her practical wisdom, does not change formation paradigms solely on the basis of critique, no matter how accurate. She is moved by evidence of fruit.
If it can be shown—over time, and in measurable ways—that people formed with a systematic pedagogy of the acts actually grow in stable faith, hope, and charity; that they navigate trials with greater clarity and less dependence on consolation; that they reach deeper levels of contemplative prayer with inner coherence; that they witness to a transformed life that cannot easily be explained by purely human psychology—then one is no longer making merely a theoretical claim. One is presenting evidence.
Integration into Existing Structures
The third requirement is integration. If a new pedagogy remains parallel to existing structures—separate from seminaries, separate from novitiates, separate from diocesan formation programs—its impact will necessarily be limited. The path forward requires finding how the operative knowledge can be inserted into what already exists: into courses, into retreat formats, into the frameworks of spiritual direction, into the protocols of formation years.
This does not mean replacing everything. Rather, it means occupying the missing layer—the operational one—within the structures that already have institutional legitimacy and reach.
Formation of Formators
The fourth requirement is perhaps the most decisive: formation of formators. Even the most perfect method will fail if those responsible for transmitting it have not themselves been initiated into it. They must know the acts, not merely conceptually, but experientially. They must be able to recognise them in others. They must be able to distinguish a genuine act from its counterfeits. They must embody the pedagogy in their own lives before they can credibly teach it.
The tradition always worked through this mechanism: a small number of people who had been deeply formed in the operative knowledge served as bridges to the next generation. Without this living mediation, even the most brilliant pedagogy risks becoming theory again—ironically reproducing the very problem it was designed to solve.
Terminological Clarity
The fifth requirement is terminological precision. Much contemporary confusion arises from equivocation in fundamental terms. When people speak of ‘faith,’ they often blur together the virtue of faith, the act of faith, the content of faith, and subjective confidence or trust. When they speak of ‘experience,’ they conflate the felt consolations of prayer with the actual transformative presence of grace. When they speak of ‘explanation,’ they do not distinguish between a theoretical account of something and the operational knowledge of how to do it.
If the language of a renewed pedagogy remains too internal to its original context, it will be misunderstood or absorbed and neutralized by existing frameworks. Therefore, the vocabulary through which the operative knowledge is expressed must be both theologically sound and pedagogically clear—precise enough to avoid confusion, but accessible enough to be received by formators and practitioners who have not been immersed in its original articulation.
X. Strategic Realism: How Change Actually Occurs in the Church
There is one more crucial point that must be made, because it concerns the realistic path forward. The Church does not typically change her formation paradigms quickly, and certainly not on the basis of critique alone, however accurate or urgent that critique may be. Historical observation suggests something different occurs: a concrete school of spiritual life emerges, demonstrates fruitfulness over time, forms people visibly, and through this very fruitfulness, its principles gradually diffuse into the broader ecclesial body—sometimes explicitly named, often without being formally acknowledged.
The call to ‘wake up’ to the problem, while correct and necessary, is insufficient by itself. What tends to move the Church, over time, is not denunciation but demonstration. This means that the path forward operates according to a different kind of timeline and strategy than what urgent diagnosis alone might suggest.
For recovery to occur in a way that actually transforms Church formation, the following must be solidly in place:
- There must exist a coherent, teachable, and reproducible pedagogy of the fundamental acts—sufficiently explicit and objectified that others can learn it, practice it, and verify it without the constant presence of an original master.
- It must lead to measurable spiritual growth—not merely subjective feeling, but objective transformation visible in the person’s capacity for faith, for patience, for freedom from emotional dependency, for genuine charity.
- It must be capable of integration into existing formation structures, not as replacement but as the missing operational layer.
- It must be transmissible by trained formators who have themselves been formed in it.
Once these four conditions are in place, wider recognition follows. It follows slowly, sometimes, and without formal proclamation. But it follows, because the fruit makes itself evident.
XI. Conclusion: Toward Recovery
The argument of the present article has proceeded from a specific diagnosis: that contemporary Christian formation has been severed from the practical, operationally teachable knowledge of how the fundamental acts of faith, hope, and charity are actually performed. This is not a minor loss. It touches the very heart of what formation is meant to be.
The classical sources, particularly within the Carmelite tradition, do contain the seeds of such a pedagogy. But these seeds have become separated from the living transmission through which they were once vital. Doctrine remains; practice remains fragmented. Exhortation remains; the grammar of how to cooperate with grace in concrete acts remains largely unspoken.
Recovery requires more than the publication of another text. It requires the formalisation of operative knowledge, the demonstration of its fruit, its integration into existing structures, and the formation of formators who embody it. These are laborious tasks, demanding sustained work over time. They are not dramatic tasks. They do not promise quick transformation of the whole Church.
Yet they are the tasks through which genuine recovery actually occurs. The question is not whether the gap exists. It does—profoundly and structurally. The question is whether those who perceive this gap are willing to undertake the precise, patient work of rebuilding what has been severed, in a way that the Church can ultimately receive, transmit, and make her own.
That work has already begun in certain places. What is needed now is the precision, the courage, and the patience to see it through.
Bibliography
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