[Question:]{.underline} Should a lay person have a spiritual director?
[Answer:]{.underline} Father Tanquerey in his standard textbook The Spiritual Life lists four principal exterior means of perfection that are normally necessary for the sanctification of souls. Spiritual direction is the first, for it “provides safe guidance” (p. 257). He goes on to explain that if spiritual direction is not absolutely necessary for the sanctification of the soul, it is nevertheless “one of the normal means of spiritual progress” (ibid.).
The error of those who maintain that we do not need spiritual direction is in fact well refuted by Pope Leo XIII in his 1899 encyclical condemning false Americanism, Testem benevolentiae. Speaking against the innovators, who place natural virtues above supernatural virtues, and active virtues above passive virtues, he invokes the whole of Catholic Tradition in the spiritual life, and how this innovation is a refusal to be directed by our elders. He invokes, to establish his point, the case of Saul, at the moment of his conversion. He was told to go to Damascus, to find Ananias “and there it shall be told thee what thou must do” (Acts 9:7). The pope goes on to explain that God generally works upon men through the intermediary of another man, just as a spiritual director does upon those who trust in him: “God in His infinite providence has decreed that men for the most part should be saved by men; hence He has appointed that those whom He calls to a loftier degree of holiness should be led thereto by other men, ‘in order that’ as Chrysostom says, ‘we should be taught by God through men’” (In The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII, p. 447)
All the spiritual authors admit the necessity of a spiritual director in the religious life, since it is a state of perfection, and since the religious has the obligation of tending towards holiness, and hence to have a guide to guide him and protect him from the dangers and deceit of pride, illusion, self-deception, excessive mortification, scruples and the like. The question arises as to persons in the world, who say that they do not have the same obligation of tending towards perfection. It is certainly true that they do not have the special obligation of the vows, but they still retain the obligation of the Christian life itself, contained in the saying of Our Lord, “Be you therefore perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48). For he who does not advance in charity will certainly fall back. The interior life cannot be static.
St. Francis de Sales is the most renowned of all spiritual directors of souls in the world, and we find the answer to this question in his well known treatise for souls in the world beginning the spiritual life, Introduction to the Devout Life. He there does not just give the advice of having a spiritual director, but insists that this is the most important advice he can give: “Do you want to advance confidently along the path of perfection and the love of God? Then seek someone who can direct you. This is the most important advice I can give you. Search though you may, you will never find the will of God so surely as by the way of humble obedience” (Bk. I, Ch. 4).
Although spiritual direction generally goes along with confession, it is not the same thing as it, but goes much further. Let me quote Father Tanquerey once more: “Confession limits itself to the accusation of faults; direction goes far beyond this. It reaches the causes of sin, deep-rooted inclinations, temperament, character, acquired habits, temptations, imprudences. This in order to discover the right remedies, such as go to the very roots of the evil. In order to combat defects the better, direction is also concerned with virtues opposed to them, the virtues common to all Christians, and those special to each particular class of persons…” (ibid., p. 262).
Consequently, the simple fact of going regularly to confession does not constitute spiritual direction. It is also necessary to ask one’s confessor to direct one’s soul, or to be, as St. Francis de Sales puts it, the physician of one’s soul: “Why should we wish to constitute ourselves directors of our own souls when we do not undertake the management of our bodies? Have we not noticed that physicians, when ill, call other physicians to determine what remedies they require?” (Tanquerey, p. 260.)
If, then, we desire to advance in the interior life, let us ask our confessor for spiritual direction. It is true that it does not have to be our regular confessor to whom we go for spiritual direction, but it must at least be a priest who understands our soul as a confessor does, with all its failures, weaknesses, and pettiness. How, otherwise, could he be our physician? If we cannot expect having a saint as a spiritual director, by the same token let us not contemplate seeking spiritual direction from anybody other than an experienced confessor who understands souls from the intimate experience of years spent in the confessional, nor let us seek it from any priest who does not have at heart our progress in progression in the spiritual life; virtue; and, ultimately, sanctity and who does not have the necessary knowledge of ascetical and mystical theology. We certainly cannot expect to receive such spiritual direction from priests imbued by the errors of Vatican II and post-conciliar Modernism that has relativized all seeking for sanctity.
Members of Third Orders ought to consider it a necessary means for their advancement in perfection that they have a priest who is a spiritual director, and who understands profoundly the spirituality of their order, and who preferably is a member of it. They should not fall into the trap of seeking spiritual direction from one another, but from one who is charged with this responsibility before God. Although a wife should in all things possible be docile to her husband, and find in such submission the ordinary means of her perfection, she should not seek to find in him a spiritual director for her soul, for he has neither the knowledge nor the grace of state of the confessor to be a spiritual physician. She will advance in perfection, as she so desires, if she finds a spiritual director who will encourage her in her regular confessions to fight against her faults as he knows them from her confessions, and to strive to please her husband in all things.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.