Discerment

Through our bap­tism, we are called to love and serve God with our lives. We must dis­cern how God desires us to live out that love and ser­vice. This process takes time and action. One must sift out and sep­a­rate what is com­ing from God and what is not. Dis­cern­ment is dif­fer­ent from deci­sion mak­ing. While deci­sions are more autonomous and take less time, dis­cern­ment on the other hand involves a mutual lis­ten­ing to God’s move­ments in my life as well as lis­ten­ing to my own desires. Dis­cern­ment is more than about myself: seek­ing spir­i­tual direc­tion and ask­ing advice is a good idea in order to see if I am on the right track. Here are some guide­lines regard­ing Discernment.

To dis­cern is to…



spend time listening;



admit that we are pow­er­less over our own abil­ity to be cer­tain, to be in con­trol, to have all the answers;



set out on a jour­ney with God, con­fi­dent that we will be cared for, that we will have all we need and that we have noth­ing to fear;



really live life by the choices we make and now allow our­selves to be vic­tims of circumstance;



take respon­si­bil­ity for the direc­tion of my life, and not depend on any­one else for my happiness;



actively coop­er­ate with God in co-creating a future full of hope, mean­ing and promise;



be alert, fright­ened, sur­prised, joy­ful and rooted (some­times all at once).


“Could God be call­ing me?” Seven Voca­tion “Indi­ca­tors”

If you have ever asked your­self the ques­tion, “Is God call­ing me?”, then you should give it some seri­ous thought. A voca­tion may be sparked by such a ques­tion and begin a period of reflec­tion and dis­cern­ment that may lead to a life of min­istry in the church.

Young peo­ple often ask, “But how do I know?”, and there is no easy answer! A life of min­istry in the Church is not meant for every­one; how­ever some...