"Quo Vadis" is Latin for "where are you going?" It's a question that Christ asks of each of us - "where are YOU going?"
God's first call for every person is to simply follow Him. You were created to be in relationship with God, and that is God’s greatest desire for you. As your relationship with God grows, God will continue to draw you deeper into this relationship, and call you to become more like Christ, to love Him more, and to love others through service. In all these things, you will experience God calling you to a particular vocation.
You may suspect that God might be calling you to ordained ministry (priesthood) or consecrated (religious) life but how do you go about getting more clarity? How do you find out what you are been called to?
The process of working out where you are called is “discernment.” The word comes from the Latin word discernere which means to distinguish, to sift out, to separate what may be from God and what may come from personal interests or cultural pressures. Discernment is a process of learning to listen to the small voice inside you and to sift out what is from God and what is not from God. Discernment is a choice between two goods. You don’t discern between good and evil.
Discernment Tips
To discern is to...
- is to spend time listening;
- is to admit that we are powerless over our own ability to be certain, to be in control, to have all the answers;
- is to set out on a journey with God, confident that we will be cared for, t hat we will have all we need, that we have nothing to fear (Psalm 23);
- is to really live life by the choices we make and not allow ourselves to be the victims of circumstance. This means taking responsibility for the direction of my life, for the decisions that I make and not blaming anyone else for my unhappiness;
- is to actively cooperate with God in co-creating a future full of hope, meaning and promise (Jeremiah 29);
- is to be alert, frightened, surprised, joyful and rooted (sometimes all at once).
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