Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life

by Henri J.M. Nouwen

Those of us who are wealthy and successful are no less lost than those of us who are poor and experience life as a failure. Those of us who are healthy and strong are no less lost than those of us who are frail and weak. Those of us who are priests and ministers are no less lost than those of us who are lawyers, doctors, or business people. Those of us who are active in the church and society are no less lost than those of us who have resigned ourselves to passive waiting for the end of life.

Getting answers to my questions is not the goal of the spiritual life. Living in the presence of God is the greater call.

I also learned afresh that friendship requires a constant willingness to forgive each other for not being Christ, and a willingness to ask Christ himself to be the true center of the relationship. When Christ does not mediate a friendship, that relationship easily becomes demanding, manipulating, and oppressive, and fails to offer the other the space to grow. True friendship requires closeness, affection, support, and mutual encouragement, but also distance, space to grow, freedom to be different, and solitude. To nurture both aspects of a relationship, we must experience a deeper and more lasting affirmation than any human relationship can offer.

Small, seemingly insignificant events, ideas, and life circumstances can become occasions to discern God’s will and calling in your life. Both inner and outer events and circumstances can be read and interpreted as signposts leading to a deeper understanding of the way the Spirit of God is working in our daily lives.

The question of where to live and what to do is really insignificant compared to the question of how to keep the eyes of my heart focused on the Lord. I can be teaching at Yale, working in the bakery at the Genesee Abbey, walking with poor children in Peru, or writing a book, and still feel totally useless. Or I can do these same things and know that I am fulfilling my call. There is no such thing as the right place or the right job.

Precisely when he becomes most spiritually present to them, he also becomes physically absent. Here we touch one of the most sacred aspects of Eucharistic theology: the deepest communion with Jesus is a communion that happens in his absence. This is a mystery of faith. Christ is with us and yet we await his full return.

When we understand the mystery that we are loved not for what we do but because of who God says we are, we are free to love others in a similar way.

‘Christ is risen’ means that we are a people of reconciliation, not of division; people who heal, not hurt; people of forgiveness, not of revenge; people of love, not of hate; people of life, not of death.”