PRAYER & DISCERNMENT
JONNY GREEN, FLICKR
Discern the real you LASZLO BENCZE
by Brian Doyle
Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland and the author of the recently published A Book of Uncommon Prayer (Ave Maria Press).
TURN OFF your phone. Take off your mask. Open your heart. Letting yourself really listen is the beginning of discernment.
God rarely makes booming announcements about what you should do with your life. Quite the opposite, it takes a lot of quiet to hear God inside you.
D
ISCERNIMENTO. It means, according to an Italian friend, not making a total and complete fool of yourself. He and I were talking about the word discernment in its various contexts, and how both of us, growing up Catholic, thought vaguely that the word meant waiting around to be picked for the holy all-star team with the same shout I Am Who Am! that Moses got. Both of us, at the tender age of 13, had visited a seminary, he in Palermo and me in New York, and both of us had sat in chapels there, diligently trying to discern if we were being called by the Lord to selfless service, but neither of us felt anything at all except increasingly hungry for lunch. My friend said all he thought about were girls and soccer, and all I thought
12 | VISION 2016 | VocationNetwork.org
