What Shall I Do? Decisions Through Discernment
Shall I accept that job offer? Is this the person I should marry? Should I go to graduate school? How can I help a child in trouble? Such decisions perplex us. How do we choose?
Ignatian spirituality has long been associated with discernment—the art of discovering how best to respond to God in daily life. For centuries, people have used St. Ignatius Loyola’s rules for discernment to help make wise choices and sound decisions.
The first principle is a desire to choose the good. As St. Ignatius put it: “our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me.” St. Ignatius’s other rules for discernment help us make choices from among attractive alternatives. Of particular importance are the inner movements of our hearts. The Ignatian rules for discernment provide a disciplined and systematic way to reflect on our feelings as we respond to God and to the events in our daily lives. They give us “the gift of the reasoning heart,” in the words of David L. Fleming, SJ, the noted Jesuit spiritual writer.
Ignatian discernment rests on the conviction that God speaks directly to each of us. We can have confidence in our own experience of God as we develop eyes to see and ears to hear.
Pop-Up Catechesis: Listening for God’s Call
When St. Joan of Arc was on trial for heresy, the Inquisitor mocked her for claiming that she heard God’s voice speaking to her. He said, “It’s only your imagination!” Joan responded, “Of course! How else would God speak to me but through my imagination?” This story teaches us that we need to pay attention to how God is speaking to us through our thoughts, feelings, desires, hopes, dreams, imagination, and memories. Our vocation, or our calling from God, comes to us in a subtle language.