The Joys and the Challenges of Spiritual Direction

Friends

    Peace be with you. 

    Last weekend, I had a session of my spiritual direction training and it occurred to me that I should update you on what we’re doing. After all, I have to miss celebrating our normal Sacrament of Reconciliation time on Saturdays when it happens so, just to make sure you know I’m not just slacking off, here’s a brief update. The director of our program is Fr. Bob Gross, though he has a lot of help from several of the people who led our Holy Spirit, Healing Fire mission last Fall. In this first year, we’re spending all our time focusing on our relationship with God and our relationship with other people and next year will be focusing on other people’s relationship with God. We’re doing that by going through the history of spirituality and working on our own spiritual growth. I have admitted in several different formats that this has been a humbling process because, before this process began, I really hadn’t taken the time for my spiritual life to grow. Without wanting to make a lot of excuses, I can admit rather shamefacedly that I’ve never prioritized prayer as I should have. In seminary, I would fail classes if I didn’t study or go to my teaching parish but there didn’t seem to be any consequences as long as I showed up for Mass and other public prayers. I was “successful” as a pastor if I had people on my committees and money kept coming into the parish, even if there were times when I felt like the Mass I was celebrating was empty because I was just mouthing words I didn’t live out properly.  And, while Masses and other public prayers are essential for spiritual growth, it is way too easy for these to become performative experiences when you are a priest. Essentially, I’m Martha in the story of Martha and Mary and I need to be more like Mary. 

    The trouble was that, whenever I would try to prioritize a daily holy hour, I would give up. I would get bored or feel like nothing was happening. I would let the “busy” work of ministry squeeze it out, or at least that’s what I would say was happening. The truth was that I was allowing my social life or the television to take priority over prayer. But, I knew that, if I was going to do this spiritual direction class, I needed to prioritize a daily holy hour. I still miss every once in a while but it’s a priority that I schedule into my daily calendar. And, even though it has helped to read and practice the techniques offered by the great spiritual writers, I still find myself distracted or bored or feeling like an hour takes so much longer in the chapel than it does anywhere else. Doubts go through my head and, as it says in Psalm 51, “...my sin is always before me…” But I’ve also found a lot of peace and it does feel like, the more I do it, the more accustomed it becomes and, without wanting to brag, the more growth I’m seeing in myself.  

    We started in August with a retreat and then studied the basics of mental prayer. Then, we went on to study St. Benedict and monastic prayer, a part that intrigued me a great deal as a Benedictine Oblate. We moved on to studying St. Francis and St. Catherine of Sienna this past January. I was really struck with how much the Eucharist and Mary influenced the theology of both of these saints. This past weekend, we talked about St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila, two real heavy hitters of contemplative prayer. Reading both of these writers was challenging because they are brilliant theologians as well as deeply prayerful people. Just to give one example, there are times when we feel distanced from God, like there’s a darkness or absence where we have felt the presence of God before. John of the Cross says that this may be a dark night of the senses or of the spirit, each of which is a situation of growth initiated by God that feels more like contraction but will make sense when it is finished. However, it could also be depression, which is more clinical/psychological in nature. We also may have caused it ourselves by selfish, sinful lives we aren’t facing. As a spiritual director, I have to help a person sift through their lives to figure out which of these four scenarios is most likely happening. 

    Yet, I take solace in the fact that a person’s spiritual growth has little to do with the holiness or aptitude of their director. God is doing all the work. We just have to show up and let him do it. We have to be open and invite him in and avoid the temptations of evil spirits who want to replace God with a search for money, power, pleasure, and fame. But God is always working in our lives. The more open and welcoming we are to him, the more he can work there.