Eternally Present and Active; yet Hidden
June 10, 2025
Hello! How is each and every one? We are on the second week of the month of June, a month-full of feasts and solemnities in the Church. St. John 20: 19-23 relates: “In the evening of the first day of the week, the doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood among them. He said to them, ‘Peace be with you’, and showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Lord, and he said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.’ After saying this he breathes on them and said: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained.’ Sunday of the Ascension of the Lord was followed by Pentecost Sunday, when the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles. Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11 relates: When Pentecost day came round, the apostles had all met in one room, when suddenly they heard what sounded like a powerful wind from heaven, the noise of which filled the entire house in which they were sitting; and something appeared to them that seemed like tongues of fire; these separated and came to rest on the head of each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak foreign languages as the Spirit gave them the gift of speech. Now there were devout men living in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven, and at this sound they all assembled, each one bewildered to hear these men speaking his own language. They were amazed and astonished. ‘Surely’ they said ‘all these men speaking are Galileans? How does it happen that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; people from Mesopotamia, Judaea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya round Cyrene; as well as visitors from Rome – Jews and proselytes alike - Cretans and Arabs; we hear them preaching in our own language about the marvels of God.’
Pentecost celebrates the birth of the Church, on the next day of which was yesterday we celebrated honoring Mary, the Mother of the Church. It is just and right that Mary is the Mother of the Church for she is the mother of Jesus, the son of God and He is the head and founder of the true Church.
(From opusdeitoday.org, Mary, Mother of the Church, May 19, 2024) Pope Francis in March 2018, decreed that the ancient devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, under the title Mother of the Church, be inserted into the Roman Calendar. The liturgical celebration, B. Mariae Virginis, Ecclesiae Matris, was to be celebrated annually as a Memorial on the day after Pentecost. In a decree released in March 2018 by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Robert Sarah, its Prefect, said the Pope’s decision took account of the tradition surrounding the devotion to Mary as mother of the Church. He said the Holy Father wishes to promote this devotion in order to “encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the Church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as a growth of genuine Marian piety.”
Pentecost Sunday ended the Easter season and Regina Coeli. We started praying the Angelus again on Pentecost Sunday.
June 1, Solemnity of the Ascension
of the Lord
June 8, Pentecost Sunday
June 9 Mary, Mother of the
Church,
June 12, Feast of Our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Eternal High Priest
Philippine Independence Day
June 15, Solemnity of the Most
Holy Trinity
3rd Sunday of June, Father’s
Day
June 22, Solemnity of the Most
Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)
June 24, Solemnity of the
Nativity of St. John the Baptist
June 27, Solemnity of the Most
Sacred Heart of Jesus
June 29, Solemnity of Sts. Peter
and Paul, Apostles
Before going ahead let us just define what spiritual direction is. From the same book it says:
“Spiritual direction is a one-on-one
relationship between a director and a directee in which the directee’s
relationship with God is the fundamental reference point. Every person’s
one-on-one relationship with God is the most fundamental relationship in his
life, but it must develop and grow.
Every relationship affects our relationship with God, but the special
relationship of spiritual direction can play an irreplaceable role in
developing the directee’s one-on-one relationship with God because it deals most
directly with that relationship.
Spiritual direction can touch on everything in the directee’s life, but
the primary focus is on his relationship with God. The spiritual director helps
the directee to see God’s role in everything else.
The Congregation for the Clergy summarized it nicely: “Spiritual direction is not simply a doctrinal consultation. Rather it concerns our relationship and intimate configuration with Christ” (Congregation for the Clergy, The Priest, Minister of Divine Mercy, no. 69).
Spiritual direction is an opportunity to open one’s heart totally to another person, sharing the most intimate memories and experiences, all the way to the foundation of one’s being: the relationship with God. As St. Augustine expressed, God is more intimate to us than our innermost self (See St. Augustine, Confessions, bk. III, chap. 6, no. 11). As the directee makes the journey of trust and vulnerable self-revelation, the intimate, innermost depths of the soul begin to come into view. Through spiritual direction, a person can develop his one-on-one relationship with God and at the same time discover new depths in his own soul. He can also allow love to heal and transform those depths. As that transformation and healing take place, everything else in life is affected in a positive way, “that God may be everything to every one” (1 Cor 15:28). There is no need for spiritual direction in heaven, because in heaven everything is unveiled and we know God and everyone fully, even as we are fully known by Him (see 1 Cor 13:12). If the dynamic of spiritual direction is lived out well, however, it can become a taste of heaven as the depths of the soul are opened up and the self-giving love of God becomes more immediately visible and tangible.
Following is the first part of Chapter 9, on The Spiritual Director (from Spiritual Direction A guide for Sharing the Father’s Love by Fr. Thomas Acklin, OSB and Fr. Boniface Hicks, OSB)
What
are the natural and supernatural qualities that make for a good spiritual
director? These qualities may already be
substantially in place and may also grow over time, especially with some
particular effort and prayer on the part of the spiritual director. Spiritual direction can be personally
challenging and cause various feelings and thoughts to come up in the spiritual
director. The spiritual director must
learn to deal with his own internal state and also bring some of his experience
and his struggles to his own spiritual director.
In
short the bare necessities for being a spiritual director are that one has a
spiritual life and that one is in his own process of spiritual direction.
Important Qualities for Spiritual
Direction
At
a natural level, he should be humble, prudent, and have a mature
disinterestedness. He should be a
patient and empathetic listener, learned in spiritual theology, and he should
be receiving spiritual direction himself.
At the supernatural level, he should have a zeal for souls, a
spiritual-mindedness, trust in divine providence, and personal experience of
the spiritual life and prayer. The
teaching of St. Paul of the Cross on spiritual direction provides a good
summary of the qualities needed in a spiritual director: “Paul expected the Spiritual Director to have
learning, prayer and experience, holiness and prudence” [Silvan Rouse, Reflections on Spiritual Direction in St.
Paul of the Cross, Studies in Passionist History and Spirituality, vol. 12,
ed. Norbert M. Dorsey, CP (Rome, Italy: Passionist General Curia, 1982), 17)].
-Learning
and experience
Learning
is a great help in shedding light upon every matter. It will be possible to find both learning and
goodness in some persons (St. Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, in The
Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, vol. 2, trans, Kieran Kavanaugh and
Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 2001), 159.
Pope
Francis likewise highlighted the importance of having formation in
spirituality. It is most important to
have knowledge of the spiritual life, even drawing from ancient and monastic
sources. There is much wisdom and
spiritual direction in the works of early monasticisms (Pope Francis, Address
to Consecrated Men and Women.)
St.
John of the Cross emphasized the importance of personal experience for guiding
directees in the intermediate and sublime stages of contemplation,
writing: “Besides being learned and
discreet a director should have experience.
Although the foundation for guiding a soul to spirit is knowledge and
discretion, directors will not succeed in leading the soul onward in it when
God bestows it, nor will they even understand it if they have no experience of
what true and pure spirit is” (St. John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, in The
Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, stanza 3, no. 30).
Spiritual
direction is not a matter of giving clever advice, but rather a matter of
receiving the directee with love and living out the spiritual direction
relationship in a way that the Lord is truly, explicitly present.
Learning
and experience go hand in hand and the saints vacillate over which is more
important. In one case, St. Paul of the
Cross emphasized experience over and above learning, when he wrote, “Besides
being very learned, he should also be a man of deep contemplation, while
without experience, the very deep and marvelous deeds which God works in the
soul are not understood” (St. Paul of the Cross, quoted in Silvan Rouse, Reflections on Spiritual Direction in St.
Paul of the Cross, 18). In another context, St. Paul of the Cross
emphasized learning, “If you cannot find a man with all these qualities, then
at least let him be learned” (Ibid.,
19).
-Humble,
Prudent, Disinterested, Zealous for Souls
Humility,
prudence, disinterestedness, and zeal for the sanctification of souls are all
qualities identified by Fr. Jordan Aumann, OP, in his Spiritual Theology (Jordan Aumann, OP, Spiritual Theology (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1980). These are some fundamental human, moral
qualities that spiritual directors must have.
Humility is the sine qua non
of the Christian life and is especially important for spiritual directors. Because of the esteem that people have for
spiritual directors, pride is always knocking at their door. Since the spiritual director is in a position
of representing God and also exercising judgement and discernment about the
movements of God in the lives of his directees, he may easily start to feel
superior to his directees. A Christian
who is truly advanced in the spiritual life, however, should rather be well
acquainted with his weakness and be very humbled to be in a position to serve
others through spiritual direction.
A
regular part of spiritual direction involves guiding directees in choosing the
good. A spiritual director should have a
well-developed virtue of prudence to be able to identify the good in various
situations and help a directee to see and take hold of that good. Prudence also has a component of common sense
to it. A spiritual director should have
a healthy dose of humanity and some good, old-fashioned common sense.
Spiritual
direction develops intense relationships and a spiritual director naturally
becomes interested in the lives of his directees. At the same time, he needs the freedom to
listen to the Holy Spirit and offer the best guidance. He needs the openness to see the spiritual
directee as he is, rather than as a projection of his own ideas onto the
directee. He needs to foster freedom in
the directee, and for this reason he has to be able to let go and let the
directee develop in his own time through his own relationship with the Holy
Spirit. A spiritual director will have a
healthy love and attachment for directees, but must not develop any disordered
attachments.
