SPIRITUAL DIRECTION

Christine Watkins received training in spiritual direction from the Jesuit School of Theology in 1997 when she received her Masters in Theological Studies. She specializes in Ignatian spiritual discernment, inner healing prayer and life decisions. She is also a trained bereavement counselor, having received a Masters in Social Work from the University of California School of Social Welfare and having worked as a bereavement counselor since the year 1999. She is available for spiritual direction in San Francisco, California.

The primary task of the spiritual director is to help the person discern the presence and action of God in his or her life and to enhance communication with Him. What is God saying to the person? How does God communicate with the person? In what way does God wish to heal, challenge or console the person? What does the person wish to say to God? How can the person grow closer to God?

Spiritual direction gently invites the person to grow, calls him or her to conversion and toward a deeper relationship with God and others.  

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, USA)  

We define Christian spiritual direction as help given by one Christian to another which enables that person to pay attention to God’s personal communication to him or her, to respond to this personally communicating God, to grow in intimacy with this God, and to live out the consequences of the relationship.
(William A. Barry, SJ and William J. Connolly, SJ, Center for Religous Development, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA)