SDC Webinar June 5th

0:01Welcome to this webinar. As I said, my name is Maria Brackett. I'm the director of the spiritual direction certificate and a spiritual director myself. We try to have a webinar every month on the first Thursday of every month at 08:00. And, usually, it's a overview of the program just for whoever's interested and can jump on. And sometimes I'm able to get a faculty member or an alumni to come on to and speak about the program. Tonight is gonna be an overview. I'm gonna the it's gonna last about forty five minutes in total. I'm gonna just go through the program, and then I'm going to, just take any questions that you might have about different aspects of the program. So let's get started. So what we're gonna just be looking at, give you a sense of the different aspects.

1:06So Divine Mercy University is accredited, by a lot of different organizations according to its different types of program. The newest, I guess, accreditation or approval, we could say, was given by the Newman guide, recommended by the Newman guide. They just started working with graduate schools, and we were one of the first graduate schools that went through the process. So that's kind of our newest one. All our programs, you know, we're accredited by the higher, education for Virginia and then for the psychological programs through those different organizations. Fully accredited university. The spiritual direction, this is a lot of information right here. I'm just gonna highlight it. This is also on the website.

1:57The spiritual direction certificate prepares students to be spiritual directors, really Christ centered understanding of spiritual direction with the heart and mind of Jesus Christ and the tradition of the church's Catholic church's tried experience. The spiritual direction certificate or as we call it the SDC DC is gives knowledge, skills, and supervision for future spiritual directors. It includes six online classes, two four day residencies, practicum requirement, and supervision. And the pillars of the certificate are the integration of theological and human sciences as they relate to spiritual development, learning the art and skill of interpersonal relationships, and the fruitful experience of supervision.

2:52These are the also on all of this information is on the website. But, anyway, the these are the goals of the program, to prepare you to be a spiritual director with a strong identity of what that means, to be able to enter into the life of another person with compassion and respect, to develop a Christ centered and person centered approach to spiritual direction, to employ basic social and behavior skills and a habit of solid theological think reasoning to promote deep spiritual flourishing or as I like to say to people, helping others to flourish in their relationship with the lord and to embody a vision of the flourishing person that inspires them. For you also as people that are training to be spiritual directors to live a flourishing life.

3:46So it's also to inspire directors by your life and your decisions so that they can grow in their own faith, hope, and love. I always like to talk a little bit about what is spiritual direction right at the outset from of this web webinar because I think it's important if you're looking into a spiritual direction program to feel comfortable in kind of their definition of spiritual direction. There are a lot of different definitions of spiritual direction out there, not all Catholic ones nor Christian ones. There's other faith traditions that have a similar concept. This is really taken from the Catholic Christian understanding of spiritual direction. So spiritual direction we see as accompaniment, assisting a person on their path to the Lord, the act of being there for them and service both to them and to the Lord in the presence of the Lord in their lives, deep listening to the one being directed to help them discover the Lord and his narrative in their lives.

4:54It's also a pilgrimage to God, a clear goal, to help the directee, as we call them, the one receiving spiritual direction to grow closer to God. It's not designed as therapy. It doesn't have a problem solving element to it, but as a walk in with someone in their walk with the Lord. And it's also a type of formation because as you help someone to learn how to follow Jesus, you're forming them in their mission of being called and sent. Spiritual direction has become increasingly popular among Catholics of all of all vocations, especially after Vatican two where the emphasis on the universal call to holiness. And this is a quote from Pope Benedict from 2011 where he just says that everyone who is serious about following Jesus should have a spiritual director.

5:52And he said, you know, it's for anyone who wants to live responsibly their baptism. That is their new life in Christ. The catechism of the Catholic church speaks of spiritual directors in the following way in number two six nine zero. The Holy Spirit gives to certain of the faithful the gifts of wisdom, faith, and discernment for the sake of this common good, which is prayer. And they and they those parenthesis are there, spiritual direction. Men and women so endowed are true servants of the living tradition of prayer. I love to think of spiritual directors in that way as servants, true servants of the living tradition of prayer, helping others to grow in their relationship with the lord through that that especially through their life of prayer, their contact or connection with the lord.

