God’s Will

Distraction or Call To Discern?

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / 2 Comments

SONY DSCA third obstacle to interior listening is allowing external distractions to disturb our interior serenity so that we cannot truly listen. Part of the listening we need to do is paying attention to how God is inviting us through the needs of others, through our loved ones’ struggles, through the needs of the world. Gazing on others with compassion, praying for them, taking action to alleviate others’ suffering or to offer assistance, are all part of how we are called to respond lovingly to others.

But having done all we can, it’s important that we then try to let go of those situations and entrust them to God. When we don’t, when we give others’ situations, needs, problems, or conflicts undue importance so that they take over our thoughts and attention, they can distract us from God’s call. We risk actually becoming deaf to the other ways that God invites us. Distracted by others’ needs which we can’t do anything about, we stop paying attention to God’s call to us. We might even give in to worrying about things that we can’t do anything about.

When we worry,  we lose our serenity or forget that God is taking care of the world, and then we can become too distracted, agitated, or distressed to live our own deeper calling.

Creating our own distractions

If we or others have a problem that is too painful or anxiety-provoking for us to confront directly, we sometimes create drama or conflict around the problem. This focuses our attention on the drama–a less painful problem–and distracts us from our deeper pain, and often, from the best thing that we can do to grow. When we do this, we prevent ourselves from addressing the real conflict, and sometimes from hearing God’s call to us within the situation. We have created our own distraction!

I have a personal example of this: my tendency to procrastinate when I am going to give a talk or presentation to a large group. I often become anxious about speaking to a group, so sometimes rather than simply being straightforward about preparing and dealing with my anxiety as it comes up, I will put off working on the presentation until the last minute. (I’m “putting off” my anxiety, along with the work.) When the time to give the presentation comes close, I become all stressed out and rushed because I didn’t give myself the time to prepare that I usually would. This stress—as difficult as it is—distracts me from the larger, underlying anxiety for a while. In the end, though, I have to struggle with both anxieties, and my procrastination makes the experience of giving a talk much more difficult for me. But even though I can see this so clearly, I still sometimes procrastinate when I need to prepare a talk.

When our loved ones create drama around a small problem to distract from a bigger problem they don’t want or cannot resolve, we can easily get drawn in by the drama, and waste our energies. We are called to love and support our loved ones, but only in rare cases are we able to “fix” one of their problems. If we try to resolve what only another person can resolve, we stop expressing our love wisely and we trample on the other’s responsibility and dignity. We start worrying about things we can do nothing about. We might become controlling, rather than helpful. We can be so taken up with them that we forget about our other responsibilities. Worry isn’t truly helpful to anyone, and can quickly become self-destructive.

Helpful attitudes to distinguish distractions from a call to discern

When we truly love others, it can be hard to know when to reach out to help and when it is more helpful to let them sort things out for themselves. Some attitudes that can help us to love while remaining true to God’s call are:

  • intentionally making choices out of love that seeks the best for those I love and for myself
  • seeking wisdom to respond in the way that is most helpful at this particular time
  • entrusting others and their struggles to God’s love
  • when we have done all we could, and we pray and entrust the person into God’s hands, we let go of our thoughts and worries about them, and return our attention to our life and our call

Share Your Insights!

There are many other external things that can disturb our serenity and make it hard for us to quietly listen to God in our daily lives. What are the things that make it hard for you to quiet down, that you see as obstacles to the deeper listening that can help you to grow in a spirit of discernment? If you have a topic you’d like me to talk about in the blog, or something you would like to share, please do so in the comments or in an email! I’d really love to hear from you, and I’m sure other people reading this blog would find it helpful, too.

The One Word That Best Describes Discernment

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

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Discernment can be described in many ways, but the best single word to describe it is listening. How can we hone our listening skills, and what are the obstacles to listening to God?

We have all watched movies where a character is alone in the dark, hears a noise and, despite the danger and fear, decides to go investigate. As the character walks into danger, we may even shout at the screen, “Stop! Don’t go in! Don’t you know that something bad is going to happen?” Either the movie has a poorly written cliché, or something else in the story prevents that character from listening to their intuition.

