Once a month, on Sunday afternoons, I meet with the Secular Franciscans. We visit, pray, and I offer a “spiritual reflection.” They call my role “Spiritual Assistant.” People often ask me questions—some in the group and some privately—about Church teaching, prayer, or the spiritual life.
Because of this, some assume I am a spiritual director for them. I am not. I offer general reflections to a group, not the one-on-one, deeply personal encounters that take place in true spiritual direction.
Understanding what a spiritual director is begins with understanding what a spiritual director is not.
A spiritual director is not an all-knowing font of wisdom. He or she does not replace God or stand above the person seeking guidance. The real Director in every encounter is the Lord Himself. The human director simply creates space for the directee to listen to Him more clearly.
A spiritual director is also not a perfect person. St. Gregory of Nazianzus—one of the great Eastern Fathers—reflects on the weight and responsibility of guiding another human being spiritually. In an early treatise on the priest as spiritual guide, he insists that even if a hypothetically perfect person existed, that person should hesitate to take on this work: “What knowledge or power would justify him venturing upon this office?”
When I sit with a directee—two broken persons meeting, as I attend to her story, her prayer, and her struggles—I listen even more attentively to the Holy Spirit. Spiritual direction always involves three persons: God, the directee, and the director. The director simply receives, discerns, and gently points the heart back to the One who alone directs every human life.
Because the term “spiritual direction” is used so broadly today, it is good to return to its true meaning. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that God gives certain members of the faithful the gifts of wisdom, faith, and discernment for the sake of helping others grow in prayer (CCC 2690). Dominican theologian Fr. Jordan Aumann describes spiritual direction as “the art of leading souls progressively from the beginning to the height of Christian mysticism.”
St. Gregory of Nazianzen goes even further, calling it the art of arts and the science of sciences. A spiritual mentor accompanies a human being with free will—someone capable of subtlety, self-deception, and great heights of sanctity. The care of a human person, Gregory explains, is more complex than the medical art or any other discipline. Even considered purely on a human level it is the most demanding craft. When the heavenly dimension is added, its nobility surpasses every other art or science.
Gregory admitted he once fled from this responsibility because he trembled at its seriousness. Spiritual direction, he said, can either sanctify or wound both director and directee. It touches eternity. What he lacked in that moment, however, was trust in God’s grace. None of us can rely on ourselves without failing. Writing after his return to ministry, he prayed: “May He Himself hold me by His right hand, and guide me with His counsel, and receive me with His glory—He who is Shepherd to shepherds and a Guide to guides.” His teaching makes clear that grace, not human skill, stands at the center of this ministry: “Without me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5).
When I sit with a directee—listening to her story, her prayer, her struggles—I lean into that same grace. Spiritual direction always involves three persons: God, the directee, and the director. The director simply listens, discerns, and points the heart back to the One who alone directs every human life.
Perhaps the 38th newly proclaimed Church Doctor, St. John Henry Newman, says it best: “Heart speaks to heart” meaning the Sacred Heart speaks to a listening heart who, in turn, listens and speaks to another heart.
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