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DOCILITY IN SPIRITUAL DIRECTION
Taken from Francis Fernandez's Book, "IN CONVERSATION WITH GOD"
We need someone to guide our soul on its journey towards God.
Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, writes Saint Paul to the Christians of Thessalonica. We are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren, as is fitting because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing (2 Thess 1:1-3). Thanks to the Holy Spirit’s help, the first Christians benefited from the self-sacrificed vigilance of their pastors. The Pharisees, by contrast, were unable to guide the Chosen People effectively because, through their own fault, they remained in darkness, and laid upon the children of Israel a hard and heavy burden, one which moreover didn’t lead them to God. In the Gospel of today’s Mass (Matt 23:23-26) Our Lord calls them blind guides, incapable of showing others the right path to follow.
One of the greatest graces we can get is to have someone to guide us along the pathways of the interior life; and if we haven’t yet found someone to teach us and advise us, in God’s name, in the construction of our spiritual edifice, then let us ask God for it now: every one who asks, receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened (Matt 7:8). He will not fail to give us this great gift.
In spiritual direction God provides us with a person who knows the way well, to whom we open our heart and who acts as a teacher, a doctor, a friend, a good shepherd in the things that relate to God. That person points out to us the possible obstacles, and invites us to strive higher in our interior life and to fight on specific points more effectively. Thanks to the director’s help we are continually encouraged to keep going, we discover new horizons and our soul is roused to a hunger and thirst for God which lukewarmness, always lurking nearby, would like to quench. From earliest times the Church always recommended the practice of spiritual direction as a very effective means of making progress in the interior life.
It is very difficult for one to be his or her own guide in the interior life. it can happen very often that the impulses of our nature, the lack of objectivity with which we see ourselves, our self-love, the tendency to be drawn to what we like most or what we find easiest to do, can all tend to obscure the path to God - even though at the beginning it was perhaps very clear - and when that hap pens we begin to get bogged down, to get discouraged and lukewarm. A soul without a director is like a kindled coal, which, left by itself cools instead of burning. He who insists on being left to himself without a director to guide him, is like an unowned tree by the wayside; however fruitful it may be, the travellers pick its fruit, and none of it ripens (St John of the Cross, Spiritual Maxims, 177-178, in The Living Flame of Love).
It is a very special grace from God to have a person who can help us effectively in our sanctification and in whom we can confide in a very human and at the same time a supernatural way. What a joy it is to be able to communicate our deepest feelings, so as to direct them to God, to someone who understands us, who encourages us, who opens new horizons for us, who prays for us and has a special grace to help us!
In spiritual direction we encounter Christ himself, who listens to us attentively, who understand us, and who gives us new energies and insights to help us keep going.
With permission from Scepter UK. Short excerpt from IN CONVERSATION WITH GOD by Francis Fernandez.
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