It sometimes happens that one is not sufficiently provided with spiritual aid; in that case, one must have patience. God needs no person; if He wishes to conduct the soul Himself from within, without exterior help, that should be easy to understand.
Does He not perhaps have as His purpose to show us that often we attach too much importance to direction or at least an excessive importance to a director?
If the Lord permits me to have at my disposal this great force of the spiritual life, I will thank Him for it and enjoy it. But then I will use this means offered only in God.
Addressing himself, not so much to the penitent as to the director, M. Olier recommends him to avoid ties that are too natural, giving as a motive the necessity to fear "violating the faith of chastity."
This advice which is worth something to the director, helping him avoid a certain vain pleasure, as well as a loss of time, is equally valuable for the one directed.
I must have a great supernatural spirit to profit by what is told me, so that it soon becomes unnecessary to repeat it to me, for what good does such direction serve other than to give and regive to souls who do nothing with it, advice perpetually listened to, but never followed.
A saintly soul, Marie de Geuser, used to call her director her exterior Jesus Christ. He is just that. If this point is well understood, all is safe, and there is no risk to that "faith of chastity" to that delicate attention of avoiding every attachment even to holy things, of which M. Olier speaks.
"O my Savior, Interior Guide of souls, enlighten me and grant that I may use my exterior Jesus Christ as You wish."
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Adapted from Meditations for Religious
by Father Raoul Plus, S.J. (© 1939, Frederick Pustet Co.)
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