Discerning God's will, thoughts from St. Ignatius Loyola

Hey all,

great work on the last post! there is some really helpful dialog going on here. I think that ultimately this process of figuring out who we are called to be as a church is really a process of discernment. This is a very important reality we have to understand, this is just about a fun conversation, it is seeking out and discerning God's will for our lives together. Below is an article about St. Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, which is a classic Christian text. There is a bit of a Catholic slant to the article, but Ignatius was a Catholic, so what are you going to do? Let's all read this article and post what we think.

Kevin

Discernment: Recognising God’s Voice
by Brian Incigneri

This article is based on The Rules for Discernment of Spirits by St Ignatius Loyola. Writing in sixteenth century Spain, St Ignatius was a master on spiritual discernment. His teachings come from his own experiences of temptation and of experiencing the movements of God in his soul. Over a long period of time, he began to recognise when it was God that was moving him, and when it was not, and what were the characteristics of both. He describes his rules as:
Rules for perceiving to some degree the different movements that are produced in the soul.

Learning to Listen to God

When someone comes to experience the reality of the spiritual world and discovers that God is a personal being who is vitally interested in every aspect of their life, they soon discover that they need to learn to recognise promptings which come from God. They know that God is completely good and completely self-giving, and they know that everything that comes from him is beneficial.

Such a person yearns to hear God’s voice, to receive his guidance, and to do his will.

They discover, however, that discerning promptings from God is not straightforward — there are many ‘voices’ competing for our attention. These spiritual ‘voices’ are quite subtle. Perhaps we had not even been aware of them before — how do we know which voice comes from God?

The first proposition we begin with here is that God does speak to people, that is, he does communicate by some means and is fully involved in the life of each person. More and more people are coming to that realisation today, turning around a period in Western history in which God came to be seen as being quite remote and even disinterested. One of the main emphases of Catholic Charismatic Renewal is this closeness of God, and his constant readiness to guide and help us in both small and great things.

God does not speak to us by an audible voice (except, perhaps, in rare circumstances). His normal way of communicating is by more subtle leadings and promptings. He may speak through circumstances, or by an ‘inner voice’ by which we know he has communicated with us, but we have not heard words. His communication may seem like a thought to us or an idea or a realisation. Yet his communications have a different quality, and as we grow in the ability to discern, we come to recognise ‘his voice’ more frequently.

Discernment Must Be Learnt

Why doesn’t God speak clearly to us? God has always chosen to risk the distortion of his Word by using human beings as messengers, just as he used the biblical writers, the Church and everyone who proclaims God to the world today. This is because of his desire that men and women be mature partners in the work of salvation. He could have spoken clearly and directly, but that would never have brought maturity. And so we are called to discern, and in doing this we are called to be open to things beyond the rational, and to consider the seemingly impossible.

If we are to grow closer to God, we must learn to come to know what he is really like. We come to know God’s voice by coming to know God. Discernment, then, is getting to know a person.

It is as if we receive a telephone call, and the line quality is very bad. The person on the end is saying that they are someone we know very well. How do we know it is them? We know because of the type of thing they say, and the tone they use to say it. If they suggest something that we know our friend would never suggest, we know it cannot be our friend on the line.

In John’s Gospel, we read:
[The shepherd] calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run away from him because they do not know the voice of strangers (John 10:2–5).
In Palestine, the shepherd would walk ahead of the sheep. Even if the sheep mixed with other sheep at a waterhole, the shepherd could separate his own sheep by just calling them. They knew his voice and would follow him. A tourist in Palestine once asked a shepherd whether the sheep would ever follow anyone else. The shepherd replied, “Yes, when they are sick they will follow anyone.” Once, the tourist saw a man driving a herd of sheep. When he asked about it, he was told that the man was not the shepherd, but the butcher.

Discernment Involves Making a Choice

The word “discern” itself means to exercise judgement. With discernment, we are always faced with a simple choice: is it God acting or not?

