Another Jesuit, Father Balthasar Alvarez, who now became her director, pointed out certain traits that were incompatible with perfect grace. He told her that she would do well to beg God to direct her to what was most pleasing to Him, and to recite daily the hymn of St. Gregory the Great, [Veni Creator Spiritus!]. One day, as she repeated the stanzas, she was seized with a rapture in which she heard the words, "I will not have you hold conversation with men, but with angels."

For three years, while Father Balthasar was her director, she suffered from the disapproval of those around her; and for two years, from extreme desolation of soul. She was censured for her austerities and ridiculed as a victim of delusion or a hypocrite. A confessor to whom she went during Father Balthasar's absence said that her very prayer was an illusion, and commanded her, when she saw any vision, to make the sign of the cross and repel it as if it were an evil spirit. But Teresa tells us that the visions now brought with them their own evidence of authenticity, so that it was impossible to doubt they were from God. Nevertheless, she obeyed this order of her confessor.

Pope Gregory XV, in his bull of canonization, commends her obedience in these words: "She was wont to say that she might be deceived in discerning visions and revelations, but could not be in obeying superiors."

Then With Reasonable Diligence

Seek a director who is compatible with you, but who also challenges you. You may have to "try out" a number of directors before you find one who is right for you. For example, St. Teresa of Avila suffered for a while from having a spiritual director who taught her to ignore her visions as distractions from the devil. When St. John of the Cross became her director, he encouraged her to explore them as the profound ways in which God was communicating with her.

1. Part Four: Christian Prayer, Section One: Prayer in the Christian Life, Chapter Two: The Tradition of Prayer, Article 3: Guides For Prayer
2. Thomas Morris: Gifted for the Journey: The Art of Spiritual Direction
3. Qualities of a Good Guide: Spiritual Direction in John of the Cross' Letters, Kevin Culligan, O.C.D.
4. Spiritual direction - A Pathway to Growth
5. St. Edith Stein

Le Poème de l'âme - Le Mauvais Sentier
The Poem of the Soul - The Wrong Path
Anne-François-Louis Janmot (1814-1892)