Discernment: The Importance of being calm and at peace

In today’s first reading, 1 Kings 19: 9a, 11-16, Elijah is fleeing for his life!  God finds  him hiding in a cave at Mt. Horeb and tells him to come out of the cave and “stand on the mountain before the Lord,” as God “will be passing by.”

Elijah comes out of the cave, as God asks of him and waits for the Lord to pass by.  Hurricane or tornado-like  winds pass by, “rending the mountains and crushing rocks before the Lord.”  The earth quakes,  shaking it to its very foundations. A fire erupts. God is in none of those terrifying disasters.  Following these scary events, everything becomes calm.  In the quiet,  Elijah hears a “tiny whispering sound. When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went and stood at the entrance of the cave.

Note, that it is when the storm subsided, that Elijah hears God’s voice. In order to discern what God is asking of us, we need to enter into a state of calmness. We need to become still  in order to hear the Spirit’s “whispering sound.” 

Once it became calm around Elijah and Elijah is listening for God, God asks him why he is where he is, like say: Why are you here Elijah? What’s up?  From what are you hiding? Elijah answers the  Lord: “I have been most zealous for [you] Lord, the God of hosts. But the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to the sword. I alone am left, and they seek to take my life.” 

God wants us to tell Him what is going on in our lives, what we are thinking and feeling!  Being honest and open with the Lord is part of the discernment process.  God will meet us and talk to us where we are at! And that is where God reveals His will to us.  After Elijah opens up to the Lord, God says to directs him according to His will: “Go, take the road back to the desert near Damascus.” He then gives him instructions of what to do for the people of Israel, against whom he had complained. And from whom he is fleeing for his life.

In order to discern God’s will, we need to,  like Elijah, come out of hiding and  face that from which we  are fleeing. We need to come before the Lord with our fears. We need to be honest with the Lord in prayer!    And, yes, we need to become quiet in order to hear the gentle, loving, caring voice of the Lord. The Lord cares about what is happening in our lives, as he did for his prophet Elijah,  and will  help us move on in accord with God’s holy will.  

Discernment: A Way to Recognize God at Work in our Lives

In  today’s Gospel, Luke 1: 39-56, we encounter two women very much attuned to what is happening within their bodies and within the core of their beings.  Both are very familiar with God at work in the stillness of their lives.  Elizabeth, following the conception of John the Baptist, withdraws  for five months, saying, “The Lord has done this for me, now that it has pleased him to take away the humiliation I suffered in public” (barrenness was considered an humiliation and, also, a punishment for women in Elizabeth’s time and culture).  Like her cousin Elizabeth,  Mary has withdrawn into the silence of her heart awed by the angel’s announcement and that she is to become the Mother of God. “’You see before you the Lord’s servant,” she says to the angel, “let it happen to me as you have said.’ And the angel left her” alone in her solitude. She leaves Galilee immediately after the Annunciation to go to Judah to visit Elizabeth, telling no one, according to the Gospel, of what occurred in Galilee.  In silence, she ponders what the Lord has done to her.

We learn from Mary and Elizabeth the importance of solitude, of pondering and reflecting on what is happening in our lives as a means to recognize the ways of God.