Ignatian
Spirituality and Spiritual Direction (Dr Lilian Lian)
Richard Foster | posted
2/04/2009 08:52AM
What is spiritual director?
1. A person who has a continuing hunger for intimacy
with God.
2. A person who has an ability to forgive others at
great personal loss.
3. A person who has a lively sense that God alone
can satisfy the longings of the human heart.
4. A person who has a deep satisfaction in prayer.
5. A person who has a realistic assessment of
personal abilities and limitations.
6. A person who has a fundamental freedom from
boasting about spiritual accomplishments.
7. A person who has a demonstrated ability to live
out the demands of life patiently and wisely.
Richard Foster | posted
2/04/2009 08:50AM
What is spiritual direction?
1. Spiritual direction is an interpersonal
relationship in which we learn how to grow, live, and love in the
spiritual life.
2. Spiritual direction involves a process through
which one person helps another person understand what God is doing
and saying.
3. Discernment is a crucial gift in the work of
spiritual direction.
4. In spiritual direction there is absolutely no
domination or control.
5. The spiritual director/mentor/pastor guides
another in spiritual things through the spiritual world by spiritual
means.
6. God has ordained that there be spiritual
directors/mentors/pastors among his people. This is the structure of
love in practice.
7. Supremely, spiritual directors/mentors/pastors
are persons who have a sense of being "established" in God.
Otherwise they are too dangerous to be allowed into the soul space
of others.
Trained and Untrained Spiritual Directors
We are not
alone in this work of the re-formation of the heart. It is
imperative for us to help each other in every way we can. And in
our day, the desperate need is for the emergence of a massive
spiritual army of trained spiritual directors who can lovingly
come alongside precious people and help them discern how to walk
by faith in the circumstances of their own lives.
Please note
that I said "trained" spiritual directors and not "certified"
spiritual directors.
There is a
genuinely bad idea circulating these days that if we take a
certain number of courses and read a certain number of books and
receive a certain kind of certification, we will be ready to be
spiritual directors. I'm sorry; I really do wish it were that
simple. But no, we are here talking about life training. And it
is only by life training that we will see the development of a
certain kind of life, a life of righteousness and peace and joy
in the Holy Spirit. It is this quality of life—the ability to
forgive when it is painful, the yearning for prayer—that we are
looking for in trained spiritual directors.
Richard Foster
Spiritual Formation Agenda