We may be wise enough not to investigate a dark alley at night by ourselves, but we all have moments when we don’t listen to the experienced voice of wisdom within us. Whether it’s lack of time or the noisiness of our life, consistently listening for God within is often the hardest part of discerning for us. Listening to how God is speaking within us includes:

  • listening for God in our prayer and desires
  • recognizing God’s presence in the circumstances and events of our lives.

Listening to God means living reflectively.

I try to check the pulse of my life daily to ensure that I’m making enough time for silence and prayer. Doing this daily is important because I find it so easy to be distracted by the “noise” of daily life, allowing it to overwhelm the much-needed interior silence that I need to live in mindful awareness of God’s daily invitations.

In addition to simple distractions, three obstacles that I regularly face in listening attentively to God within (in my prayer, desires, and reflection on my daily life) are:

  1. Busyness and/or overwork
  2. Restlessness or discomfort with silence or deeper reflection
  3. Giving others’ situations, needs, problems, or conflicts undue attention in my thoughts, so that I’m focusing on external situations that are often beyond my control, rather than my own

For me, these choices, behaviors, or attitudes are often rooted in ambition or overdeveloped ego.

What are the biggest obstacles that prevent you from listening attentively to God?

Mary: the Freest Woman Who Ever Lived

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

06P pixabay 2As we continue our discernment journey, striving for the freedom to see, understand, and live God’s Story for us, we find both helps and obstacles along the way. Many of the helps which can guide us we have already looked at: praying—especially with the Word of God, self-knowledge, the examen, our friends, a spiritual director, other mentors, the community, the Church, the circumstances of our daily life. The obstacles may be unexpected, especially because if we seek God’s will, God should clear the path for us, right? Unfortunately, doing God’s will has nothing to do with how easy or hard something is, nor how many obstacles we face.

Because of original sin, our own tendency towards sin, and our personal history of sin, none of us live the full potential of God’s Story for us. Original sin has “messed up” not just us individually but God’s creation. Yet, original sin has not changed God’s desires or ultimate plan for us, not has it taken away our freedom.

The consequences of sin in our lives make it harder for us not only to see God’s viewpoint, but also to live our stories in all their fullness and beauty. But they don’t change our call, nor our potential. Getting to know the obstacles in our discernment—obstacles to listening, to freedom, to responding generously to God’s call—is helpful for facing them, especially when they are unexpected.

virgin-335500_1280One guide to freedom is Mary, the Mother of Jesus. The saints remind us frequently that devotion to Mary is the surest and quickest way to grow in our following of Christ, in seeking and doing God’s will. Perhaps this is because Mary, whom we as Catholics believe was preserved free from all sin, is the freest human being who ever lived! She was free enough to receive the angel Gabriel’s impossible announcement and then to give an impossible yes—a yes which she must have known would lead her not just to tremendous joy, but also to great suffering as the Mother of the Suffering Servant.

Mary was not stifled by selfishness, pride, or any other of sin’s enslavements. She who listened to and lived the Word of God most freely and attentively in her life is eager to help us to draw closer in freedom to her Son.

To Pray With

Pray a decade of the Rosary, asking Mary for the grace to be free enough to listen to and respond to Jesus’ invitations in all the events of your daily life. (If you aren’t familiar with praying the Rosary, you can find an easy “how to” here: http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/prayers-and-devotions/rosaries/how-to-pray-the-rosary.cfm) I highly encourage you to consider praying the Rosary—which is a wonderful way of praying with Scripture and the mysteries of the lives of Jesus and Mary— and making it a frequent part of your prayer routine.

The Mission Entrusted To You by God

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / 1 Comment

This beautiful reflection by Blessed John Henry Newman can inspire us and offer direction to us both as we discern our mission, or as we struggle to respond to the challenges of taking the next step forward in our mission:

06N PixabayGod has created me to do Him some definite service;
He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission—I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. Somehow I am necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my place as an Archangel in his—if, indeed, I fail, He can raise another, as He could make the stones children of Abraham. Yet I have a part in this great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connexion between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.

Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life, He may shorten it; He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me—still He knows what He is about.

O Adonai, O Ruler of Israel, Thou that guidest Joseph like a flock, O Emmanuel, O Sapientia, I give myself to Thee. I trust Thee wholly. Thou art wiser than I—more loving to me than I myself. Deign to fulfil Thy high purposes in me whatever they be—work in and through me. I am born to serve Thee, to be Thine, to be Thy instrument. Let me be Thy blind instrument. I ask not to see—I ask not to know—I ask simply to be used.

– From Blessed John Henry Newman. The complete meditation can be found online here: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/meditations/meditations9.html

Discerning Our Call To Serve

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

06L my crazy ideaA hugely important part of any good discernment is to listen to God’s invitations as expressed in the needs of the world—the needs of those around us: Where is God sending us to serve?

We live in a busy world, with so many needs. Any person of good will alive today can easily become overwhelmed by the number of requests for help, whether from family, friends, neighbors, parish, or work. Sometimes it may seem to be a call from God; at other times, we may become casually involved in helping out our family, our community, or a ministry simply as a favor, and the favor turns into a bigger commitment that we didn’t pray about or plan for. Especially when the invitation is casual, or we never envisioned ourselves serving in this particular way, we may not recognize God’s call.

When we feel pulled in many directions, or find ourselves juggling too much, this is the perfect time to enter into a spirit of discernment, to sort through the different demands on our time and discern which requests or needs are invitations from God. Sometimes, we can easily sort through them. At other times, it may take time to gradually clarify how God is inviting us. But as we go forward in our lives, we will develop more of a sense of our personal mission, of how God is calling us to be and to love in the world.

For example when I visit a hospital, I am drawn to help the people I encounter there—not just the person I am visiting, but also the people I meet casually. While I’m at the hospital, I seek to respond as best I can to the requests that I receive. I believe that God wants to work through me to touch the lives of the people that I encounter on that particular visit. (And often I am deeply touched by the people who are so courageously undergoing such suffering.)

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However in my vocation as a Daughter of Saint Paul, I am also aware that I am not called to be a nurse. Instead, my vocation as a Pauline communicator is to focus on the spiritual poverty and suffering of the people whom I encounter, whether they are wealthy or poor. This can be a less obvious call, because physical poverty and suffering are often more noticeable.

What criteria can we use to sort through the many demands that we experience? For me, the wonderfully profound Presbyterian minister and writer Frederick Buechner sums it up best when he wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” (Frederick Buechner, from his book Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC). Looking for that resonance between the outward call we receive/perceive, and the inner movements of our heart may take time, prayer, and discernment, but the God who lovingly calls us will clarify his will for us in his time.   

Mary, Model Discerner

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

As mentioned earlier, when we discern we pay special attention to where we are at the present moment. We don’t begin our discernment from where we’d like to be, or from unrealistic expectations, but from where we are right now.

Because who we are and where we are has been shaped by the past, we also prayed with our past—with significant moments in our lives that have shaped us as persons, and with significant moments of grace in our lives. We may need to continue to pray about significant moments in our lives, but as we go forward in our discernment, it is time to bring all of who we are, here and now—the present—to prayer. In the past two months, we been reflecting on cultivating a listening attitude in our daily life, listening intently intently to God speaking to us through:

  • our prayer
  • our deep desires
  • our relationships
  • our conversations with others
  • our current situation
  • the Church
  • the needs of the world.

But we face any number of obstacles in this deeper listening. In the next few posts, we’ll look at some of those obstacles that can “stump” us or detour us on our discernment journey, and how we can respond to or overcome these obstacles.

The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1898.

The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1898.

