Questions on Mission Discernment - Suggestions for Growth

Q & A on Discernment

Suggestions for Growth

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Questions

How do I start a discernment process?

What do you suggest that I do in my life?

What are the tools and means needed for a discernment journey?

It's an experience like no other. You thought often about becoming a priest, sister, or doing something in relation to church ministry, but even though you had dismissed the idea many a times, the attraction to a church vocation keeps coming back.

The following suggestions might help you clarify your journey of faith, and your discernment for your presence and future.

Relax
Find your own quiet place, and use music, candles, reading, and art

Keep a Journal
Writing a journal is a personal tool for growth, for personal integration, and for getting in touch with the flow of one’s life. If you feel comfortable with it, use it whenever needed and to the depth you wish. Don’t rush through your journal; you set the pace

"Moses, remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground." [by Antonella del Grosso, xmm]

Choose a Guide
None of us can go through the faith journey alone. Choose someone (a companion with whom you may consider to meet regularly) and whose experience allows you to tell your story, look at yourself honestly and gain some direction and support.

Read and Meditate
It is a slow and thoughtful reading that leads to prayer and to applying the message to your life. Books should be rich in content and thought provoking

Pray
Open your heart, indeed your whole person to the mystery of God’s role in your personal existence and in the world. True prayer goes beyond saying prayers and is intertwined with our daily life. Be a prayerful listener, reflecting, responding in simplicity and honesty

Serve
Live without rewards, among the poor, the lonely, the discouraged, the underprivileged. Look around and you’ll find so many organizations and volunteer programs that provide just that. Go beyond restricting your service to Thanksgiving and Christmas, but apply it all year around

"To Seek, See, and Love God in All"

The Next Step

THE NEXT STEP

1 - Read the Burning Bush story of Moses:

Moses - Exodus 3:2-15

2 - Conclude your Meditation with:

Prayer for Guidance

3 - Put these thoughts into action by:

Buy some inexpensive soft clay, or plaito, and change daily your sculpture, to symbolize how your discernment evolves through reflection, prayer, some contemporary Christian music.
Or talk to someone who won't judge you, won't tell you what to do, who will not try to "solve your problem."

The Burning Bush

Exodus 3:2-15
There an angel of the LORD appeared to him in fire flaming out of a bush. As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed. So Moses decided, "I must go over to look at this remarkable sight, and see why the bush is not burned."

When the LORD saw him coming over to look at it more closely, God called out to him from the bush, "Moses! Moses!" He answered, "Here I am." God said, "Come no nearer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. I am the God of your father," he continued, "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob." Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

But the LORD said, "I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey... So indeed the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have truly noted that the Egyptians are oppressing them. Come, now! I will send you to Pharaoh to lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt."

But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and lead the Israelites out of Egypt?"
He answered, "I will be with you; and this shall be your proof that it is I who have sent you: when you bring my people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this very mountain."

"But," said Moses to God, "when I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' if they ask me, 'What is his name?' what am I to tell them?" God replied, "I am who am." Then he added, "This is what you shall tell the Israelites: I AM sent me to you."
God spoke further to Moses, "Thus shall you say to the Israelites: The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. "This is my name forever; this is my title for all generations."

Meditation

The Israelites, whom Moses is called to lead, found themselves forced by dire circumstances far from home. Living in oppression and misery in Egypt, they weren’t abandoned. Their cries were heard. God intervened.

The story that follows tells of their time in the wilderness. How they wandered away from God and from the promised goal of a new life in “a land flowing with milk and honey.” Though evil befell them, they were not abandoned. The nurturing hand of God was held out to them.

Moses' sojourn in the wilderness had prepared him for such an encounter with the Almighty God. He learned through this wilderness experience to be still before the Word of God. He grew as a person of prayer and of God's word. When the Lord Almighty manifested himself in the burning bush and spoke with Moses, Moses was ready to see, to believe, to hear, and to obey. Are you ready to encounter God personally, to hear God's voice, and to obey his word?.

Prayer for Guidance

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going;
I do not see the road ahead of me
nor do I really know myself
and the fact that I think that I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you,
and I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this,
you will lead me by the right road
through I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my struggles alone.
(Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer)