Discernment Process

A discernment process is an intentional way of discovering how God is leading you to be the person you were meant to be. One person said that it is finding out “where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” (F. Buechner)

It’s all about pursuing something that is called a “vocation.”

The church recognizes four distinct vocations through which one can become holy and fully alive:

1. The single life
2. The married life
3. The consecrated life (Brother or Sister)
4. The priestly life

A vocation is that area of life where you don’t mind the drudgery of the work involved, where you are willing to persevere and have the courage and imagination to move forward. It’s something that you can't not do. The commitment you make to it also hangs onto you.

Albert Schweitzer said that a vocation is “a duty undertaken with sober enthusiasm.” In a word, a vocation is a means whereby you dive into life and find it good.

There are some obvious pieces to this discernment process, such as a serious attitude about your interior life and ways to deepen it on a regular basis, a willingness to “listen” to God through the events and people of your life and not to get upset if these things don’t seem to be “leading” you to where you think you should go, and a certain amount of courage to make a move and take the logical next step, just to see where it will lead next. You won’t get anywhere if you’re too timid or too cautious or too afraid of where it all might lead. Being prudent is one thing; being change-resistant is another. The key element in discernment is to have another person who will listen to you as you process your experience and your reflections – someone who can give you honest feedback and observations that will help you see things more clearly.

The point of discernment is simply to do it and not to think too much are the results. Start the journey and let the steps be given to you as you are ready for them.

We act in the courage of our uncertainties. The word decide comes from the Latin decidere, “to cut off.”

You face choices – whether to be a Brother, where to go to this school or that, whether to marry a certain person, whether to pursue this line of work or another – and then you decide. And, in deciding, you have cut off the alternatives and pray you have decided rightly. But you do not know for sure. Or else you are trapped in the tangled web of indecision. Saint Paul wrties “But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. … Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.” (1 Cor. 4-5) Do not judge before the time! I do not even judge myself! These are the words of a life set free from the tangled web of introspection and indecision.

- (Adapted from an article by Fr. Richard Neuhaus)