Signs of Lukewarmness - Fr. Croiset (Spiritual Director for St. Margaret Mary)

Signs of Lukewarmness:

1.) Great negligence in spiritual exercises; prayer without attention, fervor or confidence.

2.) Confessing sins without amendment of life. Going to confession week after week after week for the same sins without taking any stronger means to avoid sin and amend one's life.

3.) Making holy communions without proper preparation and without fervor or fruit...going to communion every week and getting nowhere.

4.) Continual dissipation of spirit. This means we become engrossed in tons of different things and many different trifles which are not of any importance. Too many interests, too many worries, too many distractions.

5.) Perverse habit of doing ones actions without any interior spirit...of taking no pains to prevent passion, self-love or human respect.

6.) Sloth and not acquiring virtues proper to one's state (chastity, charity, etc.)

7.) Disgust for spiritual things, particular indifference to great virtue.

All of these things block the person from praying regularly.

A person who has great charity will have great zeal for prayer and will want to pray to escape all of these things.

Self-love especially is a great obstacle to prayer and to spiritual growth.

We must ask ourselves if our greatest love is ourselves or God. Do we seek comforts from God or from the world?

Lukewarmness is unfaithfulness to grace God offers us and is the reason why He will vomit out the lukewarm.

It is the biggest obstacle to growth of the interior life because it blocks prayer, especially mental prayer.

In order to overcome lukewarmness, we must:

1.) ASK God for the grace, especially to make our tepid souls fervent

2.) Pray the Act of Charity from the missal, pray it often

3.) Be disciplined. In every aspect, not just things spiritual. This is because our temporal life is intimately united to our spiritual life (just as the body is attached to the soul). We must be disciplined in our sleep habits (bedtime and rise time). We must be disciplined in our consumption of food and drink. We must be disciplined in our hygiene and our cleanliness/tidiness. We must be organized. If we find these things are repulsive to us or contrary to our natural disposition, we must war against that and work to correct these faults. A sloppy lifestyle is not a justifiable lifestyle. It is said that all of the saints lived very orderly lives, interiorly and exteriorly. We must strive to understand proper decorum.

4.) Pray for the grace to persevere in trials and activities which we find undesirable.

5.) Pray the Litany of Humility by Cardinal Merry del Val. A humble person will always find favor with God.

6.) Cultivate a devotion to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts. Seek refuge therein and not in any insufficient creatures.

7.) Prostrate yourself at the foot of the cross, literally and mentally, and ask Jesus to nail your heart to his feet that you may realize you deserve to be nowhere else but at His feet and on the Cross with Him.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us.
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.