Cultivating discernment in today’s Church

Discernment is a practice as ancient as the Church.

As a spiritual process for decision-making, “discernment” came to the fore during the preparation for the Fifth Plenary Council. Before that, with the exception of Jesuit circles, discernment was not a common concept for regular pew Catholics.

One young person commenting on social media wrote:

“Discernment was a new concept for me, but luckily, thanks to my work in a Jesuit school, I had been introduced to it before I stepped into the very first sessions in the lead-up to the Plenary Council”.

The emergence of discernment in the regular discourse of the Church is a good thing. Like many of the Church’s treasures, ‘discernment’ had become confined to the sphere of the sacred – in the sense of discerning a religious vocation or other such ‘holy’ functions. It should be the normal way for Christians to come to decisions. In baptism, we are all called to a vocation. How do we provide formation for all the baptised so that discernment becomes a “habit” which enables them to recognise and live out that vocation?

Discernment requires an openness to God’s word, a receptivity, and a docility—like Mary’s Fiat: Be it done unto me according to your word (Luke 1:38). It is about cultivating a fertile place in the soul where the word of God can take root, a place that recognises the stirrings of the Holy Spirit.

Discernment requires that we set aside our ego so that we can make room for the Holy Spirit and to then speak that wisdom into the world. It requires that “He must increase; I must decrease” (John 3:30).

Discernment is about the ability to balance paradoxes. It is fluid and open-ended. It expects surprises. The way God works was captured beautifully by Australia’s own poetic genius, Les Murray, in his poem Poetry and Religion. He writes:

Full religion is the large poem in loving repetition; like any poem, it must be inexhaustible and complete with turns where we ask Now why did the poet do that?

The paradox of “inexhaustible and complete” necessitates openness to surprises and new meanings. It captures the essence of God, the Church, and love.

Discernment requires deep listening and deep trust nurtured by deep prayer through an ever-deepening intimacy with Jesus. I recently revisited a book by scripture scholar Mary Healy. Healy writes:

How do we grow in intimacy with Jesus? We read his word daily, especially the Gospels. St Ignatius of Antioch … wrote: “I take refuge in the Gospel as the flesh of Christ.” The Gospels are the “flesh” of Christ because they allow us to touch him in a very real way – we get to know his ways, his love, his voice … we are freed from all kinds of hidden misconceptions that we have picked up from a fallen world.

Discernment should steer us away from the mundane towards the prophetic. It is not likely to be ‘discernment’ if it merely echoes the preoccupations of the society in which we live.

The Church, its scriptures, traditions, liturgy, and magisterium inform our discernment. We are particularly challenged to pay attention to teachings that make us uncomfortable. An easy rule of thumb for recognising the Holy Spirit is to pursue those promptings that we often ignore because they do not make sense to our usual way of doing things.

Discernment is not about me or you. It is about how the Holy Spirit wants to work through each of us – in our Church, in our families, in our workplaces, in our social gatherings, in our society, so that we can transform the cultures and societies in which we live to reflect the kingdom of God. It is about dying to ourselves so that we may have abundant life.

Again, from Healy: “To see the Lord’s power requires listening to him, choosing to be obedient, taking risks and trusting that he will lead us.”

In so many ways, this is the path that we are called to follow as we embrace the journey of synodality.

• Clara Geoghegan is the Executive Secretary of the Bishops Commission for Evangelisation, Laity and Ministry and the Bishops Commission for Life, Marriage and Public Engagement at the ACBC