From the desk of the pastor for Feb. 23, 2025

The Lord be with you! This week we start to cover a critical process for our interior life: discernment. How we discern God's Will has a tremendous effect upon our prayer life. Learning how God uses consolations and desolations to guide is one of the most important lessons that we can learn.

"Discernment" comes from the Latin word, “discerno” and it means to see by dividing or separating into pieces. Spiritual discernment is praying about what God wants us to do or not do in order to embrace His Will. St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, developed a wonderful way to discern God’s will in our lives by paying close attention to what moves us.

St. Ignatius discovered that when he thought about holy things and the works of the saints he would experience a lingering joy that encouraged him to love God and others. When he thought about the glories of this world, such as his own victories on the battlefield, he would feel good for a time, but that would quickly pass and leave him with nothing. Prayer then not only reminded him about what God did but also what Ignatius could do for God.

The process of spiritual discernment is closely linked to our experiences of consolations and desolations. A consolation is movement of the soul towards the good by either desiring a more perfect union with God or experiencing a satisfaction from love. A desolation is the experience of a trial or tribulation in our approach to God. Sometimes this trial is an explicit suffering that God calls us to bear patiently and sometimes it is the absence of any satisfaction from doing what is right.

A common consolation is the experience of feeling good after prayer. Often we have a more positive mood or have stopped worrying about some problem that has vexed us. This type of consolation is essentially emotional, but it helps us to see that daily prayer is essential to our spiritual health.

The most common desolation is aridity: the absence of any feeling from prayer. When people complain about prayer feeling "empty" or "boring" they are sometimes experiencing this desolation. More often, however, such empty or boring prayer comes from us giving into distractions. In other words, God has not hidden Himself, but we are not paying enough attention to notice.

The most basic lesson of discernment is identifying how God has already given us consolations and desolations. Thus my questions at the end of my last article. Once we note our common consolations and desolations and how we have responded to them, we can see what is helping and hindering us. Next week we are going to learn some basic rules of discernment. May we each resolve to move more closely to God even when we do not feel His Love.

In His Sacred Heart,
Fr. John