Not everyone who makes the spiritual journey is a good guide. A guide needs experience and training to sharpen his natural gifts. He knows the paths wayfarers tread in the course of the journey: the high roads, the low roads, the pitfalls, the traps. Good guides have fallen and risen many times. They know how to reanimate those who are discouraged and to temper with experienced counsel the impatience of the overzealous.
The best guides walk with those they are forming, at times quickening the pace, at times slowing it down, at times pausing for rest.
– Robert P. Maloney, CM