Our first response in facing any obstacle on our discernment journey (or our spiritual journey) is to entrust our spiritual lives and any special intentions to Mary, the Mother of Jesus. This is especially true for our discernment. Mary is the disciple who most faithfully listened to and responded to God’s invitations in her life, and she wants to accompany us as we seek to do the same.  The Founder of the Daughters of Saint Paul, Blessed James Alberione, used to say, “Mary is the way to go to Jesus, the easiest way.” Mary wants to draw us closer to her Son, so we can ask her in a very particular way to accompany us throughout the rest of our discernment, and ultimately, the rest of our lives as we seek to live God’s call in fidelity as she did.

Suggestion for Prayer

The Angelus is a beautiful and rich prayer that is so helpful for discerners, as it helps us to recall the moment when Mary received and responded with her generous “yes” to God’s call. Traditionally, the Angelus is prayed three times a day—morning, noon, and evening. Make time today to pray the Angelus at least once today. (If you aren’t familiar with this beautiful prayer, you can pray it with this lovely music version:

You can also find the Angelus in almost any Catholic prayer book. Once you have been praying the Angelus for a while, you may enjoy meditating on a beautiful work of art depicting the Annunciation while you are praying: http://calltoprayer.blogspot.com/

The World Needs You!

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

06I RGBstock choice 2“The world you are inheriting is a world which desperately needs…to be touched and healed by the beauty and richness of God’s love. It needs witnesses to that love. The world needs salt. It needs you – to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world” (St. John Paul II, Homily for 17th World Youth Day at Downsview Park, Toronto, on July 28, 2002).

The world is deeply hungry: for love, for justice, for peace, for Christ. Many of posts in this blog have been about searching interiory to hear God’s call. But a critical part of discernment is to reflect on how God calls us through the needs of others, through the needs of the world.

The world is a big place, and each of us is just one person. How can we respond to the needs of the entire world?

By responding to the needs of those around us and the people that we interact with, we are responding to the needs of the world. If each of us truly did our part to bring love, healing, and justice to our “little worlds,” the entire world would be transformed. In addition, we never know how our actions—however small—can touch or shape another person. As members of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, everything we are and do affects the rest of the Body. So every time we choose to act out of Christ’s love, our love has the potential to change the world for the better.

God calls us not just through our being, but also through the needs of those around us. All of us want to make a difference in the world. So how can we come to know the needs of the world? And how do we discern which need(s) of the world we are called to serve?

We can come to know the needs of the world in many ways. Here a few:

  • The world around us carves us and sculpts us. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are people of our time, and we are each uniquely aware of certain needs. Our personal experiences, the communities in which we live and work, the people we know, the personal challenges we face, and the challenges faced by those we know and love, are already deeply embedded in us. What about our experiences move our hearts? Who are the people in our lives whom God might be inviting us to reach out to or respond to?
  • Find a way to stay in tune with current events, if we don’t already do so. We don’t necessarily need to watch TV news broadcasts or read the daily newspaper, but we do need to find a way to engage with the larger world. Unless we are called to living like a hermit, as Christians we are called to be informed and engaged with the world. Going through a daily news app, reading the latest novels that touch on social issues, watching documentary films—all of these are ways to stay in touch with what’s happening in the world. We are particularly blessed today with a wide diversity of media that can help us to know about what’s happening—both in our own backyard and all around the globe. Each of us can choose a couple ways to be in touch with the larger community of the world, paying attention to those stories or situations that touch us deeply. Whether it’s orphaned children, the plight of a village that doesn’t have access to drinkable water, the suicide rate of teenagers in the USA, or the efforts of a particular community or group to bring about reconciliation between hostile groups—we will find out about situations of others that we feel deeply about. Bring these situations to prayer. When we feel strongly about them, we can take time to reflect on them and how God might be calling us to take action.
  • Listen to the invitations of our Pope and bishops. Very often, the Pope and the bishops have their fingers on the “pulse” of the most urgent needs or the most neglected people of our society. Prophetically, they often point out disturbing trends that if not addressed, could spiral downwards into crisis. Their words are based on research, reflection, and prayer—and can be a fruitful source for our prayer and discernment. Often, the Pope can orient us in how to respond to a particular need. (If we don’t have the time or energy to keep up with the documents of the Pope or bishops, we can read the “news briefs” from the Catholic News Agency, other Catholic news services, or the Vatican’s news service. One easy way to keep up with the Pope is to read the text of his general audience on Wednesdays.)

