The Saints and the Journey of Discipleship

The saints guide us through their writings and their example. However, except under the very rare circumstance of an apparition, we don’t have the benefit of direct guidance from them, so we have to take what they said and apply it to our own lives.

In the journey of discipleship, having a mentor or spiritual director to meet with you and guide you can be incredibly valuable. This has to be someone whom you trust, and with whom you are comfortable getting really honest about your life. Where are you struggling? What virtues are you trying to improve? What do you need to stop doing in your life, or start doing, to make your spiritual growth and journey of discipleship fruitful?

In the Catholic tradition, a true spiritual director is someone who has specifically prepared for the role of providing guidance, using one of the many manuals that have been published for that purpose. They are somewhat hard to find, particularly as priests have become busier and men and women religious less common, but there are many lay spiritual directors as well. But even if you can’t find someone formally trained to offer spiritual direction, there are typically people you know in your life who “get” the faith and could help direct you in how to live it out more fully in your own life, just as they do in theirs.

Connect with these people. Prioritize these relationships. Commit to learning from their example. You don’t have to agree with everything they say or do (they aren’t infallible), but be ready to learn, and to be challenged. (After all, you picked them for a reason.) Find guides that you trust, and then trust them.

Challenge: Think of the people in your life who are “older siblings” in the faith. How can you learn from them, directly or indirectly?