Spiritual Direction and Reconciliation

Once Upon a Time

Fr. Fernand Cassista, M.S.In 1993 I was granted the gift of a nine month sabbatical by our Provincial Superior. After 28 years or so of active ministry, in a variety of fulfilling and grace-filled ministries, I felt the need to take time for myself for much needed reading and study, rest and a thirty-day Ignatian retreat, often called the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a retreat which I had eagerly anticipated for some time. And so in early September of 1993 I went to Loyola House in Guelph, Ontario, staffed by the Jesuits and other spiritual directors trained in Ignatian Spirituality and spiritual direction.

I must candidly confess that one of my reasons for making the thirty-day retreat was to decided my future. I had become disenchanted with religious life and parish ministry where I felt more like a diocesan priest than a religious, having to deal with diocesan meetings and regulations, all the while having to participate in community gatherings and responding to community obligations. I felt weighed down by rules,  regulations and finances with little energy and enthusiasm to do the pastoral ministry effectively.

I also found it difficult to pray well. I needed an extended period of time of retreat to deepen my spirituality  and to make a decision about the future. I had been faithful to daily prayer but it was not as fruitful as it had been in the past. I had been seeing a spiritual director regularly and that was helpful, but even my spiritual director confirmed that maybe I was ready for a thirty-day retreat.

 

A Gift of Thirty Days

After I arrived in Guelph, we began a period of disposition which prepared us — all forty or so retreatants — for the thirty-day experience. It took very little time before I felt the power of God's grace at work, and assuring me that indeed, I was meant to be a religious and priest. That's where my heart was. Once again I felt deeply grateful for the call to religious life and priesthood. Entering as fully as I could into the process of the Ignatian retreat, I felt deeply affirmed, loved and called to follow Jesus.

The Third Week of the Spiritual Exercises focuses on the passion and death of Jesus. I fell deeply in love with Jesus such as I had never experienced love before. I grew in knowledge of myself, my human weakness and my human dependence on God, and that I was a loved sinner as we all are. My greatest desire at that point was no other than to love him in return and to follow him faithfully and with deep gratitude.

Compared to much of the spiritual direction I had received in the previous years, the daily meetings with my spiritual director during the Thirty-Day experience was by far more helpful, supportive and challenging than I had ever experienced in spiritual direction previously. As a result of my profound experience during the retreat and having deeply appreciated the ministry of my spiritual director during the retreat, it became very clear to me that becoming a trained spiritual director is what I desired for my future years as a priest and religious.

I came to appreciate the fact that the ministry of spiritual direction was truly a ministry of reconciliation in the spirit of our La Salette charism. Our Lady of La Salette had invited us to conversion, to be reconciled to her Son, to turn to him with our whole heart and soul, and to be grateful for his saving death and resurrection. She invited us to fall in love with her Son whose love for us is unconditional and infinite.

Spiritual direction became for me a privilege way of helping others to be reconciled with God, with self and with others - a privileged way of making known the great message that Mary came to share at La Salette. Consequently, after the thirty-day retreat, I requested permission to participate in the following summer of 1994, in a program for the training of spiritual directors also in Guelph. The permission was granted and so along with some twenty other priests and religious, I received the necessary training in Ignatian Spirituality and direction and in the fall of 1994, I became a full-time spiritual director at our La Salette Retreat Center in Attleboro, where I have also been involved in preaching retreats with the members of the Retreat Center Staff. Ever since, I have enjoyed a most fulfilling and fruitful ministry, for which I am very grateful to God.

Spiritual Direction: Important Points to Remember

I learned about spiritual direction, first of all by being a directee myself during the thirty-day retreat. I became aware of how attentive my spiritual director was to me and how he consequently responded and questioned me inmost effective ways. I learned by being a directee of a well trained Jesuit director and benefitting from his expertise. Secondly, I learned from the courses, the teachers, the advice and counsels of those leading the summer course I attended. Thirdly, I learned much by practicing spiritual direction for some 18 years as well as from much helpful reading on the praxis of spiritual direction.

It would be impossible to include here all that was learned and read during the courses I attended and in personal experience. But I can share some important aspects of spiritual direction.

1. A spiritual director should be a person of prayer with a great love of the scriptures. One cannot give what one does not possess. A director also must be aware of the movements of the Spirit and  those of the “evil spirit disguised as an angel of light”, within self, which will allow him/her to help the directees recognize the same spirits within themselves.

2. A spiritual director should be an attentive listener, one who notices what a directee is saying and not saying, what one expresses and what one seems to be unaware of, seems to evade or hide. The director should be able to sense or intuit issues  that are “skirted” so as to invite the directee to trust and honesty. Otherwise the “skirted” issues become blocks to spiritual development or growth.

Directees who truly seek a deeper relationship with God, of ten come to learn that certain experiences, habits or addictions, beliefs or assumptions can stand in the way of attentiveness to God or in one's capacity to
respond to the promptings of the Spirit. Transparency with one's director can allow the director to assist more effectively in addressing such blocks and difficulties, or if the issues are beyond the scope of spiritual direction, then professional therapy can be suggested or encouraged. While it is true that some blocks can be overcome with spiritual direction, others do need more help than a spiritual director can normally offer. A director can help inasmuch as he/she listens attentively, so as to help the directees see and hear their own experiences and their own hearts.

3. A spiritual director should be able to help the directee sense inner movements he/she is experiencing, whether they be joy or sadness, consolation or desolation, hope or despair and why they experience such movements. Recognizing these movements can only be discovered through prayer, silence or reflection and the
help of a trusted spiritual companion.

