How can I receive the gift of discernment?

Q: Dear Father Edward, how can I receive the gift of discernment? I have prayed and continue to do so, but I am not sure what comes from the Lord versus what is coming from me. Is there anything else that I should be doing?

A: Like Solomon who requested the gift of wisdom, you are asking for a good thing. Discernment is the ability to recognize what the Lord wants us to do. It can be a difficult process. One reason is because God often speaks in “a tiny whispering sound” (1 Kings 19:11-12). We might prefer that he speak loud and clear, but God in his wisdom often uses a soft voice. He makes us strain to hear him — and that helps keep us humble and attentive.

Another complication with discernment is that it involves spirits that act upon us. Spirits can come from various sources. They can come from us (our passions, our interests, our prejudices). They can come from the world, as when fame or fortune holds an unhealthy allure. Some spirits come from God or through his angels; these are the spirits we want to follow. There are also spirits that come from the devil. These are the dangerous ones that lead us into making bad choices. The devil often likes to deceive us by disguising evil inspirations as good ones. He might, for instance, tempt us to cheat on taxes (an evil) because it will help us pay off our credit card debts (a good). Or he might inspire us to think we are above temptation, so that we (foolishly) put ourselves in the near occasion of serious sin. Or he might play on our pride, convincing us that we know better than the Church about a moral issue.

How does someone sort through all of this? There are several ideas that can help. The first is: God always inspires us to do good. He never inspires us to do something evil. He won’t inspire a married couple to use contraception as a means of family planning, for instance. Nor will he inspire someone to deliberately skip Mass on Sunday. God will inspire us to be more charitable, more prayerful, more sacrificial for the good of others. He might even allow us to feel sadness for past sins that are already forgiven, with the idea that such an emotion might prompt us to a deeper sense of gratitude for his mercy. The devil, in contrast, might stir sadness in us in order to push us into despair and scrupulosity.

Another idea that can help us is that discernment requires action. That is, we need to do something, to take steps forward. Here, I’ll assume that you are asking for discernment regarding a specific course of action, that you want to know what you should do. You are already doing the best first step: You are praying. That’s an excellent start. Prayer well done puts us in tune with the Holy Spirit. It helps us to listen to his voice, which can be subtle.

Next, do some research. Ask yourself if a course of action you are considering is objectively good or at least morally neutral. If a course of action would violate Church teaching, then it is obviously not a genuine inspiration from God (as in the above-mentioned case of a couple using contraception). If the course of action involves a complicated moral issue (for instance, withdrawing a feeding tube from a terminally ill family member), you should seek the advice of someone trained in Catholic moral theology or bioethics. This could be a solid priest, a good confessor or spiritual director, or a theologian or bioethicist who is faithful to Church teaching.

If your situation involves a prudential decision (for example, whether to accept a new job and move your family across the country), then you could try weighing the pros and cons of each option. Take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On one side write “Pros.” Then list the arguments in favor of a course of action. On other of the sheet write “Cons.” Then list the arguments against that course of action. Give a numerical weight to each pro and con, from 1 to 10. “Separation from extended family” might rate a 10. “Having to leave a nice climate” might rate only a 3. At the end, add up the pro and con sides. If the pro side wins, go on to the next logical step. “OK, Lord, I think that maybe I should take this path. If you don’t want me to do it, please let me know your will somehow.” Then start making preliminary steps in that direction. Good decisions bring us peace and serenity. If we decide one way, and then find ourselves agitated or uneasy, then maybe we should stop, regroup, pray more intensely, and consider another option. If a decision will affect other people, we should dialogue with them if possible and get their input. Anything that builds unity among people will help to clear the path for the Holy Spirit to work his wonders.

Yours in Christ, Fr Edward McIlmail LC

Self-knowledge and the spiritual life – Part II

In Part I of this series we discussed the problem of spiritual delusion and darkness as a consequence of the lack of a God-ward self-knowledge. The purpose of this awareness is simply this: To reveal the sin(s) that hinder our relationship with God and that keep us from the fullness of God’s person, love, and provision for us in this life and the life to come. As well, we desire to respond to this great love by a life of devoted service to him and for him for all eternity. To do this, we need to identify the barriers to growth and pursue those things that propel us deeper into the heart of God.

In our first post, we established – through our brake light analogy – that that there are things we cannot know unless someone else reveals them to us. So then, how is it possible that we can discover these challenges within our soul on our own? Doesn’t “self” knowledge imply we have that knowledge within our grasp? The answer is no… and yes. A God-illuminated self-knowledge is often beyond our reach, but we can work to acquire it with the help of the Holy Spirit and others. In fact, only with this help can we ever hope to really grow to the degree that God desires for us.

