“It should ever be kept in view that the practice of the virtues is not only for their own sake and to obtain merit, but mainly in order to remove all obstacles in the way of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and to assist the soul in following His operations with docility.”

“Obedience in its spiritual aspect divests one of self-will and makes him prompt to submit to the will of God alone.  Viewed as an act of justice, obedience is the payment of due service to one’s superior, who holds his office by appointment of God.”

“The essential mistake of the transcendentalists is the taking for their guide the instincts of the soul instead of the inspirations of the Holy Spirit.  They are moved by the natural instincts of human beings instead of the instinct of the Holy Ghost.  But true spiritual direction consists in discovering the obstacles in the way of the Divine guidance, in aiding and encouraging the penitent to remove them, and in teaching how the interior movements of the Holy Spirit may be recognized, as well as in stimulating the soul to fidelity and docility to His movements.”

“The director is not to take the place of the Holy Ghost in the soul, but to assist His growth in the soul as its primary and supreme guide.”

“The primary worker of the soul’s sanctification is the Holy Spirit acting interiorly; the work of the director is secondary and subordinate.  To overlook this fundamental truth in the spiritual life is a great mistake, whether it be on the part of the director or the one under direction.”

The great obstacle to the prevalent use of this privilege of divine interior direction is lack of practical realization of its existence by good Christians.  And this want of faith is met with almost as much among teachers as among learners, resulting in too great a mingling of the human element in the guidance of souls.  What is known as over-direction is to be attributed, as Father Hecker was persuaded, to confessors leading souls by self-chosen ways, or laboriously working them along the road to perfection by artificial processes, souls whom the Holy Spirit has not made ready for more than the beginning of the spiritual life.  This is like pressing wine out of unripe grapes.  Another practice which Father Hecker often deprecated was the binding of free and generous souls with all sorts of obligations in the way of devotional exercises.  This is forcing athletes to go on crutches.  The excuse for it all is that it really does stagger human belief to accept as a literal matter of fact that God the Holy Ghost personally comes to us with divine grace and gives Himself to us; that He actually and essentially dwells in our souls by grace, and in an unspeakably intimate manner takes charge of our entire being, soul and body, and all our faculties and senses.

“By sanctifying grace,” says St. Thomas (p.  I, q. 33, art. 2), “the rational creature is thus perfected, that it may not only use with liberty the created good, but that it may also enjoy the uncreated good; and therefore the invisible sending of the Holy Ghost takes place in the gift of sanctifying grace and the Divine Person Himself is given to us.”