4. It is important for directors to remember that we deal with the faith life of individuals, a delicate matter which needs to be respected and kept in confidence. The directees share their relationship with God, as  they know God, and as  they experience God in their life and prayer. The director's task is to invite the directees always into a greater, more grateful and committed relationship. The director's aim is to help the directees to express and to share their journeys, joys, struggles and questions while the director listens attentively and
empathically.

Generally the director should speak little, asking for clarification when necessary, and sharing as is needed. Direction is about the directee's life and  prayer, not about the director's experiences and prayer, or wealth of knowledge. The director's experience and prayer may be shared in some cases, but only when it would be of benefit to the directee's prayer and growth in his/her own relationship with God.

5. Direction is about helping the directee to deepen his/her love relationship with God, or falling in love with Jesus, drawing ever closer to him, who revealed the Father's compassionate love and mercy. Like Jesus, meeting the disciples on their way to Emmaus in Luke 24, the director listens to the grief and disappointment of the directees, allowing them to express their disappointment and hurt, their questions and assumptions, so as to help them find hope and courage in the Scriptures and in the signs of God present in their lives, even when they fail to see. Direction is about empowering the directee to be more attentive to and aware of the ways in which God speaks to them, and how God is present in their life situations, as well as how the directee can respond more gratefully to God's love and presence.

My experience has proven to me that many people, especially men, have a difficulty with the expression "falling in love with Jesus". In such cases, I often offer for their prayer and reflection the words of Pedro Arrupe, S.J., a past General of the Jesuits,

“Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you  with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”

6. Spiritual direction is not about “attaining perfection,” but rather coming to understand that only God is perfect, and all we can do, as loved sinners, is to strive for “the more” or “the better”, which is more in line with the reality of our human condition. Direction is more a matter of coming to a point of responding more fully to the calls to daily conversion in prayer, in ministry and in relationships, and especially to God's
unfathomable love for each of us.

7. Spiritual direction should help a person to become more interiorly free to respond to God's grace and the daily challenges and changes of life, allowing God to speak and to do as God desires, without striving to bend God's will to suit our own wills and fancies. Through the process of direction it is hoped that we can stop striving to convince God to allow us to control our life, our relationships and our world. Spiritual direction should help directees to identify their deepest desire, and to distinguish this desire from  the many secondary desires and wants of life. A deeper inner freedom allows one to let God be God, and to see oneself as totally dependent on God, who is Creator, Savior, Friend and »Lover. God has great dreams for us, and often we cannot decipher those dreams by ourselves alone. We need a spiritual companion to help us see.

8. Another important aspect of spiritual direction is the question of secrecy. We all have secrets. Some of these are of no great import, but others can be deadly. In his rules of discernment, Ignatius of Loyola explains how secrecy can prevent a person from growing spiritually. One who desires to grow spiritually will want to be transparent with one's director, when he/she becomes aware of this truth. The director should never pry or force disclosure, but the director can tactfully share the rule of Ignatius about secrecy, so as to help the directee to be more interiorly free to share the secret, so that it can be brought to the light of Jesus in prayer.

What Spiritual Direction is Not

These are only a few of the more important aspects of spiritual direction that I have learned and which have served me well for my ministry. There would be much more to add, but for our purpose in this article these will suffice.

In addition to all that we have said, I would consider it important to say a few words about what spiritual direction is not.

1. Spiritual direction is not about making friends, though over time a director and directee might develop a deep friendship. Direction is not about fulfilling a director's need to share his/her life experience or growth in prayer.

2. It is not the same as counseling, though at times a director might do some counseling.

3. Finally spiritual direction is not an absolute need, not is it meant for everyone, but especially meant for those who truly desire to grow spiritually, or who desire to move from strictly devotional prayer to more relational prayer. In this case individuals desire to have a companion on their spiritual journey. Those who have known such a companion, know how great a treasure the spiritual director can be.

An Experience of Deep Gratitude

I conclude by admitting my deep gratitude for the ministry of spiritual direction which has been one of the most fulfilling that I have ever been called to do. It has been—and is—a graced privilege—a ministry that has helped me and challenged me most to continue growing spiritually.

I have never felt more like a Missionary of our Lady of La Salette as I do now, responding to Mary's request to draw closer to her Son, as well as helping others to do the same, because of God's great and merciful love and also because of her maternal and tearful intercession.

May Our Lady of La Salette, the Reconciler of Sinners, continue to intercede on our behalf, that we might all grow in our grateful and loving response to God who loves so. In the words of St. Ignatius of Loyola, we might all pray to Jesus:

Lord Jesus, help me to know you more clearly,
to love you more dearly
and to follow you and serve you more faithfully,
now and always. Amen.

This book is a wonderful description of the basics of spiritual direction:

• The Discerning Heart: Discovering a Personal God by Maureen Conroy, R.S.M., Loyola University Press, Chicago, IL.

These three books—all by the same author—are clear and understandable:

• The Discernment of Spirits by Timothy M. Gallagher, O.V.M., Crossroad Books, The Crossroad Publishing Company, N.Y.
• Spiritual Consolation by Timothy M. Gallagher, O.V.M., Crossroad Books, The Crossroad Publishing Company, N.Y.
• The Examen Prayer by Timothy M. Gallagher, O.V.M., Crossroad Books, The Crossroad Publishing Company, N.Y.

These two articles are very well done:

•  “The Road To Emmaus; A Biblical Rationale for Spiritual Direction” by Ekman P.C. Tam in Presence; An International Journal of Spiritual Direction, Volume 17, No 2 - June 2006.
•  “Love Will Decide Everything: Pedro Arrupe recovered the Ignatian mysticism of open eyes” by Kevin F. Burke, America, November 12, 2007.