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New Aspects of Spiritual Direction

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New Aspects of Spiritual Direction The Published Articles of Ernest E. Larkin, O.Carm. New Aspects of Spiritual Direction New Aspects of Spiritual Direction The object of this paper is to examine General spiritual direction is an certain practices of spiritual direction in the introduction into the life in the Spirit. It sets Catholic charismatic renewal in the light of the stage and secures the necessary conditions the history of spiritual direction in the Church. for spiritual growth. It thus includes education The paper will be tentative because practices and formation, pastoring and spiritual in the renewal are not uniform, and the government; as well as guidance and tradition of spiritual direction is both rich and counseling insofar as these are informational protean. 1 and psychological functions respectively. The very concept of spiritual direction Special spiritual direction is more varies with authors so that contradictory personalized, more grace-oriented, more affirmations abound on the subject. explicitly spiritual. It deals directly with the Frequently, for example, it is said that the role individual, and precisely with that person’s of the director is to make himself superfluous, relationship with God. Its focus is the to train his client to be self-directing. Yet St. particular will of God: how this individual is Bernard writes, “He who makes himself his being moved and touched by God. The own director becomes the disciple of a fool.”2 general relationships look to the human An Italian Salesian, E. Valentini, writing in conditions; spiritual direction as such tunes 1950, asserts that spiritual direction is into the God-dimension, uncovering, necessary for most religious because they identifying, and helping the person to remain in the purgative way. 3 James Walsh, appropriate the action of God in his soul. It is S.J. agrees with the premise that most best understood as the correlative of the religious are beginners, but he draws an manifestation of conscience, and without such opposite conclusion, namely, that they do not manifestation it does not exist. need spiritual direction; spiritual direction “Manifestation of conscience” needs presupposes a “special call,” a “gripping clarification. It is self-revelation, not so much drive” and “ache” for divine union, an in terms of sins or virtues or deliberate acts, advanced disposition far down the road.4 but as an accounting of the impulses, ideas, If “direction” means psychological attractions, and repulsions that precede counseling or educational guidance, then judgment or deliberation. It is the necessary surely the director has a temporary role, and input for discernment of spirits. Schaefer his primary thrust will be the novices in the describes manifestation of conscience as the spiritual life. James Walsh and perhaps St. revelation of one’s “state of soul, outside of Bernard have something else in mind. confession, namely of those matters which are proximately connected with virtues and vices. Kinds of Spiritual Direction It is the revealing of one’s mores, affections, inclinations, propensities, temptations, Any helping relationship that has the 5 spiritual development of a person as the dangers and passions.” The restriction, “outside of confession,” serves to distinguish consciously willed object can be called spiritual direction. I would attempt to clarify confessional matters, which are deliberate sins, from non-deliberate interior movements, the meaning of the term by distinguishing which may be from God or the evil spirit and between general and special spiritual direction. which are properly the terrain of the spiritual director as such. 6 Page 218 The Published Articles of Ernest E. Larkin, O.Carm. New Aspects of Spiritual Direction This paper is concerned with both spiritual advancement of each member. The general and special direction. For purposes of role coincides with teaching insofar as the clarity, however, I will use the term “spiritual leader promotes good discipline, morality, and direction” only in the special sense. spiritual living by speaking “to men for their upbuilding, their encouragement, their General Spiritual Direction consolation ... [and] upbuilding of the church” (1Cor 14,3,5). General spiritual direction can be summed up in three forms: guidance, But the pastor is more than a teacher; he looks to all the spiritual needs of the group. government, and counseling. It may be helpful to identify each form more clearly. In developing the role of pastor or shepherd, scripture draws upon the rich background of Guidance. Guidance is basically, Israel’s nomadic and agrarian experience, though not exclusively, intellectual. The spiritual guide teaches the truth with every delineating the care and concern, the loving commitment even to the laying down of one’s instrumentality available: good example, a loving, “enabling” relationship, life, the patience, courage, wisdom, and inventiveness that mark the good shepherd. communication, and teaching techniques. A Some institutionalized forms of truer designation would be “education,” whether moral or spiritual, or “formation,” pastoral direction are more closely identified with guidance or formation than with either initial or continuing. “Spiritual guidance” is the term more frequently found leadership as such. There are, for example, the roles of novice master or seminary spiritual in the literature, though not always in the director. They illustrate the “institutionalized” precise sense used here. Whatever the term, the function is model of spiritual direction, having as their chief function the handing on of an objective clear: Spiritual guidance, education, or formation is the process that has in view spirituality appropriate for those being initiated or renewed in a certain life style.10 changes in behavioral patterns, attitudes, value Such indoctrination must leave room for systems, and ways of thinking and acting. A living community or fellowship is rightly personal response and personalized growth, but this factor is secondary to the foundational considered to be the chief agent of this change,7 but a “director” or educator guides work of attitudinal and value changes. Beginners are generally better served the process. In one formulation, formation is by learning to integrate and internalize described as “a process involving four major variables common to all instructional settings: objective norms and patterns. They are not as yet spiritually mature, nor are they at that learner, subject matter, environment, and teacher. A formation director is a teacher who point of profound openness to God’s will that John of the Cross calls detachment, Ignatius orchestrates the four variables to produce 8 Loyola names indifference, and Hans Urs von specific outcomes.” 11 Government. Guidance is closely Balthasar identifies as biblical faith. This spiritual maturity is the prerequisite for the aligned to spiritual government, or what charismatics call pastoral direction or delicate discernment of God’s particular concrete will. All that Ignatius proposed for “shepherding” (Eph 4,11).9 The superior of a beginners was “some instruction and religious community, the pastor of a parish, 12 and the leader of a prayer group give pastoral attainment of a certain peace of Soul.” The achievement of that peace of soul has found direction to their particular groupings. Their exercise of authority or leadership in their an effective instrument in the modern discipline of psychological counseling, the communities ultimately has in view the Page 219 The Published Articles of Ernest E. Larkin, O.Carm. New Aspects of Spiritual Direction third and final form of general spiritual conversation, John Eudes emerged not only as a listener but also as a guide, not only as a direction. 15 Counseling. Psychological counseling counselor but also as a director. helps an individual sort out his feelings and Special Spiritual Direction recognize conflicts, and make decisions toward their resolution. The core of a Spiritual direction in the strict sense is therapeutic counseling relationship is a partly a derivative and partly an addition to healthy interpersonal relationship, or more the three functions considered thus far. It specifically, a set of positive attitudes of participates in all three, and has often been understanding, acceptance, insight, and identified with one or other of them, but is communication. Even in its technically reducible to none of these categories. At “directive” forms it is nondirective. The various times in history the spiritual director relationship itself is the source of therapy, and was an educator or a superior, and today as for this reason (among others) a great deal of often as not he is a counselor. In the good counseling occurs in informal settings beginning, for example, among hermits of the among friends or between a respected desert such as Anthony, the spiritual father significant other and one’s self. The same was a teacher who eventually liberated his good effects occur in group interaction. charge and sent him off to live his own Psychological counseling applied to solitary life as a monk. With Pachomian religious areas is called pastoral counseling. It cenobitism and the development of is the most popular of the spiritual helping monasticism in the Middle Ages, the spiritual relationships today. In the minds of some, director became the superior, the abbot of the pastoral counseling has replaced spiritual monastery. In both cases, however, he was a direction either in its form of group process13 “father,” a transmitter of life, and not a mere or in a modified form of a one-to-one instructor or enforcer of rules and practices. counseling relationship.14 No doubt the Superior and spiritual director were dynamics of counseling can contribute a great united in the one office during the middle deal to good spiritual direction, but they will years of the Church, and there was then no not replace it. The source of healing and distinction in practice between the internal and growth in spiritual direction is the power of external forum. The two forums were God mediated through the directive separated by the Irish monks in the seventh functioning of his minister.
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