As we listen to the needs of the world, we may feel drawn in many directions. But we don’t need to feel overwhelmed. The world—and all its people—are in God’s hands. Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, and Jesus invites us to participate in his saving mission. The needs of others that we are called to serve will deeply resonate with us. The gift of discernment is that we discover how the Lord is inviting us, through the situations in which we live and in the situations that we come to know about, to share in Christ’s mission of further bringing God’s love to the world.

Three ways the Church helps us discern

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

06H Sr Margaret JosephBelonging to the Church and being active in the Church is one of the best ways to live and grow in our faith, and can be invaluable in helping us discern God’s call. Our faith community can be as small as a prayer group, as large as a parish, or a midsize group that centers around a form of ministry or nurturing our faith and spirituality in every day life. Virtual faith communities can also support us spiritually and help us to grow, although in more limited ways. We may belong to more than one faith community.

Faith communities that really nurture us can be difficult to find, and they take many shapes. If you do not have a faith community—for example, you go to Sunday Mass but are not more involved in living and sharing your faith in your parish or in other ways—I encourage you to actively seek one. Your own parish is a good place to start. (If you don’t feel that your parish is nurturing your faith deeply enough, there are many other ways to connect with the Church.)

Why is belonging to a faith community so important to our discernment?

1. Because we need to be actively involved in building the Church in order to fully live our faith. Jesus doesn’t call us as isolated individuals, but calls us into community, to serve one another and to live in communion with each other. How can we do that if we aren’t actively involved? An essential part of our baptismal call is to evangelize, to witness, and share our faith with others. And the first place that we can do that is within the Church.

We cannot nurture and grow in our faith alone; we need others to help us, to inspire us, to motivate us, to call us to greater self-giving. Finding a dynamic faith community where we are nurtured spiritually can be challenging, but it’s worth the search. If we cannot find a vibrant parish nearby, we can start looking for other kinds of Catholic faith communities. Retreats, lay movements, or connecting with religious communities of priests, brothers, or sisters, are three ways we can find people who are committed to growing in holiness in ways that we can identify with and share. In a dynamic faith community where we truly share the height and depths of our Faith, we can more easily hear and respond to God’s invitations to us—whether they are to a particular ministry or initiative, or a deeper relationship with Christ. Especially if we are discerning our vocation or ministry, Jesus will call us and affirm our call in and through the Church.

2. We often receive Christ’s call in and through his Church: through receiving the Word of God, through our sacramental life, through the Eucharist, in the homilies, in the calls of our pastors, in the service that we give, in the holy examples of the saints and perhaps in the inspiring lives of someone we know. For those discerning their vocations, the Church has the best understanding of how to receive, respond to, and live the call to marriage, single, priestly and religious life.

3. Usually it is in the Church that we can best learn how to serve with the mind and heart of Christ. Despite the reality that the Church is Christ’s Body, we will find many people in the Church whose humanity and sinfulness irritate, disturb, and perhaps even appall us. But we know that Christ died to redeem us and sanctify us, and that the Church’s holiness comes from Christ. If we look attentively, we will also find people in the Church who are truly holy: who are receptive to the Word of God in the Scripture and in the Eucharist, and who humbly serve—often without being acknowledged. We are called to build up the Church—sometimes the irritating or wounded part of the Church that would normally turn us away—with our faith and service. In turn, certain members of our faith community will invite and/or challenge us to serve. And they will also affirm us in our service.