As Catholics, we believe in a spiritual world in which there are spiritual beings which are inimical to the welfare of humanity. Satan certainly exists and tries to mislead us. But there are also our own inner voices which can work against God — we could call this our dark side.

However, if a prompting is not from God, we are not really interested in discerning the source. It is not helpful to try and work out if it is from ourselves or some evil spirit. Fr Green gives us excellent advice here: “When the pray-er recognises the tail of the snake, he or she is wise to run away without looking for the rest of it, and to leave the species determination to the snake specialists.” And so, we will be using the term “the bad spirit” to mean whatever forces are working within us which work against God.

If we are concerned to do God’s will, then we are only interested to discern whether God is the source of the leading.

We must work at discerning God’s voice. Discernment is the art of knowing when it is God acting upon or speaking to us, and when it is not. This art can only be learned by trial and error. The voices we experience are quite subtle, and discernment requires us to become sensitive to subtle differences between the different movements upon our soul. Yet we will never recognise the voice of God with absolute clarity, and anyone who claims to hear God clearly and with certainty should be avoided — they have not even begun to know spiritual realities if they make such a claim.

Some Simple Rules

There are simple rules we can follow in discerning God’s voice and these can make a very big difference for us. If we know them, we will make fewer mistakes. Many people make very bad decisions in their life because these basic rules have been ignored.

Someone who knows what God is like knows what his voice is like. As an exercise, write down a list of single words that describe what you think God’s voice is like (for example: gentle, patient, kind, forgiving, encouraging). Then write a separate list of what you think the voice of the bad spirit is like (for example: harsh, condemning, impatient, negative). You will see a very dramatic difference between the two lists. And yet everyone regularly forgets this basic difference when they come to make key decisions. If you remember what the voice of the bad spirit is like, you will make fewer bad choices. You already know how to discern in most situations.

Presuppositions for Discernment

Before we can say discernment is actually occurring, certain conditions must be met:
1. You must desire to do God’s will. This means that this must be your fundamental choice in life.
2. You must be open to God at the moment of discerning. This means that you must be completely open to accept any of the possible results of discerning. If you are only interested in doing what you want to do, and are not open to other possibilities, then discernment is not possible.
3. You must know what God is like.
4. You must be a person who prays.
A good discerner is also:
1. Humble. Humility involves knowing self (as good, but imperfect), an openness to be guided by God and others, and a readiness to follow that guidance. A humble person is ready and willing to learn.The bad spirit will always attack you at your weakest points, and so we must know our own weaknesses.

Often that weakest point will be in our close relationships. Pseudo-Macarius warns us that we must learn to discern when the bad spirit is “operating in the area of our hidden passions.” Generally, the Desert Fathers emphasised the spiritual battle that those committed to the spiritual journey will necessarily be engaged in, and urged beginners to get in touch with what is happening inside them. They stressed the need to have a spiritual advisor available to help to discern.

With important decisions, we should always test our discernment by seeking the help of at least one other co-discerner. A community can only discern if all its members are discerners.
2. Charity. A good discerner is slow to judge others, and is tolerant. This allows for an openness to others which is essential for good discernment.
3. Courage. A good discerner needs to be ready to act boldly if necessary, and be prepared to take risks. In particular, the discerner must be prepared to be wrong.
It is important to realise that only YOU can discern for you. No one else can discern for you. You will never learn to discern if you expect others to tell you the answer. This does not mean that you should not seek help — you should, but the other person is only helping you to discern.

Also, what is discerned must be consistent with what God has said previously. This means that what we discern must be consistent with his previous revelations through Scripture and through the Church. God is always true to himself. This means, however, that we have an obligation to know what God has been saying through the Church. We must know our faith well. We also should know Scripture, not necessarily in detail, but we should understand what Scripture is and what it is not, and never misuse the Bible as so many do. We should know the Bible well enough not to take any part of the text out of context.