Do you need a "spiritual father"?

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]So, Father, what is the role of a spiritual father, and do I need one?

[00:00:06]Um I I I don't see wearing uh a monastic club book, so so probably not. Um the idea of a spiritual father, it's it's essentially a monastic concept. Um if you're when with when one talks about an individual spiritual father, who is my spiritual father, uh usually mean there's someone um who knows you well, uh who directs your life. You turn to him for uh in a monastic setting um to say, you know, what should I do? What should I believe?

[00:00:37]How do I live? And things like this. And so, I don't do anything without a blessing from my spiritual father, cuz that's the monastic way. If you're in a monastic community, monasticism is about a number of things.

[00:00:47]Um uh chief among them, cutting off the will and embracing humility and obedience. So, in the monastery, you don't do anything without a blessing.

[00:00:55]You get the abbot's blessing or possibly the blessing of your spiritual father.

[00:00:58]Can I leave the monastery and go to start by toothpaste or whatever you got to do that that sort of stuff, you know, you know? So, you ask for a blessing before you do before you do pretty much anything in the in the monastery. That's the monastic subculture that's there.

[00:01:11]And and and it works because you you put yourself under the authority of this of this of this person um because that person you uh knows you. Uh you spend all the time with the person, you're sharing the same monastery, eating in the same ref- refectory, uh worshipping the same church all the time, hanging out I don't know, you're milking the monastery goat or whatever you're you're doing all that stuff. So, the person knows you knows you well. And so, can uh based on that intimate knowledge of yourself and your spiritual condition, can give you direction. Um So, if you're in a monastery, it works.

[00:01:46]But if you're in a parish, it doesn't work because no one that unless you live with the person, uh they're not going to know you well enough to be able to give you that that sort of direction. And usually, well, if you're in a in a in a parish and you have someone who uh is your spiritual father that you've that you've chosen, perhaps a a monk in a monastery in God knows where, far far away, unless that person is an extraordinary clairvoyant and can, I don't know, bilocate, um they're not going to know you well enough to be able to give you sensible direction for your life as to how to live cuz they don't know yet cuz they're way over there. And they also don't know how to give you direction to live in the in a parish which they're not at.

[00:02:25]And so the the difficulty is that if you're in the parish, the person who's supposed to be the spiritual father of the parish, not of the individuals in the parish, but of the parish as a whole, would be the parish priest. So, if if the main authority in the parish is the parish priest, how does that combine with the spiritual authority of somebody in a monastery distant from you? Like, how's that going to work? Uh especially if they give you conflicting advice. So, most monks, I would suggest, perhaps know better than to take on uh the burden of of spiritual fatherhood for somebody that they don't know very well and isn't living in the parish with them. Um when they do, very often it blows up bad. It it doesn't end up very well. Um you sometimes hear that the the the the priest is the spiritual father. That's true, but what that means is the spiritual father not of the individuals in the parish, uh but of the of the parish as a whole. So, that the the parish as a whole will very often, in fact always, take its person take its corporate personality from the personality of the brother priest. If the priest is a is a loving humble person, you'll have a parish, all things being equal, of loving humble people. If the priest is uh um uh not that way, then the parish will will not be not that way, either. So, the the the parish priest is called to be a spiritual father to the parish in that his main job is not just to do services and preach and hear confessions and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that too, but it but these are means to an end. The end of the of the job of the parish priest is to create family. To take all of these disparate, very different people and to love them, take care of them, meld them into one family.

[00:04:06]So that he's the father of the family.

[00:04:08]But it it doesn't mean that he gives individual direction to the people in the family. Uh dear Father Lawrence, should I take this job or not? Dear Father Lawrence, what should I have for breakfast? Is it okay to have granola?

[00:04:18]That sort of stuff. No, no, this is not the This is not the idea.

[00:04:21]The parish priest does not give that sort of intimate direction um that would be appropriate to one monk directing another monk in the same monastery.

[00:04:31]Doesn't work in the parish. So on occasion I've been asked uh by well-intentioned people, "Well, Father Lawrence, would you be my spiritual father?" And I've I've I've always said, "No, because we're not monks uh in the same monastery, but I can be your pastor and I can be your friend."