Guidance in Spiritual Direction: Advice from the Holiest Men and Women

Spiritual direction is a vital aspect of the priestly ministry. It launches souls on the road to Heaven and keeps them oriented as the pathway becomes narrow and steep. Everyone — from the pope to the most innocent of children — needs spiritual direction.

In these rich pages, Msgr. Charles Hugo Doyle shares wisdom and practical advice on the process that holds rewards not only for priests but for lay faithful as well.

As Fr. Edward J. Hogan of St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore observed when the book was first published in 1958, “There are countless souls ripe for sanctity, full of generosity and desire, and needing only the expert advice of a divinely ordained doctor of souls to advance toward sainthood. Yet how often they remain unattended!”

Fr. Hogan observed that some Catholic priests hesitate to engage in spiritual direction and to reap the harvest of saints it can produce because they suffer from “a feeling of inadequacy and of lack of the requisite knowledge for so sensitive an undertaking.”