A
spiritual derector is in the position of directing others to holiness. He makes many sacrifices in offering his time
and attention to the directees who approach\ach him for direction. If he does not have a supernatural motivation
and does not truly desire for men and women to be holy, spiritual direction can
fade into mere conversation or disappear into nothing. For the spiritual director to keep the
conversation focused on the Lord and the good of the soul who is seeking
guidance, he must have a zeal for the sanctification of souls. This can also be a source of suffering for
the spiritual director as he experiences the conflict between his desire for
everyone to grow in holiness and the limits of his own ability, time, and
energy to guide them. In every case the
suffering can only be resolved through surrender to God’s will, but in some
cases that surrender may also lead to additional creative outlets in apostolic
ministry. A spiritual director may find ways to communicate his knowledge of
God and the spiritual life to a larger audience through preaching, retreats,
books, social media, or other forms of mass media.
-Spiritual-Mindedness
and Psychological Mindedness
At
the natural level, a spiritual director must have an interest in people and
have a heart that cares for people. This
interest and caring must be especially directed toward a person’s spiritual
life, not just for the externals. The
interest in externals should always move toward the deeper meaning of the
exterior life and the impact that various exterior qualities and events have on
the interior life. We could call this a spiritual-mindedness. (The traditional word for this is pneumatikos.) This spiritual-mindedness
is developed and directed first of all toward one’s own life, seeking to
integrate one’s exterior life with one’s interior life by prayer and faith. Being in spiritual direction makes one more
spiritually-minded.
While
it is necessary for a spiritual director to be spiritually-minded, it also
helps to be psychologically-minded. This means that without reducing everything
to the spiritual, one is able to see the natural processes at work, including
aspects of temperament, personality, and psychological makeup. This does not require one to understand all
of psychology or even to have a degree in psychology, but to be aware of some
dynamics of natural, psychological processes in human experience, thought and
behavior. While a good spiritual
director will be aware of the limitations of psychology, without any knowledge
of psychology there is a danger of over-spiritualizing. Grace builds on nature; it does not replace
it. A spiritual director should be able
to appreciate the supernatural work of grace perfecting, purifying, and
elevating the natural potential of the human being he is directing. It is important to know one’s limits in
psychological knowledge, but a little psychological-mindedness goes a long way.
-Empathetic
Listening
A
good spiritual director must be able to sit and listen, staying with a person
even through long periods of time when a directee is highly resistant to
opening up or being vulnerable. A
spiritual director needs a lot of patience and compassion to accompany a person
dealing with depression or anxiety, and while that directee may need
additional, professional help, the spiritual director continues to meet with them
at the same time.
Sometimes
spiritual direction is exciting, especially when a directee is growing rapidly,
receiving a lot of grace for conversion and setting out in a new
direction. On the other hand, people are
not always very interesting, and they can get stuck and be tedious to listen
to. In fact, this tediousness can cause
a person to be isolated so that his spiritual director is the only one who
listens to him. This can be a particularly
difficult dynamic in spiritual direction—a spiritual director may end up being
an oasis in a very lonely life.
Furthermore, it is important for a spiritual director to be able to empathize with a person, to put himself in another person’s place. In our time, there is an increasing number of people with a limited capacity for empathy while the number of narcissistic people is growing rapidly. A spiritual director who is highly narcissistic will be very problematic. To the contrary, a spiritual director needs to have the interior freedom and maturity that generally come through suffering and self-denial. With empathy, a spiritual director listens to the heart: “For spiritual direction, you must examine what has happened in the heart; such as the movement of the spirit, whether I have been desolate, if I have been consoled, if I am tired, why I am sad: these are the things to speak about with a spiritual director”(Pope Francis, Address to Consecrated Men and Women of the Diocese of Rome).
-Trust
in Divine Providence
Another
factor in being a good spiritual director is trust in divine providence. One concrete manifestation of this is in
being able to be generous with one’s time.
Spiritual direction takes a lot of time and reaches only a small number
of people. Not everyone can sit and
listen for hours at a time. The rewards
are often hidden and intangible, making it more a way of life than merely a
job. A spiritual director does not
usually count up hours and charge fees, but rather must learn to see that there
is a movement of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life and that becomes the
motivation for him to keep going deeper with the directee. As Jesus said, “You received without pay,
give without pay” (Mt 10:8). Spiritual
direction begins when a person comes for some spiritual help, wants to go to
Confession, needs to talk, or starts coming regularly because they can see that
meeting with a spiritual director is helpful.
