24 April 2020
Friday of the Second Week of Easter
Our first reading (Acts 5:34-42) offers us a piece of wisdom that can help us in our daily discernment of what comes from God and what does not. Gamaliel wisely proposes to the Sanhedrin about the Church’s apostolic activity, “if this endeavor or this activity is of human origin, it will destroy itself. But if it comes from God, you will not be able to destroy them; you may even find yourselves fighting against God.” Of course, Luke, the author of the Acts of the Apostles, lets the works and continuing existence of the Church speak for themselves.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola teaches us that when we have discerned a major decision or life choice that we believe comes from God, we should nonetheless remain humble, offering the decision and its accomplishment up to God for what Ignatius calls “confirmation.” A first confirmation can be the consolation that might arise in the heart when one offers this discernment to God. However, that movement does not suffice as definitive confirmation. Rather, the discernment and its accomplishment need a second confirmation, a confirmation which God offers through the accomplishment of the decision actually becoming possible in the concrete realities of the world that we live in. Of course, this requires our own engagement, but it should be clear over time that what we are doing is something blessed and aided by God’s grace, rather than us trying to accomplish something by sheer force of will.
Ignatius explains in his Autobiography that when he finally arrived in Jerusalem after years of travel, he was convinced through much discernment that what God most wanted him to do was to stay in Jerusalem to help souls there for the rest of his life. When the Franciscan prelate ordered him to leave, he resisted. But when the Franciscan threatened excommunication, Ignatius realized that God had not offered the material confirmation to his decision that he had been seeking and promptly left, as ordered. If he had not done that, we would never have the Society of Jesus today. Let us then ask for the grace to cling doggedly to our own “discernment” but rather to always submit ourselves to the continuing guidance of the Holy Spirit and the confirmation and direction that it offers us.