With renewed interest in the role and importance of personal spiritual direction for religious men and women, many questions arise about the preparation for such an undertaking.  Questions from those who are considering entering into a spiritual direction relationship include:  (1) What should I do to get ready?  (2) Will my spiritual director tell me what to do?  (3) What should I expect from such a session?

Preliminary Considerations

Spiritual direction aims at helping a person to make a more wholehearted response to the drawing power of God’s love which continues to be active in each person’s life until the day of ultimate union with the Trinity has been accomplished.  This way of defining spiritual direction, like every definition, presupposes a number of attitudes upon the part of those who enter into a spiritual direction relationship.  It is obvious that we should have some awareness of our own presuppositions before we begin, since what we presuppose greatly affects the kind of answer we will give to our questions.  Although there are many ways of summing up expected attitudes preliminary to direction, one helpful pattern would include the four areas of:  (1) a faith context, (2) God’s care, (3) Incarnation now, and (4) continual vocation.  Let us examine each of these areas.

A Faith Context

In Christian spiritual direction, life is viewed far more as a mystery of God’s forgiving love to be lived than as a problem or a series of problems of personal development to be solved.  Both director and directee enter into this spiritual counseling relationship within a faith context.  Faith as God’s gift provides a way of knowing which on the one hand cannot ignore the human knowledges which we are capable of attaining, but on the other hand is not bound by the limitations of such knowledges.  For example, there is a way in human maturity for a man to come to a certain acceptance of his limitations and even of his own evil tendencies and actions.  He comes to claim them as his own and is not incapacitated by them even though he feels helpless before them.  There is another whole process in faith by which man the sinner can accept the evil and powerlessness which is a real part of him.  This man has a confidence, not directly in himself, but directly stemming from a faith which experiences the power of a love-acceptance by a redeeming God.  Consequently, this faith context invades every avenue of our approach to life.  Without it, spiritual direction becomes mere counseling – a good, but not a Christian treasure which direction is meant to be.

God’s Care

As a Christian believer, each of us sees a world that truly is held in the hands of a provident Father.  More than that, the idea that every hair on our head is numbered gives concrete expression to a God whose concern for each man touches every areas of his personal life.  When a person enters into the process of direction, he brings an attitude that at least at the level of belief, if not at the more desirable level of experience, allows him a certain “relaxedness” before God.  Although spiritual direction may have to help correct some crippling notions of a man’s images of God, minimally he gives a notional assent to being wrapped round by the loving care of God.  Without some basis of trust, great doubt will cloud even the feasibility of trying to search out God’s lead for the good of one’s life.  Spiritual direction flows out of the presumption that God will eve remain faithful not only in His provident care for a world He has redeemed but also in His personal concern for the sinful person that I am, one who has been formed by his word to call Him “Abba.”

Incarnation NOW

Another presupposition to the notion of Christian spiritual direction lies in the acceptance that salvation for all men continues to be mediated through their fellowman.  This presupposition is just another way of stating that one double commandment which leads to eternal life:  love of God and love of neighbor.  By God entering so fully into human history that we recognize Jesus Christ as true God and true man – the same who took on the human condition so completely even to death on a cross and now to an everlasting resurrection, man has so clearly become a part of God’s way of salvation that we acknowledge the mystery of people even anonymously mediating the saving presence of Christ.  The explicitness of this belief is portrayed not just in the last judgment scene of Matthew 25 or Saul’s conversion in Acts 9, but also mere especially in the Pauline doctrine of the Body of Christ.  Priests, preachers, and confessors have always been recognized by the Christian community to be particularly caught up in this mystery of God’s mediating power.  Spiritual direction, too, is one of these specialized instances when we enter into that mystery of God’s ordinary working through our fellowman to lead us along the path of salvation.
           
At the same time, we as Christian believers remain aware that God does touch us very directly in experiences that are penetratingly clear in their effect, while we remain confused to find words which might help us to express it or concepts which might lead us to understand.  Knowing the obscure power of our own religious experience, we enter into spiritual direction because we expect that it will gradually aid us in understanding, expressing, and responding to the signs of God’s action.  In the spiritual direction situation, we know a confidence not primarily in the theological training or counseling technique of a particular director, but rather in the faith that God ordinarily has us work out our salvation through just such a human director with all his own personal faults and virtues.  And so with both parties being caught up in this now-experience of the Incarnation, the director in prayer and in humility will try to assist in uncovering and more deftly identifying the direct and indirectly movements of God in one’s own personal life.

