Post for March 8, 2008
Today was a day devoted to spiritual direction: I had one appointment after another for people coming for counsel and (in some cases) confession. Obviously I can’t get into details, but let me confirm that it was a day full of blessings.
One method of spiritual direction I developed some time ago that has actually been very useful was something I call the My personal scriptures approach. Check it out, you never know if it might be useful to you.
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Post for January 12, 2008
Since I’ve started working at the diocese some people seem to get the impression that I’ve stopped doing regular “priest stuff”. Of course, I don’t do a lot of *parish* stuff (although I try and do as much as I reasonably can!) but my focus first and foremost remains helping the people of God grow in holiness. For example, today I offered spiritual direction to a fine young man seeking to do exactly that.
There are different kinds of spiritual direction, corresponding to different moments in our life. Sometimes people come for spiritual direction because they are facing some sort of personal life crisis or choice. Others come for no particular reason apart from the desire to grow in God. For the latter, particularly, I once developed a method of spiritual direction I call the “Writing my personal scriptures” method, which allows the person to take things at their own pace and following their own initial spiritual interests. For those interested in taking a peek, here is a link to the PDF version of the file.
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Post for November 17, 2007
This just might be a first: I offered spiritual direction to someone today over webcam. No, it did not involve the sacrament of confession — that can only be offered face to face — but for the discussion of other things it worked just great. In fact, in some ways it worked even better than a regular face-to-face meeting. This is because, in addition to the video link, it was possible to have the regular typed messages that you can do with an instant messaging service. This serves as a journal of the key points raised in the spiritual direction session, and can then be used for prayerful reflection later on. All that, plus you avoid the hassle of fighting traffic to get downtown.
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