What is the Role of the Spiritual Director?
A spiritual director is then, one who helps another recognize and to follow in the inspirations of grace in his own life, in order to arrive at the end in which God is leading him...the director is not to be regarded as a magical machine for solving cases and declaring the holy will of God beyond all hope of appeal, but a trusted friend who in an atmosphere of sympathetic understanding, helps and
strengthens us in our groping efforts to correspond with the grace of the Holy
Spirit, who alone is the True Director in the fullest sense of the word. The first
thing that genuine spiritual direction requires in order to work properly is a
normal, spontaneous, human relationship. Seventeenth Century Benedictine mystic, Dom Augustine Baker said about
spiritual directors, "The director is not to teach his own way...in a word he is
only God's usher, and must lead souls in God's way, not his." (Thomas Merton, Spriritual Direction and Meditation, p.5-20)