Spiritual direction makes us feel special. We get to talk about ourselves and feel heard. We get to think about how well we are doing and pat ourselves on the back for making such “great efforts” in our spiritual lives. It gives us space to feel bad for ourselves and blame our lack of progress on our director or on the lack of time/money/availability to speak to them regularly. To be fair, good ideas can be developed in a strong spiritual direction relationship, but more often than not, it becomes a “feel-good” source of procrastination, giving extroverts space to “talk things out” without actually doing anything, and introverts time to listen and evaluate, often coming to the conclusion that they “disagree with” (usually meaning dislike or do not fully understand/appreciate) the advice of their director, and thus also avoid action…
Alas, the spiritual life is all about progress. We seek a guide because we believe that a personal trainer in the Spiritual life will magically make us better, but it doesn’t always work that way. It is true that it is possible to have a phenomenal spiritual director who always knows exactly what to say, but it only really helps if we actually choose to trust them and act on their advice, even when we don’t fully understand it… but, this is hard, and often goes against our sensibilities. Sometimes, it even makes us think that the guide we have chosen isn’t right for us. It shatters our secret hope that simply having a spiritual guide will make us better without us having to change, or that they will do the work for us.
Alas, we must do the work, with or without a guide.
However, if in our earnest search for a spiritual guide, we aren’t looking for “holy” procrastination, if we are truly willing to do what it takes and we are still seeking, then maybe the real reason is because we don’t know what our goal is supposed to be.
Let me break it down for you:
First, and foremost, the universal goal of the Spiritual Life is growth in Intimacy with God. Practically speaking, this intimacy will show itself in the union of our will with God’s, so as to desire with all our heart His plan for us, and then to live it out with every fiber of our being, as the greatest source of our happiness.
What does this mean? How do we know God’s will?
Step 1: We have the Bible.
Our Lord Himself makes God’s plan very clear. He says: The first and greatest commandment is to love Him… and He says that, if we love Him we will keep His commands (John 14:15). We must, therefore, begin here. We must set out with a strong knowledge of the Commandments of God, and then “go and sin no more” (John 8:11).
Step 2: We must eliminate all sin from our lives. Period.
Don’t believe it is possible? Think again.
All things are possible with God…
All deliberate disobedience of any command of God, even in its smallest degree, must be eliminated from our lives STAT.
If you don’t know where to begin, begin by taking all grave offenses against the Commandments to task immediately. Start doing something about them. Avoid anything and everything that leads you to the repetition of these particular sins at all costs. Lean upon the graces presented in Absolution to break the chains of addiction that any sin may hold on you. Start first with grave sins and move slowly and methodically until all intentional sin and even the desire for sin has been erased from our life completely and replaced by prayer and a deeper desire for union with God.
This leads us to the next point, which overlaps quite a bit with the last one, because without prayer we cannot thoroughly eliminate sin. The point is:
Step 3: We MUST increase our life of prayer.
We must use this powerful source to increase our desire for God and our love of Him by using scripted prayers as well as an ever deepening practice of mental prayer. (See also: The Urgency of Mental Prayer)
How do we do this???
MAKE. TIME. FOR. GOD. PERIOD.
Prioritize Him over everything else.
Read strong, classical works from proven spiritual giants on growth in prayer and how to pray, especially ones who explain how to replace our “disordered desires” with a deeper desire for God. But, don’t just read ABOUT God or ABOUT prayer. Make time to practice it. Like a muscle, our prayer deepens with pursuit and practice. Make Mental Prayer a daily and indispensable habit. Take time to contemplate the meaning of the words we say in more scripted options and spend time learning to MEAN them with our whole souls.
What else must we do?
- In addition to prayer, we must learn about grace, pursue grace, and put forth our absolute best effort to make responding to grace a habit in our lives. (This point significantly overlaps with the last one considering that prayer is a major source of Grace).
- We must begin to practice deeper silence and reflection, spend time contemplating the Passion, and learn to embrace suffering in our lives.
- Finally, we must look at what is already our state-in-life and ask ourselves what habits of virtue we need to practice in order to live that state as perfectly as possible. We must question ourselves where our greatest weaknesses lie, and then do everything in our power to exercise both grace and practice to grow in strength in those areas.
We must be humble and honest, practical and resourceful. We must use our God given common sense, logic, and resourcefulness to seek out trusted sources of information to grow in our weakest areas, and make them strengths.
For all this, we need prayer and the ability to read/research.
In this modern age of information we have no excuses. We have access to every possible resource from every era in every format possible, from print to preaching on any subject we could possibly need. There is nothing new under the sun. Every struggle and every sin has been analyzed within an inch of its life and all the information is at your fingertips.
The real problem might be the excess of information, and knowing whose advice to trust. Well, first we must always remember that even if we have a guide for the purpose of this step alone, we will still have to ask ourselves if we trust our guide’s advice/recommendations. It’s a vicious circle, and one we can easily “spin in our favor” if we don’t like something they tell us. It is far easier and more economical to trust the greats of the past, the ones who have proven their lives through miracles and the taking up of their Cross, through their clear living of their own callings to the point where Christ shone through their testimony in an undoubtable way. (It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me… – Galatians 2:20) These are those who heroically practiced what they preached and/or gave their lives to prove it, like Theresa of Avila and Francis de Sales, Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Alphonsus Liguori, and so many others.
Once you have come to this point, you may begin to need more direction as to how you should proceed and where else you need to grow… but, it is also at this point when those capable of or willing to direct you will be few and far between. This is the stage at which you may begin to ask Our Lord to put someone in your life to help you in this regard, but, if you have a holy marriage, this person is more often than not, meant to be your spouse. If you are a member of a religious community, it is more than likely simply going to be a superior or a director in your community itself. If neither of these situations apply to you, then most likely He intends you to turn first to whichever confessor He has placed in your life at this particular moment.
A final word of caution…
Calling the search for a spiritual director a source of procrastination in our spiritual progress rather than a true help may sound harsh or cruel especially to those who may have pursued an education in “spiritual direction” and who are attempting to make a living directing wayward souls. It is a commendable ambition, but it is still an ambition, and ambition is often a subtle source of a dangerous and powerful pride: who are we to place ourselves in a position to tell others what to do, if we have not yet removed the beams from our own eyes?
Therefore, let us step back and examine if this whole spiritual direction thing is really a giant distraction from where we should be focusing our energies? Let us all get brutally honest and ask ourselves if we don’t already know what we are supposed to be doing.
Maybe what we need more than someone to “tell us what to do”, is to simply start acting.
To growing together 🥂
In Him always,
<3
