Catholic Fire

Spiritual direction has been an essential part of Catholic tradition since the earliest days of the Church when desert fathers were sought out for their wisdom and guidance. Today, a renewed interest in attaining personal holiness and an ever-increasing attraction to monastic spirituality has put spiritual direction in the spotlight. In 2012, Emmaus Road Publishing released Navigating the Interior Life: Spiritual Direction and the Journey to God by Executive Director of the National Catholic Register, Dan Burke. In it, Burke emphatically emphasized the importance and necessity of spiritual direction for Catholics in their spiritual journey. Now Peter Kreeft, a seasoned author whom I greatly admire for his natural genius on topics of faith, has written a book on spiritual direction that Dan Burke describes as “his opus.” In Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas , Kreeft has combined 358 useful insights from Aquinas’ masterpiece, the 4000 page Summa ...