• Spiritual Direction

Spiritual Direction is the opportunity to reflect with a qualified spiritual director about your life, its events, and your relationship with God and others. Meetings are strictly confidential and are held on a regular basis.
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—listening, encouraging, challenging, praying with the directee, asking reflective questions and pointing out resources. They assist with resistances and roadblocks, helping the directee to come to breakthroughs in his or her relationship with God and its lived consequences.

A spiritual director may be especially helpful to someone 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 her or him and to listen.

“Spiritual direction is, in reality, nothing more than a way of leading us to see and obey the real Director — the Holy Spirit hidden in the depths of our soul.” (Thomas Merton, Trappist monk)

Spiritual direction at St. Cyril's is provided as a ministry, at no charge. Current spiritual directors include Fr. Mario Arroyo, Diane Trees-Clay and Ray Viernes. Referrals can also be made to spiritual directors outside of the parish. Opportunities exist to meet one-on-one with trained spiritual directors on a schedule that you and the director determine together. Contact: Ray Viernes 713.789.1250, ext. 222.