About Saint School
What you'll find here
Saint School is a catalog of formation in the interior life — prayer, the sacraments, ascetical practice, discernment of spirits, the saints as guides, and the journey through Teresa of Ávila's Interior Castle from beginning to spiritual marriage.
The courses are drawn from the teaching of Dan and Stephanie Burke on the SpiritualDirection.com podcast Divine Intimacy Radio (648 episodes, 2014–present), plus newer retreat material from Into the Deep, Spiritual Warfare and Discernment of Spirits, and The Perfect Prayer (the last with Fr. Boniface Hicks, OSB). It builds on the Catholic tradition — Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, Ignatius of Loyola, Thérèse of Lisieux, Francis de Sales, the Catechism, and the Doctors of the Church.
How it's organised
Every course belongs to one of four Paradigm rails, drawn from Dan Burke's "Paradigm of Ascent":
- Sacraments rail — Confession, the Mass, Eucharistic adoration. The base of the spiritual life.
- Prayer & Recollection rail — vocal prayer, mental prayer, lectio divina, contemplation, the dark night.
- Ascesis rail — mortification, fasting, the predominant fault, the theological virtues, suffering, redemption.
- "Your Yes" rail — the cross-cutting work of consent: the universal call, discernment, the saints, the seven mansions.
Courses are also placed on a tier from 0 (foundational) to 5 (contemplative), so you can see at a glance whether a course is for beginners or for those further along the road.
How to use it
Pick a tile from the front page that matches where you are. Each tile recommends a pathway — an ordered list of courses for a specific audience (new Catholic, daily Mass-goer, leaving centering prayer, married couple, etc.).
Within each course you'll find five or so sessions, each about 15 minutes of reading at the standard depth. Every concept also has shorter and longer depth levels — pick the one that fits the time and attention you have. Most readers stay at "short" or "standard"; the "advanced" and "scholar" depths are for formation directors and scholars.
Practical things
- Guest access — you can browse every course without an account. Create a free account if you want to track progress.
- Mobile-friendly — designed for phone use. Public transport works.
- No tracking, no ads, no telemetry beyond Moodle's standard activity logs.
- Catholic doctrinal orthodoxy is the standard. Where the Catholic tradition is unanimous, that's what you'll read here. Where it admits legitimate variety, the variety is named.
Where the content comes from
Saint School is built on the open-source NWP (Narrow Way
Project) platform and uses Moodle as its rendering layer with a custom
mod_depthcontent plugin for the six-depth content presentation.
Course content is authored as YAML in
~/dir/courses_v3/catalog/ and imported into Moodle by the
create_v3_courses.php + populate_courses.php
pipeline.
If you spot an error or a doctrinal concern, or have a suggestion, please use the contact options below.
Acknowledgements
The content rests on the labour of many: Dan and Stephanie Burke and the SpiritualDirection.com / Avila Institute community whose teaching is the primary source; the Doctors of the Church whose writings the teaching expounds; the volunteers who transcribed the podcast and retreat material; and the open-source community whose tools (Moodle, Python, Whisper, Ubuntu, PHP, MariaDB, DDEV, Nginx) make this possible.