Charitable Toughness: What Makes a Spiritual Director Effective

Almost everything written about spiritual direction is written for the director. This short course does something rarer — it lets you listen from the other chair. In a brief interview, a layman named David, who has sought spiritual direction for about twenty years, describes from long experience of receiving it what actually makes a director effective.

He starts where a businessman would. In his working life accountability is easy to see, because a profit-and-loss statement tells you whether you are succeeding. The spiritual life prints no such statement, which is exactly why he keeps a standing monthly appointment: to make visible a growth that is otherwise too easy to lose track of. From there he names the directors who helped him most — not the ones who only reassured him, but the ones who gently refused to let the hour stay comfortable and asked, “Now let’s talk about what you could be doing.” He warns against being put “in a box,” praises directors who prepare for the particular person the way the best homilists prepare even for a daily Mass, and makes his peace with the fact that not every pairing will “click.” When it doesn’t, he looks not for blame but for the Holy Spirit.

His final counsel is three marks, and the order matters: personal holiness (“you’ve got to walk the walk yourself — or at least an attempted personal holiness”), charitable toughness (“being tough and willing to ask hard questions… if you’re doing it with charity”), and prepared, individualized attention.