“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”
~ G.K Chesterton
What is right and what is wrong? What is good and what is bad? What is necessary and what is unnecessary? What is safe and what is dangerous? What is healthy and what is unhealthy? What is true and what is false? We search our entire lives for the answers to these questions, knowing deep within that the answers are crucial to our health and well-being, indeed, to the very safety and protection of our souls.
We learn by trial and error. We may not understand the word “hot”; but, once we burn ourselves, we know. Some things are learned by the teaching and example of others and some things are only learned through experience. We seem to understand that the sooner we learn the answers to these questions, the better, safer, and happier we will be.
The same holds for our spiritual lives. There are right things and wrong things, good things and bad things, things that protect a soul and things that jeopardize a soul. We need to know what they are and we need to learn to choose the right thing. As G. K. Chesterton reminds us, just because we are able to choose something doesn’t mean that we should. We need to know the difference between our options so that we can make the right choice.
Knowing that difference comes about through the process of discernment. We talk about discernment in many different ways: discerning a vocation, discerning right from wrong, discerning good and bad, et cetera. We know ourselves well enough to know that we cannot trust ourselves. We have been formed from dust and our roots are in clay. We need to reach out with our spiritual roots which are in God in order to distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad.
The season of Lent is designed to help us in our discernment processes. We are challenged not to trust ourselves and the world but, rather, to trust God. Only when we can place our complete trust in God will we be able to be certain about the path of our lives.
FAITH ACTION: In your prayers today, ask God for the great gift of discernment so that you may know His will.
Remember: The Fridays of Lent are Days of Abstinence