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Peterson Eugene H: Working the Angles - the shape of pastoral integrity (Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 1998)

"Spiritual direction takes place when two people agree to give their full attention to what God is doing in one of their lives and seek to respond in faith. ... three convictions underpin these meetings:

  1. God is always doing something: an active grace is shaping this life into a mature salvation
  2. responding to God is not sheer guesswork: the Christian community has acquired wisdom through the centuries that provides guidance
  3. each soul is unique: no wisdom can simply be applied without discerning the particulars of this life this situation.
[Quote p.150]

Peterson quotes John Cardinal Bona's 'Treatise on Spiritual Life' (New York, Pustet, 1901) -

Everybody should know this truth that no one is gifted with such prudence and wisdom as to be adequate for himself in the guidance of his own spiritual life. Self-love is a blind guide and fools many. The light of our own judgement is weak and we cannot envisage all dangers or snares and errors to which we are prone in the life of the spirit." [Quoted in Peterson p.167]

In support of his point Peterson spends some time describing why priests especially need spiritual direction -

"Our position requires that we act with authority; our faith requires that we live in submission. ... Our already healthy propensity for pride is goaded a dozen times a day with no one in sight to check it. It is not merely nice for pastors to have a spiritual director; it is indispensable." [Quote p.167]

Peterson describes the internal problems he himself experienced in coming to the point of approaching a spiritual director. He does so with refreshing and helpful candour concluding -

"What I detected in myself was not a fight for theological integrity but a battle with spiritual pride." [Quote p.172]

Once through that barrier the benefits he discovered were -
  1. a marked increase in sponteneity. He learned to share the role of spiritual disciplinarian with his director.
  2. the ability to talk of important but mundane matters without having to be conversationally interesting.
  3. abandoning written communication for a time and making use of the oral tradition
  4. hearing the right word at the personal right moment
Although our focus here is upon the spiritual direction that a PSE receives Peterson reminds us that spiritual direction is a pastoral ministry that the PSE ought also to be offering to others. Making this point he quotes Erich Auerbach's book 'Mimesis' (Princeton 1953) p.92 -

"The agents of Christianity do not simply organise an administration from above leaving everything else to its natural development; they are duty bound to take an interest in the specific detail of everyday incidents; Christianisation is directly concerned with and concerns the individual person and the individual event." [Quoted in Peterson p.149]

After developing the theme of spiritual direction as a valued ministry within the spectrum of Christian (and by implication priestly) disciplines Peterson sounds a warning which may be particularly needed by PSEs -

"By its very nature -- obscure everyday low profile non-crisis -- this is the work for which we need the most encouragement if we are to keep it at the center of our awareness and practice. It is in fact the work for which we get the least encouragement for it is always being pushed to the sidelines by the hustling career-development mentality of our peers and by the hurrying stimulus-hunger demands of our parishioners." [Quote p.162]

Is it significant that in Peterson's book he puts the chapter 'Being a Spiritual Director' before the one on 'Getting a Spiritual Director' ?
Another thought - spiritual direction as here described might be a ministry for which PSEs are particularly suited