Florida Catholic | Soul Partnership

‘Soul partnership’

Spiritual direction students will get experience in the field by working with residents at Catholic health-care facilities.

PRISCILLA GREEAR | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT

Published: 12.07.07

Father Parker Ogboe, right, chaplain at Villa Maria Nursing Center, will supervise the St. Thomas University students who are completing their practicum in spiritual direction by working with residents of Catholic Health Services facilities such as Owen Anderson, left.
PRISCILLA GREEAR | FC

MIAMI GARDENS | Susan Loretta calls it “a marriage made in heaven”: a partnership between people learning to be spiritual directors and the mostly elderly, often lonely, residents of Catholic nursing homes and residential facilities.

Third-year students in St. Thomas University’s spiritual companionship certificate program will now complete their practicum at Catholic Health Services facilities in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, where they will practice giving spiritual direction under supervision.

“I’m really excited about that,” said Loretta, who directs the Center for Wholistic Spirituality at St. Thomas University. “For some people it’s really hard to begin to find directees, and here are all these people who may have no one listening to them, and here are students trained to be professional listeners, to just go in and be a loving presence.”

Loretta and Sister Jill Bond, a Sister of St. Joseph who serves as vice president of mission advancement at Catholic Health Services, were talking on the phone one day when they discovered they both had been thinking about the same arrangement.

“Obviously in a nursing home they need some kind of assistance with the activities of daily living, but oftentimes residents are very alert, oriented and interested in their spiritual lives,” Sister Bond said. “We’d like to give them the opportunity to talk about their spiritual lives.”

The partnership is in keeping with Catholic Health Services’ philosophy of treating persons holistically — body, mind and spirit.

While there are devout people of every age, Sister Bond said, “As we all get older and closer to meet our maker, our desire to pay attention to that relationship increases.”

For more information on St. Thomas University’s spiritual direction certificate program, or to be matched with a spiritual director, contact Susan Loretta at 305-628-6548 or sloretta@stu.edu.

“Spiritual direction is one of the best-kept secrets in the church,” she added.

Sister Bond herself is a graduate of the St. Thomas program. She found it beneficial as a refresher course to refine her directing skills.

“It’s a wonderful experience to be able to share what’s going on with your prayer. In the spiritual direction relationship, the attempt is being made to discern together where God is calling you or inviting you,” Sister Bond said. “We see it as a partnership, a soul partnership (where) we can help one another.”

As residents at Catholic Health Services are very diverse in ethnicity, students with additional language skills will be very useful. One of them is Haitian-born Pierre Roosly Cesar, who speaks French and Creole and will complete his practicum at Villa Maria Nursing Center in North Miami.

His supervisor will be Father Parker Ogboe, director of pastoral care at the facility. Father Ogboe said the practicum arrangement will give interested residents another option to talk “more leisurely” with someone. Villa Maria has about 270 residents, roughly 65 percent of whom are Catholic, Father Ogboe said. He often speaks with patients about topics connected to marriage, remarriage and how their health conditions affect the practice of their religion.

“It will give the patients the opportunity to realize their dignity,” he said, “that they are not just part of a group … that this person is talking to me as an individual.”

Cesar, 30, who is married and also studying for a graduate degree in management at St. Thomas, said that being a student in the program has helped him to stay focused on Jesus and to endure the challenges involved with emigrating from Haiti and being separated from family.

“The spiritual director helps you to see that God has done things for you and is still there for you,” he said. The director encourages him to keep praying and “to be open … so when God speaks I hear and understand what he wants me to do or not to do.”

“Whether illness or immigration (problems), I like to say to these people if they trust in the Lord in all their heart in that situation they can continue to praise him,” said Cesar, who is a Knight of Columbus.

Loretta said she often confronts misconceptions about spiritual direction. One is that a person must be deeply religious or spiritual to have a director. In reality, spiritual direction is for people who simply have a desire to grow in faith.

Another misconception is that spiritual direction involves problem-solving on a particular issue, something like professional therapy. “Therapy is really attending to a problem or an issue. Directing may begin with an issue but direction is like, let’s look at this and let’s see how God is present in this issue for you. It’s helping people to get in touch with the deeper river of their lives where God lives,” Loretta said. “We don’t give advice. … The job of the director is to help those persons go within themselves and find that answer within.”

She added that the partnership between St. Thomas and Catholic Health Services is a model for how Catholic organizations can share resources and fruitfully collaborate.

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‘Soul partnership’

Spiritual direction students will get experience in the field by working with residents at Catholic health-care facilities.

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