Parameters for Spiritual Direction

[RCIAGraduate]

“may mercy, peace, and love be yours in abundance”

What would be the appropriate situation for getting a Spiritual Director,everyone isn’t /can’t have one so what should.

Peace and Love.

 

[Oneofthewomen]

IMHO, everyone should have a spiritual director, if possible.

If you can find someone willing, I say go for it!

Spiritual direction is a great gift. My SD helps me to see where God is working in my life, and where I am working against God. He gives me wonderful suggestions for enhancing my prayer life and for going deeper in my relationship with Jesus.

 

[Auntie_A]

“may mercy, peace, and love be yours in abundance”

What would be the appropriate situation for getting a Spiritual Director,everyone isn’t /can’t have one so what should.

Peace and Love.

I’m glad you asked; I was just wondering the same yesterday.

How much time can I expect to have with a spiritual director?

How do you find one in your parish or thereabouts?

Are the priests overwhelmed with requests for spiritual counsel?

Do you stay with one for years or does it depend on your situation and circumstances?

Would it be better to find one with whom I really feel connected who lives far away or someone with whom I have no connection but they are easily accessible?

Are spiritual directors always clergy? Are they nuns? Lay people?

I Hope my questions enhance your original post and not detract.

 

[animalis]

Spiritual Direction is a great gift and all should be slow to start to give it. What I mean is concerning what St. John of the Cross said, “And hence there comes to them likewise a certain desire, which is somewhat vain, and at times very vain, to speak of spiritual things in the presence of others, and sometimes even to teach such things rather than to learn them.” (Dark Night; 1, 2)

This points to the parameters for direction. The person directed and the director have both to consider the need to be formed into a vessel of the spirit. The director does not boss the one directed, the one directed has to be a vessel to discern the Spirit in the agency of the Spiritual Director.

Psalm 32 and 143 speaks of the instruction of the soul by the confession of his or her sins. The Gospel of Luke affirms this (cf. Lk 1:77). This contrite spirit of the soul is a way it walks in conformity to its adherence to God’s Will. “Go thy way; for this man is to me a vessel of election, to carry my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel.” (Acts 9:15)

“Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” (Pope Leo XIII citing S. Jerome) The intellectual aspects of knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and counsel are given in abundance with a frequent reading of the Scriptures. An exhortation to do this is given by the Church at the Second Vatican Council, as well as S. Therese of the Child Jesus, the little flower.

“Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord: he shall delight exceedingly in his commandments.” (Ps 112:1) It says in more then three places in the bible “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”. Considering taking pleasure in the commandments -some souls feel pleasure in this, others in this agency, have to mortify their will and when the occasion comes when they want to delight in vanity, they have recourse to the commandments instead - they open up part three of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and read the instruction on the ten commandments. This is the fear of the Lord that begins wisdom. Hence it also begins a way to be a vessel for Spiritual Direction.