Okay, yes, now, I was wrong, saying that the previous post was hardly going to have any readers.
You, in order not to remain silent, say anything. And then what happens happens.

From the doctrinal premises already exposed in the previous articles, I will now draw concrete consequences for the spiritual life.

What should I do, Lord? Christian perfection, holiness, is in total fidelity to the grace of Christ. And to the extent that we love Christ, to that extent we docilely receive his grace. In other words: the one who does His will loves the Lord.

Loving the Lord is not feelingfor Him this or that, but faithfully doing His will: “if you love me, you will keep my commandments,”and “if you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love” (Jn 14:15; 15:10). To love the Lord is to let yourself be moved unconditionally by the Holy Spirit, “the Spirit of Jesus” (Acts 16:7). And “those who are moved by the Spirit of God are the children of God” (Rom 8:14). We love the Lord to the extent that we let Him work in us and with us whatever he wants. He is the head, we do not belong to ourselves, He has acquired us at the price of his blood. And if He is the head and we are his members, He must move us as he sees fit, without finding any resistance in us. That’s what holiness is. And this is how Saint Paul understands it from the first moment of his conversion: “what am I to do, Lord?” (Acts 22:10).

Always being the Lord’s initiative, we must do everything and only what His grace gives us to do,  no more, no less, nor anything else, no matter how good it may be. I remember what the Apostle said: “we were created in Christ Jesus to do those good works that God prepared in advance for us to walk in them” (Eph 2:10). In them, not in others, that usor perhaps others, no matter how good and urgent they may be, may occur to us. “A man should not take anything unless it is given him from heaven” (Jn 3:27). We also saw how Christ declares “I do nothing on my own”, nothing. He only does what the Father works in Him. He is always moved by the Father, like that illiterate child who wrote guided by his father’s hand.

Therefore, in the total synergy of grace and freedom lies Christian perfection. Children who walk hand in hand with their mother rarely adapt their pace exactly to hers: they either allow themselves to be towed, or they pull to go faster, or they try to go in another direction. And they do this because they are still children. But when they reach an adult condition, they will adjust their pace to that of their elders with complete ease and pleasure. The same thing happens as we grow in the spiritual ages: while the Christian is still a child in Christ, it is difficult for him to know and follow the will of God (1 Cor 3:1ff.); He will only reach the full synergy of grace-freedom when he reaches adulthood in the age of Christ (Eph 4:13-14).

Christian spiritual discernment aims to know the concrete will of the provident God: “what am I to do, Lord?” And it will have to be carried out in a different way when it is mandatory or not.

–When good works are obligatory, there is no particular problem of discernment. The command that God communicates to us externally is nothing other than the declaration of what He wants to do internally in us by the motion of His grace. If God, through Scripture or through the Church, has given us a clear command on a specific point – for example, forgiving offenses received, going to Mass on Sundays – there is nothing to discern: “he who loves me keeps my commandments.” The same can be said of the person of consecrated life in an Institute approved by the Church: if God has given him the grace to profess that Rule of life, he will habitually give him the grace to fulfill it.

In these cases, then, the only care will be to apply oneself well to the fulfillment of those mandates, that is, to fulfill them with true motivation of charity, with fidelity and perseverance, with right intention, in a humble attitude and with very firm determination. And as is already understood, the fulfillment of certain specific works – going to mass on Sunday – will sometimes be lawfully prevented for serious objective reasons – for being sick, for not leaving a seriously ill person alone, etc. -. The discernment in these cases is usually obvious.

–But when good works are not obligatory, I mean, they are not obligatory in a measure and frequency clearly determined by God and the Church, that is when the need for discernment properly arises. In considering this topic, I will henceforth take as my main example the practice of prayer. Certainly I must pray, God commands it, God gives me his grace to pray; But how much, in what way, when, how should I provide prayer and work, dialogue with God or with men?… “What should I do, Lord?”

The rules of discernment, more or less systematized, have been formulated in the Church since the first monasticism. Those proposed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises(169-189, 313-370) are highly esteemed. But let us keep in mind that no specific method for discernment has in itself a magical efficacy to discover the divine will. The method can undoubtedly be useful, but it will be valid only to the extent that the Christian applies it according to the general rules that I explain below.

Saint Joseph, being most holy, upon learning that Mary was pregnant, did not know how to discern what he should do, that is, what the will of God was, and after many prayers and doubts, “he decided to secretly repudiate her.” If God did not send him an angel to order him to receive it, he would have made, even if blameless, a very serious error (Mt 1:18-21). Saint Francis of Assisi, being also a saint, was for a time without knowing whether God wanted him to preach or to retire to a life of prayer and penance – which is no small doubt – and he had to get out of it by sending messengers to consult with Saint Clare and Brother Sylvester (Saint Bonaventure, Major Legend12,2).