So, what are the key elements necessary for one to begin the lifelong quest to understand ourselves in the context of God and develop the ability to route out those soul-tainting defects that hold us from fully loving and being loved by him?

Silence: The noise and relentless busy-ness of modern life is a blight on our souls and a favored tool of the enemy to drown out the still small voice of God. Often we welcome this evil ambiance in order to to hide from the thoughts and feelings that cause us pain and anxiety. As with substance abuse, hiding from our thoughts and avoiding the discomfort of quiet doesn’t solve anything. Similarly, ignoring the signs of a serious illness like cancer allows the disease to progress unchecked in our bodies. So too, our hidden (or not-so-hidden) faults promise the same result in our souls. Silence is one of the most basic elements necessary for us to come face-to-face with these issues, with God, to hear his voice, and see our way clear to healing and growth. In the classic Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis reveals a demonic diatribe (a senior demon on a rant to an apprentice demon) about the value of noise to the enemy of our souls. An important side note here is that when the demon is talking about music he is speaking about sacred music:

Music and silence—how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell—though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express—no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise—Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile—noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end! We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of heaven will be shouted down in the end!

For most in modern society the enemy’s plan has worked. Between tweets, texts, telephone calls, TV, Internet, radios, computers and iPods, we wake up to noise, we are inundated with noise as we move through the day, we get in our cars and turn on the noise, we work with the noise in the background, we leave work with noise in our cars again, we return home to noise. Where in all this noise will we find God? How can we hear the voice of God when our hearts, minds, and hearing are constantly bombarded by the endless “noise” of modern life?

The truth is, we can’t. There is no way around this problem. We may limit the noise to those things compatible to our faith like contemporary Christian music or great programming like EWTN; however, regardless of the degree of piety or putrification we allow to occupy our souls, there is no way we can claim to hear God if we don’t first create space to listen to him in silence.

In Part III, we will explore exactly what we mean by silence and begin to identify ways we can incorporate it into our lives.

Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him

Dan

Self-knowledge and the spiritual life – Part I

How are the brake lights on your car? Are they working properly? I have an experiment for you. Go out to your car all by yourself and try to verify that they are working. Back already? How did it go? Did you cheat and do the exercise in your head? That’s ok, let’s just go with it. The bottom line is this; in the normal course of life, you would never know that one of your brake lights was broken unless someone else revealed it to you.

The same is often true in the spiritual life. Because of the effect of concupiscence (our inclination to sin) we are prone to self-deception and to fall prey to the lies of the world and the enemy of our souls. These deceptions are often subtle and have worked their way into our persons in such a way as to blind us to them. Our natural adaptation to ways of living, thinking, and acting become second nature and thus they disappear from our sight because they are familiar to us. These hidden faults might come from a series of choices we have made in life or they can come from patterns of behavior common to our families of origin. They can also come from the habitual clinging to imperfections or venial sins that provide some temporal benefit to us. Regardless of their source they are moral defects or patterns of sin and spiritually destructive behaviors that we are often unable to see without the help of others.  They are the broken brake lights that significantly increase the probability of a serious spiritual crash.

How can we be sure we are driving through life with all our lights functioning properly? The answer lies in a life-long commitment to spiritual practices that foster self-awareness. St. Teresa of Avila and St. Catherine of Siena, along with many other spiritual doctors of the Church, strongly emphasize the necessity of a God-centered self-awareness in order to have a vibrant and healthy relationship with God and others. St. Teresa says this about self-knowledge and spiritual development (in the second chapter of the First Dwelling Places of Interior Castles):

Knowing ourselves is something so important that I wouldn’t want any relaxation ever in this regard, however high you may have climbed to the heavens… So I repeat that it is good, indeed very good, to try to enter first into the room where self-knowledge is dealt with rather than to fly off to other rooms… Rather, let’s strive to make more progress in our self-knowledge. In my opinion we shall never completely know ourselves if we don’t strive to know God. By gazing at His grandeur, we get in touch with our own lowliness; by looking at His purity, we shall see our own filth; by pondering His humility, we shall see how far we are from being humble.

Regardless of the level of delusion we suffer, the challenge is that if these patterns of deception find a home deep within our makeup, it is very difficult to diagnose and then effectively deal with them. Failure to deal with them can result in serious spiritual calamity. The good news is that the beginning of freedom comes with the beginning of self knowledge. The beginning of self knowledge comes through the exploration of God’s love and provision for us. In our next post, we will explore a few ways we can uncover these challenges hiding in the dark corners of our souls that hinder the great love and peace that God has prepared for us in Christ.

Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him

Dan