What spiritual direction is
Spiritual direction means: someone listens regularly to how God is at work in your life. No advice from above, no judgement, no sacrament – a second pair of ears for the question the Examen asks every evening: where was God today, and how did I answer?
A director replaces nothing that already exists. Confession stays with the priest, therapy with the therapist. Direction is the third thing alongside them: someone who walks with you over months and helps you read your own interior movements – consolation and desolation, what draws and what resists. If you pray regularly and wonder where it is all leading, you are the right person for a director. A crisis is not a requirement.
Why Lumen vets no one and arranges nothing
This has to be said honestly, precisely because many people would like an app to do it: Lumen vets no one and arranges nothing.
Anyone who gives spiritual direction in the German-speaking world needs a mandate from their diocese or order, an extended certificate of good conduct and safeguarding training. No app can issue that and no app can verify it. A directory of "vetted directors" inside an app would claim a safety it cannot provide – and in something this personal, a claimed vetting would be more dangerous than none at all. This page therefore only points to the places that can vet: the dioceses, the orders and the bodies established for it.
Where to look
- Diocesan offices – contacts across the German-speaking area, sorted by diocese (exerzitien.info).
- The Jesuits – direction in the Ignatian sense, where the Examen comes from (jesuiten.org).
- Exercises in daily life, online – four weeks of accompanied prayer from home, with one fixed director (online-exerzitien.org, in German).
- International, in English – a worldwide directory (sdicompanions.org). This body does not vet its members either – so ask about a church mandate.
What to expect
- A conversation about every four to six weeks, usually an hour. Not confession, not therapy.
- Usually free of charge. In the German-speaking world the dioceses cover the cost from church tax.
- You may stop at any time without giving a reason. A good director accepts that immediately.
The measure to hold direction against
Ignatius gives it himself in the Spiritual Exercises, in Annotation 15:
Let the one who gives the Exercises stand in the centre like a balance, and let the Creator act immediately with the creature.
A director who pushes you towards a decision, places himself between you and God, or makes you dependent on him is failing his office – however pious it may sound. And Annotation 17 anticipates one more thing: the director need not want to know the sins at all. What he should be faithfully informed about are the interior movements – what consoles, what disturbs, what draws. The companion summary in the Lumen app is built to exactly this measure: it contains gratitude, review, resolution and the course of consolation – never the failings.
Spiritual direction replaces neither therapy nor confession. If something weighs on you persistently, speak to a doctor or therapist.