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a great saint, especially gifted by God for the discretion of spirits, while in the Holy Land, made a “very firm intention” to settle there forever. Later, with his companions from Paris, he wanted to go live in Palestine for years. I thought that was God’s will. And in 1551, five years before he died, after much thought and prayer – presumably he would apply his rules of discernment – he decided “absolutely” to leave the guidance of the Society of Jesus. None of these intentions were fulfilled, because God’s will was different, and he was always attentive to the will of the Lord. His biographer, Father Nadal, says that “he was gently taken to where he did not know.” And a few years later Saint John of the Cross would write: “to come to what you do not know, you must go where you do not know.”

I want to point out with these examples that the rules for discernment, which ensure a synergy of grace-freedom, “as methods”, never guarantee true discernment by themselves. True discernment is a grace, a gift from God, and whether or not methods are applied, it is only achieved to the extent that the fundamental norms of the Christian life, which I recall below, are met.

1.–Humility. The humble person totally distrusts himself; That is why he has a horror of doing his own will, and puts all his effort into knowing God’s will: “give us light to know your will and the strength necessary to fulfill it” (dom. 1, T. Ord.). God does not hide from man; It is man who hides from God (Gen 3,8; 4,14), and he hides because he does not want the divine Light to come to denounce his evil works (Jn 3,20). The Lord loves his children, and therefore wants to manifest to them his concrete wills so that, by fulfilling them, they may be perfected. It is man who covers his eyes and ears with the disordered attachments of his own will – to ideas, projects, people, places, jobs, situations, whatever – and thus fails to know the will of God. Therefore, to the extent that man, docile to divine grace, humbly emerges from the prison of his own egocentrism, to that extent he advances in the easy and sure discernment of God’s will for him, and his life becomes illuminated with the serenity and peace of heaven. The Lord gives him light to know his will, and the strength necessary to fulfill it.

The Christian focuses on himself (egocentrism) when he polarizes his spiritual attention on the production of these or those good works. And instead it focuses on God (spiritual indifference) when all its efforts are put into pleasing God, in maintaining unconditional fidelity to his grace, whatever it may be. That is when, having silenced the internal noise of anxieties, fears and vain joys, the Christian begins to achieve that precious interior silence (silentium mentis, Saint Bonaventure), in which he easily listens to the divine Voice, his will, his command. And so the humble, through prayer and self-denial, guided by the infallible instinct of love, easily arrives at exact discernment, often “without knowing how” (Mk 4:27).

2.–The abnegation of one’s own will. The humble person is horrified at being “abandoned to the desires of his heart” (Rom 1:24-26), I have already pointed out. Not having one’s own will is the fundamental condition to be able to know the will of God. Without that, there is no method of discernment that is worth anything. Original sin darkened our reason and weakened our will to do good. But, certainly, it did not kill the carnal will in us. On the contrary, the will of the Adamic man wants, always wants – for this to happen, for this not to happen, for such a thing to be achieved, for it to come now, for it not to occur to him –… always wants, he is always wanting, he wants to kill himself. And so he loses us. Therefore, the key to good discernment that makes full Christian sanctification possible is to keep the will under surveillance, never allowing it to want something for itself. For we have not come into the world to do our will, but the will of the one who sent us, God (cf. Jn 6:38). Therefore, brothers, “do not do what you want” (Gal 5:17).

Attachment to one’s plans is usually one of the main obstacles to the spiritual life, no matter how good those plans are in themselves, objectively considered, whether they are their own plans or are drawn up by others. The carnal Christian who attempts Christian perfection is usually more or less attached to a certain project of his own spiritual life, composed of a set of good, very concrete works. This project is frequently conditioned by one’s own temperament, the education received or the predominant spiritual environment. One, for example, who highly values ​​prayer, insists on praying two hours a day. Another, very active, barely has prayer time, because he is firmly convinced that charity requires him to do many things. Without a doubt, these personal projects can be good and noble in themselves, but very often they do not coincide with God’s specific designs for the person, and therefore they resist them. And this is where anxiety, fatigue, poor spiritual growth, sometimes sin, and perhaps abandonment come from.

–«But let’s see: and who tells you to want anything from your own will? Who authorizes you to have your own plansin your life? The only thing you have to do is discover and carry out the will of God. Can you imagine the Virgin Mary “wanting something of her own”? It’s unthinkable. She is the slaveof the Lord, and therefore has no will of her own, and only wants the will of her Lord to be done in her.

Incessant ruminations are a horror, but they are inevitable as long as there is one’s own will. Let us know well that in persistent doubts we will not find the solution by giving the matter a thousand thoughts, anxiously consulting one and the other, considering the pros and cons in an endless task, although God will also want us to sometimes do some of all that. To get rid of doubts, the most decisive thing is the prayer of petition, “what shall I do, Lord?”, and ensuring above all that our will plays freely under the motion of grace, that is, that it is sincerely free in this matter from all disordered attachment, that it remains only attentive to God, unconditionally surrendered to his will, free of both desires and concrete fears. Our spiritual life must habitually focus on achieving that holy indifference, mainly through prayer of petition. And then the spiritual life becomes increasingly simpler, because as Saint John of the Cross says, “the path of life is one of very little bustle and negotiation, and requires more mortification of the will than much knowledge” (Sayings57).

I will continue to expose, with God’s favor, the conditions that make possible the perfect agreement between grace and freedom

Author: Pbro. José María Iraburu