Continual Vocation
           
It has always been evident in the Jewish-Christian tradition that special callings are made to various men and women by God.  Although some controversies have arisen about the seriousness of the obligation to respond to such a calling, it has never been denied that such a call on God’s part comes from love and can be answered on man’s part only from the same free gift of love in return.  Particularly as we view our lives of specialized service in the Christian community, we religious are concerned to respond ever more fully to the continual promptings of a jealous God who desires nothing more than the total gift of ourselves.  Because we believe this is the context of faith in which we live, we enter into spiritual direction desirous to be ever more aware of this continuing call from God.  We have in direction the very method and means by which we can come to an understanding of how we not only have reneged on our response but also how we can give answer more full-heartedly.  We become accountable in a most incarnate way, and so we are given new eyes to see with and new hearts to make our response.

These presuppositions to spiritual direction, which we have selected, already identify much of what the direction sessions will continue to be about.  After all, the four areas cover attitudes which take us to the full depths and heights of our Christian vocation.  Perhaps, still, it would be helpful to point out a few of the other main elements around which spiritual direction is focused from its very beginnings.

Approaching the First Interview

Presuming that I have begun to clarify in my own mind the presuppositions of spiritual direction given to me by my Christian faith horizon, I should focus my first concern upon the area of my prayer life.  Do I pray?  Do I attempt to pray?  Do I at least say some prayers?  Such questions as these may well be the subject matter of the initial session.  But they can also be questions I check myself on before I enter into the spiritual direction period.  Some directors state dramatically that they do not take someone into direction unless they give evidence that they pray.  A basic condition for spiritual direction is the sincere desire to lead a life of prayer.  Certainly without the fundamental context of prayer the reality of spiritual direction so fades that it quickly falls into trifling talk or gripe sessions.  Prayer always remains like the water source which irrigates the entire area so that growth can take place.  No matter what crisis may arise in the spiritual life, prayer itself ever remains at least as an essential part of the resolution.  And so spiritual direction is concerned with the prayer life of an individual from the first session till the end of one’s life.

Since prayer is the speaking out of my love response to God, it often needs the objectification and clarification which a spiritual director can give or help me to make.  As I try to tell a director about my prayer life, perhaps I will be made aware if I use words to hide behind because I am fearful to remain quiet in the presence of God.  Or perhaps I am fooling myself by trying to hold myself in great stillness where God too is being kept without.  There are many ways in which I can find myself in doubt or confusion about my own prayer life and its rhythms of growth.  For religious, spiritual direction is meant to be of special help in this area more than in any other.

In beginning spiritual direction, I also may be asked to sum up my personal history, concentrating especially upon my religious journey up to the present.  Each of us does have a personal salvation history, and the director may find it very helpful if I can fill him in on God’s action in my life both through human situations of family and education as well as religious experiences of prayer, retreats, and good works.  There is no doubt that my response to God is lived out in all the areas of my life – my physical well-being, my emotional and intellectual framework, my social contacts, along with those specifically religious practices of Mass, sacraments, and prayers.

Expectations

To move into spiritual direction, then, is not so general that it is a matter of “finding someone to talk with.”  At that same time, spiritual direction, like prayer, is not some esoteric practice that has a fixed and rigid agenda of things-to-be-done.  Between these two extremes, we are now trying to respond to a practice embedded in Christian spiritual tradition with renewed vigor and interest.  Within a faith horizon, spiritual direction takes in the whole of my life so that I as a total person might grow in my loving relationship with God.  Once I am in this process, I realize that some spiritual directors will be more helpful at a particular time in my life than others.  I realize, too, that there is no one indispensable director other than God himself.  I become aware that ongoing spiritual direction is of greater need in my life some times than at others.

My expectations of spiritual direction are reflected in m y understanding of Christian growth.  No instant magic, just life-giving grace.  Occasional breakthroughs that may be dramatic, but always solidifying growth that needs the patience of time.  To hold myself accountable to a human director, to find objectifications, clarifications, and sometimes instruction – these are true and valuable expectations, and they remain expectations to be fulfilled throughout the course of my life.

An Enduring Value

Spiritual direction has no time limitations on it.  We never totally outgrow it; and so it does not become outmoded according to the progress we have made in the spiritual life.  The need is present throughout our lives because we are Christians who journey by faith.  The regularity or intensity of spiritual direction in our lives does vary, and the advantage of recognizing its continuing importance will allow us to seek it as a matter of course during such moments of greater need.

Spiritual direction is one of the ways we most immediately touch the Incarnation in our own lifetime.  For us to ever approach it lightly or to reject it as of no value is to find ourselves undermining the deepest roots of our Christian faith.

David L. Fleming, S.J, is Co-director of the Institute
of Religious Formation at the School of Divinity
of St. Louis University; 3634 Lindell Boulevard;
 St. Louis, Missouri 63108