Q. But how do I know who is a suitable spiritual coach for me?
A. By searching for certain qualities or characteristics. These can be summarised into two points: first that your spiritual coach is himself sincerely striving to grow in virtue. Secondly that because of the friendship you share, your coach is someone you can speak to in complete confidence without fear of shame or embarrassment.
Q. Then what exactly do I do with my spiritual coach?
A. You do with him what you do with your sports coach: let him train you, form you, develop you.
And the two most important characteristics you will need for this are sincerity and obedience; in one word humility.
Brutal sincerity to speak out and say anything and everything that concerns your soul and your struggle for virtue, as embarrassing and as humiliating as it may be.
Intelligent obedience to adopt your coach's suggestions and indications as your very own and to implement and execute them as effectively as possible.
Q. Is that it?
A. Well as with your sports coach, you need to meet regularly depending on both your circumstances. At least once every 2 weeks is a good target.
Secondly, in those meetings learn to speak about the major aspects of your struggle for virtue: your life of prayer, your work or study, your struggle in charity and purity, queries on faith, etc.
Then, at the end of every conversation, together you can set a concrete target of an area you can strive to work on so as to grow in virtue. The most important thing about the target is that it be concrete e.g. this week to get out of bed punctually, or to go for Confession, or to study 3hrs every day, or to apologise to someone, or to put order in my wardrobe etc.
6th September 2015