Lately, you've probably heard a lot about a new fad -- persons seeking help and guidance from a "life coach." Life coaches are supposed to help you through life's hurdles, helping you to better navigate life's journey. Having a spiritual director is somewhat similar with one very important difference -- a spiritual director helps you to lead a more meaningful life by helping you to discover a deep and lasting relationship with God.

Spiritual Direction is the opportunity to reflect with a qualified spiritual director about your life, its events, relationships with God and others. Spiritual direction is a graced way of serving another believer -- helping the other to grow in intimacy with God and to live out the consequences of this intimacy.

Click here to watch a video of spiritual direction.

While some spiritual directors may be trained pastoral or psychological counselors, problem solving or therapy is not the focus. Rather, the focus of a spiritual direction relationship is the directee's experience of God. The director helps the person to notice God's movement in prayer and in the circumstances and events of one's life.

Contemporary direction presumes that God communicates through ordinary human experience, and in that experience is found God's invitations, urgings and confirmations. A spiritual director is a companion on life's journey -- asking reflective questions and pointing out resources. They assist with resistances and roadblocks, helping the directee to come to breakthroughs in their relationship with God and its lived consequences.

A spiritual director may be especially helpful to an individual seeking to develop a deeper relationship with God:

when the search for God seems to be at a crossroads
when one wants to explore new methods of prayer
when prayer becomes difficult
when one feels the need for help in discerning the call of the Spirit
or when one feels the need for a companion on the spiritual journey to walk with them and to listen.

Spiritual direction at the Cenacle is available for people of all faiths -- lay women and men, single or married, priests and members of religious communities. Frequency of sessions can be discussed with the director and decided upon according to individual needs. Many people find once a month helpful.

To find out more about spiritual direction in your area, visit the different Cenacle locations on this web site or e-mail jrennert@cenaclesisters.org