Judging where you are in the spiritual life is utter arrogance. Everyone does this in beginning the spiritual life. But, just get over it. The Lord is our spiritual director and we cannot begin to know where He is leading us in all friendship. If we did, it wouldn’t be worth going there, would it? We would already be where we are right now. Not good. Forget about having goals in the spiritual life. You can’t get there from here. He draws us from there.
But, if you’re content with being stuck in reverse, looking to Christ crucified with your self-congratulatory imagination — so that He has no wounds at all, since you have no sin[!], holding Him to be a liar — then, go ahead, make all the goals you want.
But if you want to look upon Him whom we have pierced, and do so with all reality, in solidarity with Him, knowing that He has died for us while we were yet sinners so that we could look to Him in all friendship, then let Him draw you to Himself. Sit there, helping Mary hold Him:
If you’ve noted that you’ve ever sinned, and you label yourself as impossible in regard to holiness, you are then refusing to see how our Lord is drawing you to Himself. Just be a simple child before Him. Let yourself be drawn. He is just so good and kind.
If you’ve pegged someone as never able to advance in the spiritual life because you’ve noted how that person has at least objectively sinned in this way or that, know that you’ve already judged yourself as unworthy to be drawn by our Lord to Himself. He can forgive. Can you? In his grace? Yes, even if your feelings don’t like forgiving this one or that one. Just look to our Lord, who is so good and so kind.
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter. 
This is so true I do not know what to say. This gave my heart a lot to think about and the particular (vocation) matter that is most on my mind right now is certainly in the hands of the Crucified Lord (have had Masses offered for my vocation and for my conversion) though I myself “cannot get there from here”.
Your words on this topic that I read either here or in various other places throughout your blog have given me much to think about. It’s quite refreshing in many ways to try to trust more in our Lord than in ourselves; at least that has been my experience.
It is in the emptying of self that the grace of God can flow thru us. The quite voice that direct without direction, that offers an inner knowing that brings us one step closer to the voice of our Lord and the Blessed Mother. To be empty of self, of desire,of ego allows us to share, to give without expectations and to be open to a deeply spiritual life, to be open to a vocation in the church. What joy and wonder we experence on this spiritual adventure with our Lord and his Blessed Mother…
Now I wonder how the money changers felt when they were driven out of the temple. Now I wonder if what I feel right now could have any relationship to how it would feel to be smacked across the face by Jesus. Can you say, pride [on my part]? I need this message stamped into my heart with a hot iron.