6:44So let's just look at a snapshot of the program. It's a flexible online hybrid program. So by this, we mean that there are six online courses. There are two residencies in the third course and the sixth course. And the third course and the fifth course, there is a residency as part of the course. There are sixty practicum hours as a requirement for graduation, and that is forty eight hours of seeing people in spiritual direction and, twelve hours of supervision. You find the people locally that you need to see in spiritual direction, and, we give you the supervision. You have that as part of your fifth and sixth course. You don't start these practicum hours until the fifth course. So you don't have to worry.

7:36We kinda walk you through some ways of trying to find people. You're also given a program adviser, when you enter your third course that is a spiritual director or is familiar with spiritual direction and can help you to kinda troubleshoot that. And then we also require at least five day spiritual exercises. If you've had that experience within the last two years before you enter the program, that counts. But if not, you should have it during the program. The practical hours and the spiritual exercises need to be done by the time you you are applying to complete your certificate, which is after the sixth course. The administrative team of the program was myself there and then Linda Francis.

8:24We Linda works remotely from Boston. I work out of the university here in Sterling, Virginia. These are some of our faculty. We've got a good amount of faculty. Not everyone can fit here, but this kinda gives you a good understanding of the different types of people. We have laypeople, men and women, deacon, some priests. You know, there are depending on the subject matter of the course, that's the type of instructor that we look for for the course. So they're either seasoned spiritual directors with masters in theology, or, they are in some of the courses for the skills courses. We often use clinicians, counselors, or psychologists that know these skills very well and also know the world of spiritual direction.

9:21They're just not any counselor or any psychologist. There are people that do know, spiritual direction or and probably are in spiritual direction themselves. Actually, they all are. Again, this has a lot of words on it, this slide, but it's, these are the course descriptions. They're also on the website, so please feel free to go there. So as I said to you, the core the certificate consists of six courses, and you see here the third course and the fifth course residency. And, also, the the each course is eight weeks long, and I'll talk about the calendar a little bit later for you. So during the time that you're taking the courses in that eight weeks, you should set aside six to nine hours of work per week.

10:23And as I said, these courses are online. The these, in our website, they have the course descriptions. I know these letters are a little bit small. Basically, what you're seeing here is kind of a dance between, the spine of the whole certificate is spiritual theology or the life of grace and the growth of grace in a person. Right? And that their relationship with the lord. And then sprinkled through, as you can see, in February is a course on human development for spiritual direction. So understanding the person, how they develop, how relationships develop. And then we've got the relating skill courses. The 300 and the 500 are relating skill courses. The four hundred and six hundred are really talking about that deep listening to the spirit, discernment of what is the voice of the lord or what we say the voice of the good shepherd and the voice of the thief, and then advanced prayer and situations that might arise in spiritual direction in 600.

11:27So you as I said, you begin your practicum hours in 500. So after you've done a considerable amount of study and, already had some practice and, and then you work on them through five hundred and six hundred, and you have from the time that you begin 300, you have up to two years to finish the certificate. So, again, this gives you just kind of how it is. In the first year, you do three courses. And so you first you do the 100, 200, 300, and the residency in that third semester. And in year two, you do 400, 500, and 500 has its residency as part of it and then 600. Now let's talk about how the terms work, because we actually have three times a year that you can enter the program. We run three terms a year.

12:29That's why you were seeing three courses a year in that previous slide. So the spring term begins in early January and ends in early March. The summer term begins in late May and ends in mid July. The fall term begins in late August and ends in mid October. So we're actually coming up on a fall term right now. It's the next, what we call start is August 20. We're right now in the third week of our summer term. And then you have breaks between the terms, which, so it's not like you're continually going through classes. So in the spring, you don't have any class. We don't run a classes from March to May. In the summer, from mid July to late August, we don't have classes. And from mid October to early January, we don't have classes.

13:21So those are your breaks. Sorry. So the residencies, you might wanna know about these residencies that I've mentioned. There are two four day residencies on campus here in Sterling, Virginia. So you arrive Wednesday evening, and you leave Sunday at lunchtime. Monday begins with a reception that Wednesday evening, and then it ends, on Sunday with lunch. You can either stay at the university, eat your lunch at the university, or you can grab it and go. It gives the students an opportunity to put in practice the skills and the knowledge that they're that they've been learning under this supervision of spiritual directors and therapists. So we have, like, usually about an hour and a half of class in the morning, and then you break up into small groups and you practice your skills throughout the day.