There is an element here that is not part of the practice of the secular
professional. That element is divine
providence (See Jean-Pierre de Causssade, Abandonment
to Divine Providence (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1975); Jean Baptiste
Saint-Jure and St. Claude de la Colombiere, Trustful
Surrender to Divine Providence (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publications,
1983); W…. A spiritual director must have
a lot of trust in divine providence. He
needs to be able to discern and to believe that God has brought directees to
him and that God knows what He is doing.
God provides the people and their needs, and he provides the grace and
time we need to help them. A spiritual
director may not feel like he has time to meet with another person but time is
a gift to begin with—it belongs first to God who freely entrusts it to us. If one is worried about time, he will always
be running out of it, while the one who offers the little he has will find that
God has a wonderful way of multiplying his time.
At
the same time, a spiritual director must be prudent, which requires him to
carefully and prayerfully discern his availability. He may have to tell a directee he cannot meet
with him more than once a month. He may
not be able to be on call in the same way as other professionals are. At the same time, a spiritual director needs
to develop a profound trust in divine providence. God leads people to a particular spiritual
director and God will provide the gifts, including the time to lovingly,
prayerfully guide that person. If the
spiritual director puts the pressure on himself as if it all depends on him, he
will quickly be overwhelmed.
A
parish priest may not feel he has the time necessary to do much, or any
spiritual direction. On the other hand,
Dom Chautard, in his classic work The
Soul of the Apostolate, puts out the challenge: “It would be an omission, and sometimes a
grave omission, in a priest, bound by his duty as teacher and surgeon of souls,
if he were to deprive them of this great supplement to Confession, this
indispensable source of energy for the spiritual life, which is spiritual
direction” (Chautard, The Soul of the
Apostolate, 169). Furthermore, he
concludes his reflections on spiritual direction by relativizing the other
activities of a parish priest that are intended to reach a great number of the
faithful in favor of forming more intensely the more fervent souls in his
parish:
The more zealous priests become in perfecting
themselves in the art of spiritual direction, and in devoting themselves to it,
the more will they realize how unnecessary are certain exterior means which
might, it is true, have some use to begin with, in establishing contact with
the faithful, and drawing them in, grouping them, arousing their interest,
holding on to them, and keeping them under the influence of the Church. But the Church, faithful to her true end,
will never be fully satisfied until souls are intimately incorporated into
Jesus Christ (Ibid., 182-183).
A
good spiritual director will have to be prudent in determining his physical
limitations and establishing boundaries. These need to be adjusted according to
one’s vocation to priesthood, religious life, marriage, consecrated virginity,
and so forth. All have their own unique
demands. A spiritual director does no
one any favors if he cannot make a priority out of his own responsibilities and
spiritual life so that he can most effectively help others. Within the realm of these very real
limitations, however, an ongoing openness to divine providence continues to be
necessary. When one is praying and
trusting in God, it is amazing how things always work out. God has a way of providing exactly enough,
like the jar of oil and flour that never ran out but continued to provide bread
for the widow of Zarephath and Elijah the prophet (see 1 Kgs 17:8-16).
-State
in Life
The
collection of characteristics listed in the first part of this chapter will
more readily describe those who are able to devote themselves to the spiritual
life. The vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience provide an opportunity for separation from some of the more
burdensome and time-consuming parts of life in such a way that facilitate a
greater sensitivity of heart for the matters of the spirit. Spiritual-mindedness, great trust in divine
providence, extensive experience in receiving spiritual direction, experience
in prayer and in the movements of the spiritual life, adequate time for meeting
with directees, and substantial knowledge of the spiritual life are all going
to be found more readily in priests and consecrated men and women. Of course, humility and empathetic listening
are qualities that are found more broadly than in those special vocations. With this in mind, we can see that priests
and consecrated men and women are more likely to be good candidates for giving spiritual
direction, but some uniquely prepared lay men and women surely also have the
capacity to be good spiritual directors.
“There are to be found also well formed lay people—both men and
women—who offer this service of counsel along the journey of holiness”
(Congregation for the Clergy, The Priest,
Minister of Divine Mercy, no. 65).
I am sure you also find the topic interesting and worth
considering in your life and yet the real and true spiritual director is
already in you and must have been doing His job. What may be wanting is your participation in
the in this one-on-one process. Bring the whole idea and topic into your
conversation with the Holy Spirit Himself in those quiet moments of your prayer.
I trust He will tell you more things and He will lead you to carry out whatever
needs to be done every step of the way. This is the opportune time to do so. No better time to do so.
See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and
laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us
together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
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