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Brookline Carmel Bulletin
January 1,
1961
Cogitatio Sancta
(Holy
Meditation)
“Lord, we do not know where Thou art going, and how can we
know the way?” (John 14,5). These words of Thomas the Apostle, spoken at
the Last Supper, spotlight an important need in the life of every
Catholic: Spiritual Guidance. We are born children of wrath,
hell-bent. A considerable change is
required of us before we can be united to God; the characteristics of fallen
human nature must yield and give place to divine ‘mores’. This is no simple task. “As the heavens are exalted above the
earth, so are my thoughts exalted above your thoughts, and my ways above your
ways.”
(Isaiah 55, 9). Spiritual
Direction makes the transition possible.
Spiritual Direction
pertains to the Church. Taking the hint
from the reply of Jesus to Thomas, she can say to men of every generation: “I know the Way; I have the Truth and the
Life.” In general, all her ministers
are spiritual directors; they make known to men the truths they must embrace,
the means they must follow in order to achieve their eternal salvation. In this sense, therefore, all Catholics
receive spiritual direction. But it is
one thing to teach someone the necessary and sufficient means to reach Heaven
(and needle him into practicing them), and quite another to teach someone how
to attain the highest degree of union with God that is compatible with our
conditions of life here on earth. So when
we speak of Spiritual Direction, we envision that personal and personalized
type of guidance, which is geared to the concrete circumstances in which a man
is living. It takes into consideration
his state in life, his environment, his spiritual history, his innate and
acquired tendencies, his temperament, his strong points and his weak
points. Its purpose is to enable him to
achieve a state of continual and perfect conformity to the will of God,
enabling him, when occasion demands, to practice heroic virtue. But for all this, it remains the ordinary
way God reveals His Will to His children, as is the general type of direction
spoken of above. It is an inscrutable
decree of God that no man can come to Him except through the instrumentality of
other men.
Spiritual Direction does
not assume the same form in every phase of the spiritual journey. For those who have been recently converted
from a state of habitual, serious sin it consists in spiritual formation. Here, the Director is principally a
teacher. He instructs the directee on
how to introduce due order and submission to God’s Will into his life. Above all, he outlines a ‘rule of life’, a
balanced blend of the necessary ascetical practices with the faithful discharge
of the obligations of his state. In
their ‘interviews’, the person directed learns the fundamentals of the
spiritual life: how to practice
mortification, prayer, the rudimentary virtues, and the fruitful use of the
Sacraments and other channels of grace.
His formation is complete when he has acquired a profound sense of his
responsibility before God, a thorough grasp of his obligations, and fulfills
them without external constraint.
Once this stage has been
reached, Spiritual Direction enters a new phase. Now the Holy Spirit is able to make His influence more easily
felt. He, the interior director, draws
souls along the path He has marked out for them by giving them good thoughts
and desires. After all, the Spiritual
Director is not the master of the destiny of those he guides. His chief concern now is to help the directee
interpret the impulses of the Holy Spirit.
Usually they have to do with the choice of a vocation in life, or if it
has been already chosen, how to perfect oneself in it. Some further instruction is still in
order: adjustments in the life of
prayer, the relaxation of corporal mortification in order to emphasize the more
interior kinds and a deeper understanding of the virtues. In this phase, interviews are not so
frequent, nor do they consume much time.
Eventually a time comes
when the need for Spiritual Direction all but ceases. When the directee is perfectly docile to the inspirations of the
Holy Spirit he doesn’t even need to have them interpreted. Rather, he needs more the approbation of the
Director whenever he makes a decision touching some important aspect of his
spiritual life. In this phase, meetings
with the director are quite rare.
It should be pointed out
that, very often, well-educated, intelligent Catholics receive their Spiritual
Direction informally, not even being aware of it. From their deeper study of the Faith and the reading of outstanding
Spiritual Authors they are able to formulate their own rule of life and interpret
the Will of God as manifested in their thoughts and desires with great success.
Thus they need not seek special interviews with a director, but could
content themselves with submitting to their confessors whatever decisions,
proposals, and resolutions they make concerning their spiritual life.
To be sure of God’s blessing, we must submit our wills to the “Will
of God. This is done by seeking the
approbation and confirmation of His representatives, the ministers of the
Church.
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