Part 5, Chapter 9
Driving in an area that we don’t know wasn’t always so easy. Before GPS, if we got lost, we had to ask direction, we needed someone to point us in the way that we should go. Sometimes we were heading in the right direction, but needed some reassurance, so we asked to make sure. Other times we thought we were heading in the right direction and when we asked for help, we found out we were going in the totally opposite way. Thus asking and conferring for directions is not a bad thing. Sometimes we only have a part of the directions and not the whole; when asking help from someone that sees the bigger picture, we get help in seeing where we need to go.
This reading is very short and yet there is an important point that we might gloss over. We always want to make sure that we get the whole picture and to do all that we are supposed to do before moving on to the next point. So today prepares us to do Part 5, Chapters 10 & 11. So if it prepares us for that, we need to follow the direction that it gives us. “After you have made this self-examination, and having conferred with some holy director as to your shortcomings and their remedies, you will do well to pursue the following considerations” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 197, emphasis mine). We need to make sure we are headed in the right direction because sometimes we are blind to a part of what is going on in our lives. We can be harder or easier on ourselves than we should, so having our Spiritual Father guide us is the way we should go.
Now, I am not saying don’t go on to the next part, but I am saying that we should meet with our Spiritual Father to discuss this. St. Francis De Sales is a Saint, and this is his guidance that the Lord gave to him. We need to make sure that we are traveling in the right direction.