Hi, I'm Father Gregory Pine.

And I'm Father Jacob Bertran Jansick.

And you're listening to the Catholic Classics podcast, where we seek to grow our prayer lives by learning from

the church's greatest Saints and teachers. Spiritual reading can be challenging

for many Catholics so this podcast is here to help. Each season will read

through a great work, unpack its timeless wisdom,

and encourage you with practical tips for the pursuit of holiness. The Catholic

classics podcast is brought to you by Ascension. This season we are reading

Ascension's edition of Introduction to the Devout Life by St Francis to Sales.

To get your copy of the book and download the reading plan for this season

visit Ascension Press.com slash Catholic Classics or text intro to 3.

3777. Be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast app. In this bonus episode, we will be reading the Introduction to Part 5, exercises and councils for renewing the soul and strengthening her devotion, found at pages 427 to 429 of Ascension's edition of Introduction to the Devout Life.

This introduction will give you an overview of what we will be covering in the following episodes for this part of the book.

As we pursue the devout life, we find ourselves craving assurance that we are in fact making progress. Sure, our prayer life may not be very advanced nor our virtuous

deeds especially heroic, but if we could only have a sense of improvement then all

would be well, at least for now.

Unfortunately for us, though, spiritual progress cannot be neatly measured and tracked.

For one, the life of grace is immaterial or invisible,

and so it can be hard to determine whether that grace is present or how it is fairing.

Then there is the fact that

while scientists and clinicians may make it sound like we are always progressing to a better and brighter future.

In the spiritual life, the narrative is a lot messier.

...