As Catholic Christians, we are called to listen to the invitations the Church makes–because Christ speaks through his Church. Our last few popes have wisely and unapologetically called the Church to take specific actions. Coming from pastors who most clearly represent Christ on earth, these are calls from God. Today, Pope Francis sometimes startles us with the vividness of his invitations of how we are to called to love the world as Christ did. His wise and pastoral invitations to holiness and service are not just for the bishops and clergy, but for all of us Catholic Christians to bring to prayer and discernment.

Discerning in My Weakness: a personal story

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERARecently, I made a discernment that specifically takes into account my personal gifts and weaknesses. Honestly, I hesitated to write something so specific and personal on this blog, but then I thought it might be helpful for others if I shared the process that I went through. Like the stories I try to write, there’s an unexpected twist at the end!

Gift from God
As a published author, I am often asked to give talks and conferences, or lead retreats. But I’ve always been terrified of public speaking. Over the years, I’ve worked hard to overcome my fears and to become a speaker who really engages with people; I try to make the talks appealing and enjoyable. A number of people have affirmed that they have been touched by the talks and conferences.

Limitations Surrounding the Gift
Despite my best efforts, speaking publicly is still quite difficult and draining for me. While I’m able to present well, I am often quite anxious several days ahead of time. Afterwards, I’m drained and have difficulty for several more days settling into writing and my other demanding responsibilities. I was hoping that over time, the anxiety and energy drains would lessen, but this year’s book tour has shown me that this is not true. Instead, the traveling and stress from the book tour resulted in my being unable to fulfill some of my other apostolic responsibilities well.

Motivation to Discern
This is the reason I started to discern whether I should continue to speak publicly. With God’s grace, I can manages the challenges and sacrifices that speaking publicly requires. But these challenges make me less available to enter deeply into my prayer life and to carry out my other responsibilities.

After the book tour ended in June, I’ve continued to receive requests for public speaking, and my next book will release in eighteen months. How is God calling me with regard to public speaking as an evangelizer for the Gospel? After praying about it and not receiving any clarity, I did a simple “pros and cons” analysis. These were the most important points that arose  when I prayed with the question: Is God calling me to continue public speaking?

 Pros:

  • I am asked repeatedly to speak publicly
  • God seems to bless my talks by touching people’s hearts and lives
  • Public speaking is part of being an author today because it’s an important way to spread the message of the books that I’ve written

Cons:

  • Because I become unduly stressed, anxious, and drained almost every time I accept an engagement, my prayer, writing, and other apostolic duties (given to me in obedience) are often affected negatively, despite my best efforts

When I discern taking on apostolic projects, an important criteria is seeking the greatest good for the greatest number of people. But I puzzled over what that meant in this case. Is it reaching more people through public speaking? How about the people that I reach through my writing, whom I can’t count? What about the quality of my prayer, of how I carry out my other responsibilities, and of my relationships with the sisters with whom I live? And, if I become burned out, how will I be able to effectively communicate Christ’s love?

The Unexpected Twist
After several months of discerning, I suddenly realized that maybe I’d been asking God the wrong question all along. Perhaps I was trying too hard to plan out the future, when instead what I really needed to do was discern the opportunities that were right in front of me. I changed the question from being general to being specific: Am I being called to speak in this particular time and place? Immediately I started receiving clear answers.

And my larger question was answered, too, though not in the way I expected. For right now, it is clear that God is inviting me to discern each opportunity for public speaking individually, on a case-by-case basis, and to accept those specific engagements which I truly feel called to and which my other responsibilities allow.

Finally, I also received an interesting insight in my prayer–that God seems to be guiding me to do his will specifically through this weakness of mine. If I didn’t find public speaking so challenging and need to set limits around it, maybe I would accept so many invitations to speak that I wouldn’t have any time to write another book. Perhaps this balance between public speaking and writing is exactly how God is calling me.

At some point in the future when my situation changes—for example, if I were freed up from other duties—I may find God inviting me to do more public speaking. Or I might be given a duty which precludes public speaking altogether. But for now, in the situation I’m in with my current responsibilities, gifts, and limitations, God’s will is clear. I cannot always say “yes” to people’s requests, but I can be open to the guidance and invitations of the Holy Spirit in each opportunity that arises, in my gifts and limitations, and in my current circumstances.

