We find the meaning of our vocations through spiritual direction. I will give you a link to a document from the Roman Curia on spiritual direction. They speak most about it in the second half. You will read somewhere in this document that priests as they are in themselves are spiritual directors weather they know it or not. There is confusion where I am from on the role of spiritual direction, and it seems that much has changed in the last 100 years in regard to this role among the clergy. Anyway I am drifting, for they do not cover in this document the changes. Here is the link.
clerus.org/english/news/00002638_The_priest__minister_of_divine_mercy___An_aid_for_confessors_and_spiritual_directors.html
The Holy Spirit gives to certain of the faithful the gifts of wisdom, faith and discernment for the sake of this common good which is prayer (spiritual direction). Men and women so endowed are true servants of the living tradition of prayer. According to St. John of the Cross, the person wishing to advance toward perfection should “take care into whose hands he entrusts himself, for as the master is, so will the disciple be, and as the father is so will be the son.” And further: “In addition to being learned and discreet a director should be experienced. . . . If the spiritual director has no experience of the spiritual life, he will be incapable of leading into it the souls whom God is calling to it, and he will not even understand them.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2690)
“Conversion is accomplished in daily life by gestures of reconciliation, concern for the poor, the exercise and defense of justice and right, by the admission of faults to one’s brethren, fraternal correction, revision of life, examination of conscience, spiritual direction, acceptance of suffering, endurance of persecution for the sake of righteousness. Taking up one’s cross each day and following Jesus is the surest way of penance.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1435)