14:26And then you come together for, you know, just a wind down at the end of the day. So as I said before, they're held at specific times within the program in week seven of that third course or week two of the fifth course. So either at the beginning of the third course well, one is at the beginning of the third course and that second is at the end of the fifth course. The length of the program is two years. This is the cost of the program, 850 per course and 1,400 for residency. So all in all, if you add up those two, the totals there, it's 7,900. And then, if you do not finish your practicum hours by the time you finish that six course, you need to sign up either for practicum or practicum with supervision.

15:21So one's $50 and one's a $100. You usually only need one term of that just to finish your practicum hours. We always want you to continue having supervision as you're being taught. So the application process. The application process is on the website. It's very simple. There it's a two step process. You have to fill out an application, takes you about fifteen minutes, and then you'll get a few short questions or essays sent to you. I always tell people to go through the application and just fill it out completely because that's how it just functions best. Right? And then if you fill it out completely, pay the $25 app application fee, you then can, you'll get the short questions sent to you right away.

16:20Sometimes if you leave you go in and leave without finishing the application, we start having glitches. And then there is a link there for your pastor or your faith leader. And so you just copy that link and send that to them so that they can fill out a recommendation for you. So the classes begin. As I said, those there are three terms. So the fall term begins August 20, the spring term begins January 7, and the summer term begins May 20. So these are these are pretty much the same things that I was telling you before, so three easy steps. That gets you into the first tier of the program. And then when you're in the program, when you finish 200, you go through a shorter process just to apply for the next tier.

17:22We do have some tuition partnerships here at the university. So if you are belong to any of these organizations or diocese, there's also more on the website. It's under a tab called tuition partnerships. You would get 10% off of your courses, not off of the residencies, but off of your courses. And this is just my information. Take a screenshot of that if you'd like it. That's my phone number. You can call or text me there. That's my email. There's this is also a Calendly link, which really doesn't it's not really I mean, you could take a screenshot up and then manually put it in. But, also, pretty much any yeah. Any email that I send you always comes with things this link on it, so you can always just go in there and use that.

18:16So I'd love to open it up for questions right now. I just ask that you put the questions into the q and a box, so that I can answer them. I'm gonna stop sharing so that I can see those questions. Great. Any questions? I'm not seeing any yet in the quest q and a box. Maybe I went too fast. Chris Torres, you raised your hand. Can you put it into the or maybe you did. Gustavo Ponce. Is there any background or previous studies required? There are not you don't it's not accredited per like, it doesn't give academic credit, so we do not require you to have credit, an academic degree to get into it. We do screen you through the admissions process, just kind of your theological knowledge. We know the the subject matter and we know the materials, so we're just gonna we just wanna be sure that you've got what it takes to be able to move through that successfully since we wanna kind of set you up for that.

19:42Bernadette. I'm sorry. It's allergy season here in Virginia, so my nose is itchy. How does supervision take place for practicum? Supervision takes place virtually. Your instructors give it to you in your fifth and sixth course, and you're gonna be you're gonna be pretty used to doing things virtually because a lot of your assignments are done that way. So, Chris, what is the expected time commitment? I guess that's what that question is. The suspected time commitment is six to nine hours a week when you're taking classes. And each of those classes, those courses are eight weeks long. You take three a year, so you're taking twenty four weeks of courses. But as I mentioned in that calendar, they're spread out through the whole year.

20:39I hope that answers that question, Chris. Marcia. Yes. You submitted your application for August. You were accepted. Marcia, I think I explained in your note you'll be getting orientation a link for orientation, but I put there that it does it won't happen before August 1. So, August 1 is when we send out the orientation for that next so that's that's the next step. Will you get a link to the presentation? No. But this so what I wanna tell you about all these and to kind of just point you to this, Divine Mercy University has a YouTube channel, and on that YouTube channel, there is a playlist for the spiritual direction certificate. It's called spiritual direction certificate webinars. You can go in there, and some of the past webinars that I have done, you'll find there, but you'll also find thematic webinars, and you'll also find interviews with alumni and students.