Our Gifts and Weaknesses Help Us Discern Our Way of Being in the World

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

06D RGBstock 2 choiceDiscernment can be approached in many ways. Personally, I’ve found it easier when I begin with my own heart, my identity, and experience (as at the center of a circle) and then gradually expand outwards to my situation, my family, community and workplace, the calls of the Church, and the needs of the world.

If we imagine discernment as a series of concentric circles, the innermost circle would be my interior life, including: my God-given identity, my feelings, thoughts, deep desires, my gifts and limitations. We discover these in prayer and also by praying with our history, the needs of the world, and our current situation.

In particular, reflecting on and praying with our gifts and limitations—the ways that God has given us to be and to act in the world—is extremely helpful in discerning a course of action or our vocation. One of the most popular sayings of St. Thomas Aquinas is: “Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.” This is helpful in understanding that we are called be holy in a way that respects our humanity, although grace also enables us to transcend the merely human and to selflessly sacrifice for the sake of love.

A superficial examination of the lives of several saints quickly reveals how unique each saint’s path to holiness was. (I give a quick example between St. Pio and St. Frances Cabrini in this earlier post.) Sanctity certainly has many common elements: faith, hope, and love; the works of mercy; the Beatitudes. But how each individual is specifically called to live holiness is unique, partly according to that person’s gifts and limitations.

Taking into account our gifts and limitations, therefore, is an important part of understanding God’s call for us. There are certain roles that require certain aptitudes or skills. If we are discerning our call to a role that has such requirements, we need to reflect on whether we have the aptitudes or the ability to acquire the needed skills. We don’t discount the reality that grace can help us to do something that would ordinarily be beyond us, but we also don’t seek to work against the foundational inclinations of our personality, unless we have a compelling reason to do so.

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As a college student, Sarah is currently discerning her future career. At heart, Sarah is an artist and idealist who feels called to serve others. For some reason—perhaps because of her family background—she believes that being a doctor is the best way to serve others. Yet, she finds herself dismayed when she starts to fill out an application for medical school because she feels no personal inclination towards a medical profession: she isn’t good at science, and she becomes faint not just at the sight of blood, but at the thought of blood. If Sarah’s interest in becoming a doctor is based solely on her theory that being a doctor is the best way to help others, then she is basing her discernment on a faulty assumption, and her resistance to filling out that application is a real indication of that. The clue here is not that being a medical doctor is hard, or a lot of work, but that it actually goes against Sarah’s personal inclinations and gifts. Sarah may indeed be called to serve others, but in another way.

* * *

When we discern, we want to take our personalities, gifts, limitations, and inclinations into account. Part of the work of vocation directors for priesthood and religious communities is to see if the candidate is a “good fit.” For example, as Daughters of Saint Paul we share life closely—not just daily life, but also in the ways we carry out our daily mission together. It can be quite demanding to live and work so closely together, even for those of us who are called to it. (One of the greatest “daily miracles” in religious life is the reality that five women, who all take turns cooking the meals, can share the same small kitchen and still be friends at the end of the day!)

Since a young woman needs to have a certain amount of flexibility and sociability to be happy as a Daughter of Saint Paul, this becomes part of her discernment with our community. If she doesn’t have those particular qualities, it doesn’t mean she isn’t a wonderful person called by God to a special mission, but it’s an indication that she might be called somewhere else—perhaps to another congregation of sisters who don’t live community life together so closely, or perhaps to single life, or married life.

On the other hand, someone who hastily dismisses an invitation to be involved in something good–such as their parish’s outreach program–only because it’s “too hard,” is not really discerning. The amount of sacrifice involved is not the question; as followers of Christ, we will always have something to offer because we seek to love selflessly as Christ does. Instead, the question is how God is calling us to use our particular gifts and our limitations to serve others’ needs in the way that only we can.