Hajja Salesjana

credit due His glory as they recognize any virtues within themselves or any accomplishments they have achieved. Growing spiritually impels them with a greater desire to grow in perfection with the understanding and acceptance that they will never completely attain it in this life. Just aswe understand emotional maturity as the ability to experience warmth and affection and to guide our emotions effectively by reason, spiritual maturity can then be understood as growth in a loving and warm relationship with Christ and the effective guidance of both our reason and our emotions by virtue . to move him to attempt to address whatever injustice made him angry in the first place. Now naturally reason, to do its job effectively, needs to be informed, which includes proper conscience formation, or the understanding of right and wrong. The first formers of conscience are the parents. But this is also where catechesis comes in, and where the lack of effective catechesis these last few decades has had a devastating impact. The human person, by nature, is always seeking after happiness, but often in wrong ways that can never truly satisfy him. Many, because they misunderstand or do not even know what Holy Mother Church teaches, may have limited culpability but this can impede their spiritual maturity and may even sabotage true emotional maturity as well. For how can reason effectively guide the emotions toward their natural end of all that’s good, beautiful and true if it is misinformed as to what actually constitutes authentic goodness, beauty and truth? Spiritual Maturity: Spiritual maturity on the other hand is measured by our conformity to and relationship with God . An individual grows in their knowledge of God through study of scripture, and spiritual reading. They grow in their relationship and intimacy with God through prayer. As an individual matures spiritually they are drawn into a deeper relationship with God and should also gain a greater discernment of God’s particular call on their life. Spiritual maturity is not simply intellectual knowledge of God or warm emotional feelings toward Him, but is characterized by growth in virtue . As someone grows in virtue, they become more steadfast in the truth and less swayed by public opinion, emotional arguments or even their own willfulness or disordered passions. The hallmark virtue of the spiritually mature is humility. With true humility a person sees his own place in relation to God and gives God the Photo by Lachlan Dempsey - Unsplash.com 33 Jannar-Marzu 2024 hajja