A Method for Discernment

1. Continual Prayer

A daily living relationship with God is a precondition for good discernment. Seeking God's will requires growing in relationship with God. No one knows God's will without knowing God. Regular prayer, with the help of a spiritual director, will enable you to see more clearly how God might be leading you.

2. Gather information - about your options and about yourself

Discernment involves choosing among two or more options. Gathering and sifting through information regarding the various options is crucial to making a good discernment. If you're considering religious life, it's important to talk with people who are happily living this vocation in order to really get a feel for what this life is about. The same goes for marriage or the committed single life.

It's also imperative that you learn about yourself. Next to developing your relationship with God, growing in self-awareness is probably the most important element of doing discernment well. Carefully consider your natural tendencies, gifts, aptitudes. What are your deepest desires?

Where do you see a match between the options that you're considering and what you know about your best self?

3. Prayerful Reflection on One's Freedom to Accept or Reject the Options

To know and follow God's will means that we are aware of the forces in our lives that keep us from making and carrying out our commitments. Material or psychological attachments, health issues, addictions, poor or inflated self-image, our image of God and fear are just a few of the factors that can keep us from being free to choose God's direction for us.

When you begin discernment, it's important to pray to be unattached to your own agenda or to be free from a pre-conceived notion about which way God might be leading you.

4. Weigh the Pros and Cons

The process of discernment involves looking objectively at the options at hand. No option is perfect, and all options usually contain some positive and negative aspects. When we make a choice for something, we're automatically eliminating other choices from our range of options. That's life.

Weighing the pros and cons involves paying attention to both the "hard" and "soft" data, paying attention to the facts, as well as what's going on inside of you. One needs the capacity to understand, reason logically, compare and weigh different considerations in order to form judgments based on rational information.

Equally important, however, is the ability to listen to our feelings, and our "heart," as well as to trust our intuitions.

5. Pay Attention to the Great Desires

Discernment is a way of sifting through our desires and passions so that our lives may be shaped by the best of them.

Our great desires put us in tune with God's desires and express what God wants us to become - our most authentic selves.

6. Seek Confirmation

Interior peace is one of the surest signs of the presence of the Spirit and its presence is a sign of confirmation of the choice made. After making a big decision, though, it's normal to feel doubtful or confused.

If this sense lingers, however, and does not give way to an underlying sense of peace about the decision, it may be necessary to reconsider the choice. In either case it's important to continue to pray for light and guidance even after coming to a decision.