Program of Priestly Formation (Ascension)

PPF 107

Program of Priestly Formation

helping the seminarian discern whether he is called to priesthood or to another vocation in the Church.

Those priests who engage in spiritual direction for seminarians must understand and support the full formation program. They also need to be integrated into the priestly community of the seminary. The spiritual directors are thus aware that they are part of the whole seminary program and community. 163 Care is to be taken to ensure that issues of human formation that properly belong to the external forum are not limited to the spiritual direction relationship for their resolution. Likewise, the spiritual director should be prepared to encourage that a seminarian bring to the external forum characteristics within him which would preclude the freedom to be advanced or ordained. Because spiritual direction in a seminary context differs from spiritual direction more generally experienced in the Church, the seminary must explain to seminarians the purpose and process of spiritual direction in the seminary. This should include, for example, an understanding that spiritual direction is not an optional possibility but a seminary requirement; a recognition that seminary spiritual direction is concerned not only with the personal spiritual growth of seminarians but also with their preparation for service in the Church as priests; a knowledge that the spiritual direction process must take into account preparation for ordination and that, therefore, one should have passed certain thresholds of spiritual development and commitment at different points in the seminary program (in contrast to the open-ended nature of nonseminary spiritual direction); and an acceptance that a lack of readiness for spiritual direction itself should

107

108

109

163 See Ratio Fundamentalis , nos. 132-133.

62