(not that kind of director!)

Catholics like spiritual directors. Good luck finding one…but we like them a lot.

Good luck finding a handy definition for spiritual direction as well. Basically, THE Spiritual Director is the Holy Spirit. The human director is a person with whom you discuss your spiritual journey, who teaches you to notice and yield to God’s call for your life. Expect that she doesn’t tell you what God wants. Instead, she asks questions that help you hear God’s voice in your soul. Clear as mud?

OK, let’s do a via negativa exercise: getting at a definition by looking at what spiritual direction is not.

Directee: I’m having a hard time praying. I’ve only prayed twice this month.
Not a Spiritual Director: Yeah, me too. I’m kind of wrapped up in election coverage right now. Whaddya think about the veep specs?

Directee: I’m having a hard time praying.
Not a Spiritual Director: Geez. Why is saying a Hail Mary so hard already? It’s 51 short words. Come on, get on your knees, I’m dragging out the rosaries.

Directee: I’m having a hard time praying.
Not a Spiritual Director: So have you been exorcised recently? ‘Cause I can’t think of any other reason.

Directee: I’m having a hard time praying.
Not a Spiritual Director: Well, look, I’ve always thought prayer was overrated. Go do some Reiki or something; that should be enough for God.

Directee: I’m having a hard time praying.
Not a Spiritual Director: I’m not surprised. I just don’t think you’re the praying sort. That’s for those people really called to be holy.

Directee: I’m having a hard time praying.
Not a Spiritual Director: So did Mother Teresa. I think you’re called to join the Missionaries of Charity.

Directee: I’m having a hard time praying.
Not a Spiritual Director: OK, here’s what you do. … Got it? Good. That was easy.

The more correct responses would be:
Real Spiritual Director: (nods, silence, waiting for more) or
Real Spiritual Director: Does that concern you? Could you tell me more about that? or
Real Spiritual Director: Hmmm. So what’s going on?

And then a spiritual director listens a lot, trying to guide directees to fully understand what they are saying, and helping them listen to and discern what God is communicating to them at this place in their lives.

Spiritual directors are important because, as the Second Vatican Council underlined for us, all human beings are called to the heights of holiness. But with the clutter and noise of modern life, not to mention the often anonymous feel to many mega-parishes, a companion who is walking the journey helps. Otherwise, it is like training for a marathon without help. Do-able, but so very hard.

This is a journey, remember, with an end–our hoped ultimate end, life in Christ. They’re called directors because they are bellwethers, providing a leading pointer: this way, not that. Some people will call them spiritual companions or friends, to remind people that they are human too, not some super-guru (fair enough point). But when my first director suggested that the term spiritual companion was better, I sputtered “Look, man, I have companions! I need direction!” So do me a favor. Call it direction. I’m trying to start a movement in this little matter.

If you need direction, remember many of the saints were practiced directors, and their causes for sainthood were subsequently offered by grateful directees, who argued that God worked through them in this way for their ultimate good: deep, joy-bearing, peace-filled union with God. So if you cannot find a director, try a saint. But The Holy Spirit will not abandon you regardless: whatever you do, keep moving toward our goal of joyful union with God’s will and love.

Protestants have revivals. Catholics, being the more “I prefer experiencing the Spirit kneeling in silence under the stars, thanks” type, have retreats. And oh, do we like them. Ignatian exercises, high school senior retreats, engagement encounter, marriage encounter, Quo Vadis?, Cursillo, TEC, etc….Frankly, the creative Catholic with some cash could spend his whole life on retreat. An intervention is sometimes needed and can get ugly. So I’ve heard.

The first Catholic retreat began with John the Baptist. Needing to get away from it all to hear fully God’s voice, he headed off into the desert, living on locusts and wild honey. This diet didn’t appeal to the majority of stressed-out Israelites at the time, so the full retreat series didn’t really catch on. But the “let go, let God” exercise, which he called baptism, transcended the meager menu, so people reportedly came in droves for day trips.

His most prominent retreatant, Jesus of Nazareth, was so taken with John’s retreat format that he immediately went for forty days of testing by Satan in the wilderness. While being tempted by the devil doesn’t really “sell the experience” on a tri-fold brochure (although that was one heck of an impressive mountain view Satan used to encourage Jesus to toss himself off of), Jesus found the 40 day wilderness retreat to be a formative discernment experience, and the style has caught on in certain circles.

The desert fathers and mothers three centuries later did battle with their passions in the desert in a life-long retreat from society, but people were beginning to find the very cheek of their vocation so very attractive, they were seeking these holy men and women out and bugging them for “a word.” Despite responses so obscure that any retreat leader today would be asked for a refund, they kept returning, and returning, and returning to beg insight from these poor hermits. Hence Benedict of Nursia’s appeal for every monastery to have a place of hospitality for strangers. No Holiday Inns out in the wilderness.

For the record, there is no history of drum-making as spiritual act in Christian retreats.

Fast forward to the present day. We still have retreats, in the equivalent of a desert in our modern society: that is, any place with green space and no TV. Most retreatants today are more tempted by turning on the cell phone than the Evil One in the desert, but perhaps that is our own burden of which we try to let go in a retreat: our comfort, our control, our arsenal of distractions at the ready. Catholics like retreats because as Christians, we know we need a spiritual discipline to turn off the noise to hear the still, small whisper in the wind that is God’s voice. And while we see and know God in relationship with each other, there is nothing like turning into that gentle blowing, listening to God call you by name.

OK, now that you have picked yourself up off the floor, dusted yourself off…one would have surmised this surprising fact from the post Catholics Like Babies, eh?  Because, you may have noticed, the first often leads to the second.  Like it is some kind of natural consequence or something.  Wild.

But Catholics liking sex is a huge surprise to many.  After all, look at those celibate priests and sisters and brothers.  They are clearly repressed, right?  I don’t care if they look happy.  It’s not natural, I tell you!

Since I teach young people between 18-21, that is, at the height of their sexual urges age-wise, let me make this simple:

1.  Catholics like sex because God created it, and it’s a great gift both to humanity and within a married relationship, to each other.
2.  When rightly engaged, sex is ordered to growth in holiness.  That’s right.  A married relationship that is faithful, fruitful, and total helps each person grow in holiness.  Sanctification, baby.  A married couple could look at each other, flutter eyelashes, and say “Hey sweetie.  Up for sanctification tonight?”
3.  Some people voluntarily give up sex and its attendant relationship as a way to move more directly into union with God, which is where all of us are going anyway.  You don’t “give up” what you don’t like.  Who gives up brussel sprouts for Lent?  Only those without taste buds.  Who gives up chocolate?  Yum:  half the Catholic Church.  So, for the sacrifice to be meaningful, it must something reeeealy good you are giving up.  Get it yet?  Celibates recognize that sex is good.

As in most things, misunderstandings come from somewhere.  In this case, they come from, well, my favorite theologian-saint of all time, Augustine.  Augustine had a few teeny-tiny sexual issues in his adolescence and young adult life.  Teeny-tiny like the state of Texas.  And he said he couldn’t fathom how to convert because of his attachment to “woman” (his word), and sensed that to convert to Christianity, he would have to be celibate.  People have since pounced on that: the Biggest Baddest Church Father of all time hated women and sex!  The thing is, Augustine knew that in his particular case (and he was careful to speak for himself alone), he needed to make a clean break from what he did everything but call an addiction.  And it was never sex as God intended anyway (cue Theology of the Body music).  But he did humble himself to receive celibacy as a gift, and lived it out with grace, continuing to be a doting father to his son, Adeodatus.  Nice.

Ah, don’t ask me about Origen, though.