A reporter once asked Mother Teresa: “How do you feel about being called a living saint?” She answered: “You have to be holy in the position you are in, and I have to be holy in the position God has given me. There is nothing extraordinary about being holy. It is simply a duty for you and me.”
This article explores some more ways for becoming holy, which is our core duty. Helping the members to reach this goal is one of the key functions of a religious superior, who, after all, is not heading a business or a sports club, but a community of persons vowed to put God in the first place.
Spiritual Direction
In his great book on holiness titled Introduction to the Devout Life, the first means St. Francis de Sales proposes for becoming holy is spiritual direction. He writes: “If you want to set out earnestly on the path of devotion, find some good person to guide and direct you. This is the most important advice.”
What is spiritual direction? William A. Barry and William J. Connolly describe it as the “help given by one Christian to another which enables that person to pay attention to God’s personal communication to him or her, to respond to this personally communicating God, to grow in intimacy with this God, and to live out the consequences of the relationship” (The Practice of Spiritual Direction, p. 8). A person’s experiences of God, prayer life, vocation, apostolate, vows, relationships, doubts, struggles, lifestyle, etc., are all matters for spiritual direction.
The purpose of spiritual direction is to enable us to grow in our relationship with God. It is to be used by all those who wish to make progress on their journey to God; by all those who wish to realize the goal of their life.
Fr Jose Kuttianimattathil SDB
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