The Heart of Accompaniment: The Spirituality of Seeing

What is accompaniment?

Accompaniment is the practice of walking with a person in friendship from a place of brokenness, fear, and sin to a place of healing, peace, and holiness. Its greatest characteristic is loving attentiveness: seeing the good desires beneath the sins and nurturing these desires in the context of trust-filled conversations. Accompaniment gives a person the experience of being truly seen as he is and truly loved even in his brokenness.

Spiritual Sight is a Disposition of Heart

If accompaniment is seen only as an activity, it will certainly fail. Those whom the Lord calls to accompany others must live with radical dedication to fostering the freedom of their own hearts. If one’s interior life is dominated by one’s own fears and wounds, one is not able to attend to the wounds of another with true freedom. This chapter will serve as a guide to the habits-of-the-heart that are the foundation of a spirituality of seeing.

As you read, reflect: Are these characteristics true of my life? What is my next step to grow in greater freedom and love?

“Do you want to be healed?”

The foundation of the spirituality of accompaniment is our own desire to be healed and transformed by grace. We all carry wounds from our past — events and memories that continue to negatively impact how we relate to others, ourselves, and God. These may have been habitual sins, singular traumas, or broken relationships. To accompany another well, we do not need to be entirely free of wounds, but we do need the fundamental desire to be healed by God. If we do not desire this healing for ourselves, we are incapable of truly desiring this for another.

“Come to me, all who are burdened…”

If the desire for healing and transformation has taken root within your heart, it will be lived out in a lifestyle that seeks to spend time with Jesus, the one who heals and transforms. The place this happens most deeply is in the presence of the Eucharist — at Mass and in Adoration.

The first habitual practice of the spirituality of accompaniment is regular silent, Eucharistic adoration in which we reveal our brokenness to God and ask him to see us and heal us.

“Those who receive you receive me…”

When you live the spirituality of accompaniment, there is a clear understanding that when you receive another, you receive Jesus. The same silent, receptive disposition of heart proper to adoration is present as you are speaking to the person you accompany.

Initially, you will likely have to be very intentional with seeking out this disposition of heart, and may do so only when in the more formal context of spiritual conversations. Yet as someone grows in the spirit of accompaniment, this becomes a habitual disposition of heart, present when engaging even in small conversations with strangers.

“I have not lost any of those whom you have given me…”

Each person one encounters becomes “[one] of those whom [the Father] has given me.” After conversations, you will continue to hold that person in your heart. Contemplating the grace you saw, their holy desires for goodness & love, and their wounds. You let them rest in your heart even as Jesus holds you as he rests in the Father’s heart (John 1:28).

“Love one another, that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete.”

Accompaniment, as a form of the spiritual life, is not lived only with those who are new to spiritual things. It is lived among those who are spiritually mature as well (1 Corinthians 2:6-16). The spiritually mature accompany one another as they speak of spiritual things in order to rejoice together in the love and goodness of God.