spirdir

Even in the ancient Church, lay persons also entrusted the direction of their
souls to monks. But spiritual direction outside the monasteries only became
important in the spiritual movements among the laity which characterized to
some extent the period from the 12th to the 15th century. Lay persons could
also assume the task of spiritual direction, as did for instance St. Catherine of
Sienna and Nicholas of Flue. The greatest age of spiritual direction was the
17th century, especially in France, with such figures as St. Francis de Sales,
St. Vincent de Paul, Pere de Berulle.

Spiritual direction is both a "humanist" and a "spiritual" process. "Nobody is
an island": we are only ourselves in contact with our mutual selves. This is
the anthropological ground for spiritual direction. As is well-known, the mere
verbalization of a problem can already "cut it down to size." In the Church,
the Body of Christ, people are even more intimately related to each other.
This is the theological ground for spiritual direction. Very often, too little
attention is paid to the fact that spiritual growth is only possible, as a
deliberate personal commitment, within a framework laid down by nature and
personal history. It is true that spiritual direction must be concerned with
spiritual initiatives, with disposing for the incalculable encounter with the
mystery of God and God's word, whose impact is never quite the same in any
two cases. It is essentially concerned with the discernment of spirits and the
finding of the will of God in a concrete situation. Nonetheless, all these
things must be integrated into a person's life as a whole, and the spiritual
cannot be treated as a sort of superstructure on top of the human element.
Spiritual direction cannot be confined to the religious realm, as though this
existed in isolation, but must deal with the whole person and the person's actual
problems. The main task of spiritual direction may therefore, be outlined as
follows: (a) to help the individual to self-knowledge; (b) to help the person to
self-acceptance; (c) to help the person to detachment from one's own ego; (d) to
help the person find the actual Will of God.

The spiritual director cannot be asked merely to ratify the subject's
opinions of one's self. The subject must be ready to accept without
resentment or defense mechanisms aspects of one's character which
one's self does not recognize, at least under their true names, and is
perhaps not too anxious to admit. One must be convinced that the value
of direction depends essentially on one's own readiness to be humbly
frank. This is mainly what the spiritual director has to go on, which means
that one must first be ready to listen attentively. This is the only way in
which real dialogue is possible. The director tries to place what is heard
in an objective perspective, analyzing it and throwing light on it so that
the inquirer can feel is understood. The answer to the question, "Who am
I really, and where do I stand?"

This brings us to the real aim of spiritual
direction, the finding of the Will of God "for
me," in the whole program of life and in the
new situations to which it constantly gives
rise. This is the interest to which the Spiritual
Exercises of St. Ignatius are devoted. The Will
of God, the Will of God's Grace, follows the
lines of each person's nature, even where,
and indeed above all where, the self must be
crucified for the same of its ultimate
fulfillment. When a person is in harmony with
one's self, the person is profoundly in
harmony with God, though it always remains
true that reason and grace cannot totally
coincide with this spiritual process.

Self-fulfillment passes through the incalculable and hence impenetrable
"mystery of the cross." "He that would find his life must lose it." The life of
the individual, like the history of the race, contains so many obscure
challenges and barely decipherable potentialities that it is the main task of
the spiritual director to try to help the inquirer to find the Will of God in the
actual circumstances of his or her life.

Spiritual direction and psychotherapy are essentially different, since the
former is concerned with eternal salvation and the latter with the healing of
illness. Nonetheless, in practice the boundaries are fluid, since the spiritual
director cannot exclude the element of healing, and the therapist should not
prescind entirely from a person's religious salvation, above all when the
therapist is dealing with someone whose fundamental attitude is that of a
believer.

is best based on a straightforward account of the life-story of the inquirer,
not centered, as in confession, on the question of guilt, faults and sins, but
comprising the whole evolution of a life. This should be able to throw light on
the deeper structures of a person's nature and character, as well as on the
aspects which at once meet the eye. In the course of the discussions, it will
probably be necessary to take up past history again and again. At the first
meeting, the director, usually, though not necessarily a priest, will probably
mainly try to listen receptively to what he or she is being told.
All self-knowledge, and especially when it is sought for religious motives,
implies immediately an ethical demand. The inquirer must be ready to accept
one's self as one has seen oneself to be, to face what one is, to face the
burden of one's real self. Human beings tend almost inevitably to create an
image of themselves in accordance with their wishful thinking, to play a "role"
of their own choosing and then go sour when facts are stubbornly resistant.
Nothing less than a real conversion is needed if the searcher is to accept the
profounder self-knowledge which one gains with the help of another. Here
too the director must give guidance and encouragement. This invitation to
conversion should not be primarily a call for ascetic effort. The director tries
to show how pre-existing dispositions interact on each other, and what
elements of imbalance are present. The director has to distinguish structure
of mind and character which are religiously neutral from the moral and
religious attitudes which alone a person's value is determined. There is then
still much to do in line of furnishing religious motives to help the subject to
accept the inadequacies and disequilibrium of one's nature, to bear one's
own burden -- in a word, to carry one's cross after Christ.
Once the process of self-acceptance has begun, it releases the forces which
help a person to stand back as it were from one's self and exercise a healthy
self-detachment. The spiritual director then has a new task. The director
must help the inquirer to recognize the projections of the self-seeking eho
for what they are, to rid oneself of fictive lifestyles and take up the program
indicated by one's real qualities as revealed by one's actual life story, the way
of life ordained for that person by God. This means striving for the inner
attitude which the tradition of spirituality has described as abandonment,
resignation or indifference [St. Ignatius Loyola] -- terms which could be
misleading. Here the discernment of spirit plays an important part, to which
the spiritual director should be equal.