Called to become an Ignatian Spiritual Director?

How would you know if you are being called to become an Ignatian Spiritual Director?

A good method of assessing your own suitability for this vocation would be to answer a number of questions to yourself. If you can respond to most of these questions in the affirmative, then you may well have a calling to become a spiritual director on the Ignatian tradition:

1. 1. Have you made the Spiritual Exercises? If you have, did they have a transformative impact on your life?
   2. Do you have a desire (in other words, are you drawn) to become a giver of the Spiritual Exercises?
   3. Are you serious about your prayer life? Are you in touch with your own interiority?
   4. Do you have the capacity to reflect on your own inner experiences of God?
   5. Do you have a reasonable level of self-awareness? Are you in touch with your affective side? In other words, are you comfortable interpreting, and sharing, your feelings and experiences?
   6. Have you reflected deeply on your own life experiences? Are you conscious of your own suffering, but not overcome by that suffering? Has suffering transformed you? Are you deeply attuned to love, to wonder, and to beauty?
   7. Would you consider yourself a person of strong integrity?
   8. Are you the kind of person whom people sense they can trust? Would others see you as a person of strong empathy and compassion?
   9. Do you communicate what Barry and Connolly name as a “surplus of warmth”? Does this trait manifest itself as deep commitment, a genuine effort to listen to, and understand others, a degree of spontaneity, and a sense of presence that makes others feel ‘at home’?
   10. Are you aware of your own failure and sinfulness, but ‘at ease’ with it in the sense that you experience yourself as loved and forgiven in your sin and in your failure? In other words, do you experience yourself as having been set free by grace – a power greater than the power of failure and sin?
   11. Would you say that you have loved and been loved, and know the struggle of trying to be a faithful and loyal friend to another?
   12. Are you relatively unafraid to live life with courage and hope in all its darkness and light – and mystery?
   13. Are you capable of transcending personal absolutes, so that you can remain open to a “sense of wonder” to God’s capacity to communicate with people through a variety of experiences – experiences that might differ markedly from your own?
   14. Are you willing to engage in genuine dialogue and in a spirit of mutual enrichment, with people from different faith backgrounds and beliefs?
   15. Are you able to maintain a healthy work/life balance?

If you can answer (mostly) in the affirmative to these personal discernment questions, then you may well have a calling to become a spiritual director in the Ignatian tradition.