Transcript

I would say that, you know, having a spiritual director is very important for anybody. I think any Catholic could have a spiritual director. Is it necessary? I wouldn’t say it’s necessary, but is it helpful? Absolutely. A spiritual director helps us to see the workings of God within our lives. A spiritual director is able to help somebody really identify the movement of the Holy Spirit. I think any priest would be more than capable, because of his vocation, to be a spiritual director, so you can ask your priest if he would be open to be your spiritual director. For a person approaching spiritual direction for the first time, I would say that what you want to do is go into the session with a good understanding of what you want to talk about, what you want to accomplish. So it’s just like having an agenda for a meeting. Because that’s the way, through your prayer beforehand, that you will get the greatest benefit. What a lot of spiritual directors would recommend is that, you know, from session to session a person is keeping some kind of log or some kind of journal. For others, journaling is not something that they like to do or that they find helpful. However, even if you don’t like to journal, kind of going through and making an evaluation of your own prayer life over the past few weeks, or few months, ‘this is what’s happening in my prayer,’ and then, through that, the spiritual director will ask different questions, again, to see the presence and the movement of the Holy Spirit. What has a tendency to happen if you don’t have a clear plan, our thoughts can kind of roam, and then we’re getting into several different conversations, and, again, that might not be the most helpful. We are, body and soul, we are one person, opening our whole self to the heart and mind of God. And that’s what we’re trying to really focus on in spiritual direction.