JUST over a month ago, with the death of Brother Michael, the Franciscan friar who was for a time Bishop of St Germans in Cornwall, the Church of England lost a priest and spiritual guide who had been a source of wisdom and support to many. As his Times obituary noted, his ministry over six decades touched the lives of many in the Church and beyond. “Notwithstanding his achievements as a friar and bishop, it will be as a friend and mentor that he will be most warmly remembered by many.”

As I am one of those to whom Brother Michael ministered for some twenty-five years, his death underlined for me the importance of spiritual direction and spiritual friendship. Although physical frailty had meant that he had had to hand me on to another wise guide and counsellor, I both miss and treasure his wisdom and loving kindness.

There is a story of the young John Wesley meeting an old clergyman in Lincolnshire and asking how he might find God. “If you would see God and go to Heaven,” he was told, “get yourself friends, for the Bible knows nothing of solitary religion.” In a world shaped by postmodern individualism we need to be reminded that the Christian life is corporate and involves belonging. A person is not to be equated with an individual, but we become persons in relatedness, and ultimately in that true relatedness which is the common life of the Body of Christ.

To grow in that relatedness, all of us need the wise counsel and guidance of those who are also “on the way” and who know deeply the wisdom of those who down the centuries have given themselves to the practice of the presence of God. If we would be guided on our journey, we need those who know the maps.

Our society is one in which there are many counsellors and therapists seeking to enable human wholeness and healing, and their ministry is one for which we should be grateful, always remembering that the task of listening and counselling is, like marriage, not to be undertaken “unadvisedly, lightly and wantonly” but with a deep sense of responsibility. It also demands an understanding of human life and destiny, which in the end means judgment about the good and about who we are as human persons. A compassionate acceptance is one thing; making an absolute of being non-judgmental is quite another.

For the Christian the practice of spiritual direction is always concerned with growing into the likeness of Christ. The physician of souls must know how to meet those who come for advice, guidance and forgiveness with both the compassion and the judgment of Christ. Just as, so St John of the Cross reminds us, at the final judgment Christ will examine us in love, so that same judgment is encountered through wise confessors and spiritual directors as, with stumbling and hesitation, we seek to grow up in all things into Christ.

The love and the friendship of Christ are received through others. The love of God and the love of our neighbour belong insepar-ably together. They are the two great commandments by which our lives are to be shaped. St John reminds us that we cannot love God whom we have not seen if we do not love our neighbour whom we have seen. But neither can we love our neighbour without the resource of the grace and love of God, who meets us in the silence of adoration, the penitence of confession, and feeds us in the Eucharist in broken bread and poured out wine, catching us up into a life of transforming and sacrificial love.

On this day the Church remembers St Antony of Egypt, the founder of Christian monasticism. Living for years the solitary life of a hermit in the desert, Anthony taught that “our life and our death are with our neighbour”. As I give thanks for a wise and compassionate guide, confessor and counsellor, I pray that God will continue to raise up in the Church those who can offer that same companionship on the way. We all need what Thomas Traherne called “spurs, wings and enflamers” so that we may become the man and woman that we are, after the image of Christ Jesus our Lord.

The Right Rev Geoffrey Rowell is Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe