February 12, 2023- Pastor Message
04/19/2024THE YEAR OF MISSION
THE MISSION TO DISCERN (cont.)
“God freely created us so that we might know, love, and serve him in this life and be happy with him forever. God's purpose in creating us is to draw forth from us a response of love and service here on earth, so that we may attain our goal of everlasting happiness with him in heaven. All the things in this world are gifts of God, created for us, to be the means by which we can come to know him better, love him more surely, and serve him more faithfully. As a result, we ought to appreciate and use these gifts of God insofar as they help us toward our goal of loving service and union with God. But insofar as any created things hinder our progress toward our goal, we ought to let them go” (St. Ignatius of Loyola).
The three steps in serving our mission as disciples of Christ, individually and as a parish, are listening, discerning, and acting. We find a helpful model of discerning in the life and teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Ignatius was born in 1491 in northern Spain, the son of a noble family but certainly not yet a saint. Like many young nobles of his time, he craved adventure, riches, and glory, and so he became a soldier. Wounded in battle, he spent many months convalescing in a lonely castle, where all he had to pass the time were a handful of books about the lives of the saints. While still craving the adventurous life of a knight, he also began to crave the holy life of a saint. This inner conflict prompted him to develop his own spiritual path of discernment, which he later recorded and shared with the world as his spiritual exercises.
While exploring Ignatius’ spiritual exercises in full would certainly be worthwhile, it would take us far beyond the scope of this humble weekly column. We can however glean some useful grains from the exercises that we can grind and bake into the bread of serving our mission at St. Boniface, including Ignatius’ foundational assumption about spiritual discernment, three preliminary observations, seven necessary attitudes, and seven practical techniques. I have adapted these from the article “Some Ignatian Principles for Making Prayerful Decisions” by Father Warren Sazama, SJ, at Marquette.edu.
Ignatius’ fundamental assumption about Christian discernment is that it is spiritual and not merely a matter of human judgment, like deciding whether to have hamburgers or pork chops for dinner tonight. When it comes to the important matters in life, like deciding our personal vocation or what path our parish should take, God communicates directly with us through the prompting of his Spirit in our hearts, minds, and souls, which takes shape in our deepest feelings, thoughts, and desires. Spiritual discernment is the art of distinguishing the movement of God’s Spirit within us and our community from that of other thoughts and desires that, while they may be good, are not what God wills for us. So, for example, while both Christian marriage and consecrated religious life are good, a young woman contemplating them as a possible vocation cannot choose both. She must distinguish the movement of God’s Spirit in her heart and where he is leading her from her other thoughts and desires if she would serve her divine mission; she must practice spiritual discernment.
That’s all for this week. Tune in next week when we will look at three preliminary observations on spiritual discernment. Until then, keep practicing the skill of listening to God and others and keep praying that we may learn together in ever more faithful ways the art of discernment here at St. Boniface.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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