21:52And we try to just do, like, varied types. So I really recommend to you to go there. This this webinar will be put there, but probably not for at least a week or so. So just go there and look through all the different, webinars because there's just a lot of interesting stuff there. Hope that answers that question. Gustavo, can you explain for the the support provided when we need to find people required for practicum? Well, it's a little long answer to this because we really kind of one of the methods that we use as we go through the certificate is little by little, have you kinda do baby steps. Right? So you'll see in the course descriptions that we actually actually ask you at the end of your third course when you're finished that residency to start having, like, spiritual friendships and just sitting down with people and just talking about spiritual things.

22:58Right? So some of those people grow into wanting to have spiritual direction with you. Also, usually, people hear that you're doing the course. We don't really have problems with our students finding people that wanna have spiritual direction for them. And what your program adviser does is that he or she, you can just talk to them at any point in time, and they can help you troubleshoot it and give you ideas in case you you need any coaching on that. I hope that answers your question, Gustavo. Let me know, please. Oh, you you couldn't find the link on time. Could you see? Well, yeah, at the end here, I'll run through the whole presentation again. I'll just show you the slides. Although, really, if you go on to our YouTube channel, Divine Mercy YouTube channel, and you go to, the playlist that's for the spiritual direction certificate, there's probably about three or four webinars past webinars there.

24:01This is the first one launching the fall some, for the small fall term or this academic year, so it's got a new look and feel to it and the newest prices. So this is the most updated one. Great. Wow. Did I answer everyone's questions? So we you know, from my experience of giving these webinars, I did update the content, so I'm hoping that it's useful content for you. I tried to take it from questions people had, in the past and, just the experience. I am a spiritual director myself. I've been one for about fifteen, eighteen years. Did a lot of different studies along the way. Got my master's in theology, pastoral studies, and a lot in in education and also a little bit of psychology. So, a little bit more, I've been I I was dedicated to full time ministry for thirty years, so definitely, a bit more experience, than maybe just a spiritual director out there, but that's kind of, my role as a director of the program and also part of the design team of the curriculum.

25:29Anyone else have any more questions? As I said to you, the website, which can be found on the Divine Mercy website, you just go let me just actually pull that up for you. That might be helpful. Let me just show you the website. Sometimes I think it helps you all if I can just walk you through that. So this is the website, the Divine Mercy University website, and the spiritual direction program is right under the academics. And it's right here, spiritual direction certificate. There's gonna be a little pop up asking people to donate to the program. And the measure that we get people to donate money, we give it out to the students. So if you go over here, this is where you're gonna find, like, frequently asked questions, admissions requirements, completion, course descriptions, faculty, everything there.

26:37Right? We've got some blog posts. We haven't put some blogs there probably in the last two years. Just haven't had the time to sit down and write those, but and then there's the application. We also have the program handbook, which is just a great resource if you kinda wanna know the ins and outs of the program. It's got answers a lot of different questions there. So okay. Good. Now someone said that they wanted to see again. Okay. So, Emica, everyone do you have clientele and charge like a fee? Emica, spiritual direction is a ministry. So there are some people that charge a small fee for it. Some people don't. It really depends upon the person and their situation. Sometimes religious and priest might not charge, although it's always good to give a donation to their congregation because you're they are using time and and money to, keep themselves educated and, to give you spiritual direction.

27:49So, there are some laypeople that do charge a little bit. It's not a career, so it's not something that you could really make tons of money off of, but, most people do it, I think, just to kinda give back to their faith community. Chris, is there financial aid available? There isn't, Chris. Since it's not an academic, it doesn't give academic credit. Most of, like, GI bills and things like that don't apply to this program. I'm still working on that, trying to see if we can find some way. The only financial, like, discount that we have is that 10% if you belong to one of our tuition partnerships. And if I ever get money, people ever donate money to me, I always first see if there's, you know, any request from students to finish the program.

28:39And then sometimes if someone's coming in, I can give them a little break. Right now, I don't have any money just sitting there. Would this program help interfaith groups or only Catholics? No. We definitely have I'm imagining this is what your question is. We have people from other faiths also in the program, not just Catholics, Episcopalians, Anglicans, Lutherans. Yeah. Evangelicals. The majority of people are Catholic, but definitely anyone that just wants to learn from a Christian perspective. God bless you all. Thank you.