Finding a Spiritual Director: Restore Yourself to Factory Settings
A welcoming sponsor or Godparents bring us in. Diving deeper requires someone to guide you further along The Way…
“Do you have a spiritual director?’’ our pastor asked me. “It might be helpful.’’
I said I’d be honored if he was offering — that wasn’t what he meant. Priests are overbooked and overloaded, first responders helping broken people with urgent needs. Man Plans, God Laughs.
A Spiritual Director helps restore you to who you are meant to be, the way we restore messed up iPhones to the Designer’s factory settings:
Something isn’t working, wheels are spinning or the screen is locked so you plug your little device into a bigger computer, finding an earlier, healthier set of memories and restore it. Then you can resume growing again.
The Spiritual Director moves you from Child of God to who were designed to be: becoming a better spouse and/or parent. In “The Mission of my Life,’’ St. John Henry Newman explains:
“God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons… I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away… He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.’’
This morning our pastor, the priest who suggested I get a spiritual director, is in another state leading 2,900 others. For an instant, I knew how the Father must feel: Your children are “out helping others, making names for themselves in another world.’’ You’re home, missing them, praying for them knowing they need to do some things themselves.
The visiting priest asked the questions a spiritual director asks:
“Is 2020 going to be the year we break with sin? There’s too much gossip, too much negative speech, too much dissension in families. Too much unforgiveness, too much negativity, too little love and patience. The first stage of the spirital life is to get rid of sin. Then you practice virtue and you grow to excellence and perfection in love… Where has my mind been since I woke up this morning? Did I think good or negative thoughts? When I purge myself of negativity it gives the Holy Spirit the opportunity to cleanse me.’’
My choice for a spiritual director was obvious: Someone with similar yet different experiences, someone who could teach me, someone I could help as well. I found a man who heals people in every way: spiritually, emotionally, intellectually and physcially. I found an MD and a spiritual healer.
Ironically, Father Mathias, who was told me I needed a spiritual director, had actually given me the ticket where my spiritual director and I forged that bond at the 2018 Encounter Conference. My friend Tom and I became each other’s spiritual directors.
Wisdom from my Spiritual Director Tom:
“Unless Jesus was lying, we will live forever in either Heaven or hell. We want Heaven! But often, even Christians don’t think of Heaven much. Those who think of Heaven most accomplish most here for Christ! Heaven is our destiny, our ‘home’…and we are homesick…As Randy Alcorn said, ‘Nothing is more often misdiagnosed than our homesickness for Heaven. We think that what we want is sex, drugs, alcohol, a new job, a raise, a doctorate, a spouse, a large-screen television, a new car, a cabin in the woods, a condo in Hawaii. What we really want is the person we were made for, Jesus, and the place we were made for, Heaven. Nothing less can satisfy us.’”
I told Tom that reminded me of my graduate work at the University of Michigan. A group of us (including a couple doctors) did a paper on homesickness among college students. One of the points I remember from that paper is that EVERYONE gets homesick. Every single kid who goes to college, joins the military, etc. The only difference is how long it lasts and how they handle it…
“Yes, Joe, you’re right,’’ Tom answered. “We were built for Heaven, with Our Father… Until then, we live here and please God — empower and embolden us to glorify you and help as many of your children here as possible. But we are homesick, Lord…we long for your embrace…so surround us with your love, our grace, and people who also love us, encourage us, and walk with us in the path you have chosen for us. And one day, the day of your choice Lord, please call us to be with you, in Heaven!’’
What exactly is a Spiritual Director? Moving from child to parent
Nearly every movement, faith or club includes some sort of sponsorship, someone who vouches for you, someone who helps you join something bigger than yourself and then guides you.
Whether it’s a spiritual 12-Step program like Alcoholics Anonymous or a Church or becoming a U.S. Citizen, you want to find an experienced sponsor to welcome and guide you in. Your sponsor is the one who brought you in. Now what?
“Jesus always traveled with buddies,” our friend Mike Timmis explains. “He sent them out two by two. The biggest problem with the Church is we send priests out one by one… One of the biggest epidemics is the loneliness of men… We have blurred so many distinctions that men are afraid of women, afraid of saying the wrong thing…”
A Spiritual Director helps you dive deeper, gets you through the advanced issues. When St. Faustina, a very young, uneducated Polish nun, found herself hearing from Jesus regularly, she needed help dealing with everything she was learning. God sent her Father Michał Sopoćko.
Faustina became the first saint of the 21st centrury and Father Sopoćko, who guided her through life and carried on her work for four decades after she died, is now following her through the canonization process.
Father Sopoćko told her to write everything down and that became the massive Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, one of the most widely read books in the world.
Nearly every priest or sister has a spiritual director. But this century is different: Father Mathias taught me, “We are in the age of laity.’’
Ordinary lay people, mothers and fathers living in the secular world are being called upon to do much more.
“Spiritual direction is a discipline through which a person explores and deepens his relationship with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the context of confidential ongoing conversation with another disciple of Jesus who, because of his/her personal experience and intellectual knowledge of God and the spiritual life, accompanies others on their way home to God,’’ Brother Rex Anthony Norris explains. “Spiritual direction helps us become aware of the ways in which we cooperate with, ignore, or in some cases actively hinder the Holy Spirit’s work within us.’’
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, essentially the “nitty gritty’’ guidelines for the faithful, offers detailed “Guides for Prayer’’ in sections 2683 through 2696.
The Catechism also describes what an ideal spiritual director does:
“The Holy Spirit gives to certain of the faithful the gifts of wisdom, faith and discernment for the sake of this common good which is prayer (spiritual direction).
Men and women so endowed are true servants of the living tradition of prayer.
According to St. John of the Cross, the person wishing to advance toward perfection should ‘take care into whose hands he entrusts himself, for as the master is, so will the disciple be, and as the father is so will be the son.’
And further: ‘In addition to being learned and discreet a director should be experienced. . .
If the spiritual director has no experience of the spiritual life, he will be incapable of leading into it the souls whom God is calling to it, and he will not even understand them.’” (CCC, 2690).
How exactly does the “Spiritual Direction’’ process work?
Tom started Catholic Men’s Fellowship at St. Paul on the Lake Catholic Church in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan in the Archdiocese of Detroit. CMF follows the ideal format for a small group which is why some of us drive 50 or more miles to get there:
- Many of us start the morning at St. Paul, where every day starts with faithful praying the Rosary and other prayers followed by a half hour 6:30 a.m. Mass.
- CMF goes from 7 to 8 a.m. most Thursdays. What makes this work ideally is that each member gets a turn at organizing the content (to keep things fresh) and presentation for that day.
- We start and end with group prayer, include some “praise reports’’ of successes from each member and then read and discuss content from the Bible and other Catholic writings.
- After the CMF session, a smaller “group within the group’’ goes to breakfast for deeper and extended discussions. Once that “extra’’ session went from 8:15 to noon but mostly we finish breakfast in time for the guys to get to work.
One of the nicest things my spiritual director ever told me: We were trying to figure out various spiritual issues when Tom held up a jelly packet and said, “I love how you can take something incredibly complex and make it as simple to understand as this jelly.’’
The Church is as simple or as complicated as you need it to be…
We get each other and our families through the call of every Christian: to bring others to Heaven.
How can you find your own Spiritual Director?
- Start with a gathering of Alpha, a Bible Study or similar small group. I’ve tried several including the Men’s Prayer Breakfast (about 300 men who gather each Wednesday at Our Lady Good Counsel Catholic Church in Plymouth, Michigan); a Crusader Prayer Group that meets evenings in Beverly Hills, Michigan, the Livingston Catholic Men on Fire movement near my home and the Faustinium that gathers in Orchard Lake, Michigan. Next week, my parish starts Alpha, a Christian movement that includes Protestant and Catholic churches around the world.
- The goal of each of these groups is to help others get closer to God. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew, 18–20).
- Often, you can also find good friends at conferences like this week’s Encounter Conference in Toledo, the upcoming Accept the Challenge conference convening at the University of Michigan February 22 or the summer conferences in Steubenville, Ohio.
- Look for someone you value, who “gets you’’ and your life and family, who knows things you don’t know. That Spiritual Director is kind of like a coach cheering you on when you need cheering on, nudging you when you need a nudge, sharing books and videos and lessons that will help you get to where you need to be.
The closer you get to God, the more the evil one will fight you and whisper discouraging lies. St. Faustina actually destroyed her diary at one point but her spiritual director made certain she put it back together.
Focus on the positive. At this week’s CMF, one of our quietest and youngest members reminded each of us that the “thou shall not’’ rules are rules we ourselves are called to follow while the positive ways we show others are The Way we share with each other.
Your spiritual director and you will help each other fight off the lies. God is love. God is truth. Not a love or “your truth’’ but the truth.
Think of the spiritual journey as a ride on the bumper cars:
Others will hit and push in every direction (and each is a child of God there for a reason) but your spiriutal director will help you find the right way and best way home.
