Gary Zimak gives some advice on staying close to God while trying to discern his will for our lives.
Transcript:
Host: We go now to Jennifer in Algonquin, Illinois, listening to EWTN on WSFI. Jennifer, your question for Gary Zimak.
Caller: Hi, thanks so much for your time.
Gary: Hey, Jennifer.
Caller: So my question is with anxiety and discernment. For me personally, I’m trying to discern a vocation, and every single person in my life is very much more on the secular side, or even anti-Catholic specifically, so every voice in my life is saying “No, don’t do that,” but there’s also part of me that’s like, “Well, what if?” So how do you move through the fear to actually determine what God really wants you to do?
Gary: Good question, and this is something that, even though I’m married, I have a family, I, five years ago, made the decision to go into full-time ministry. So this is a constant question for me: “Lord you really want me to keep doing this?” Because it gets challenging financially sometimes, so I’m very familiar with this whole idea of “Lord, what do you want me to do?”
One thing I would recommend–and I have a lot of details in my book “Faith, Hope and Clarity,” that really grew out of my own discernment–I would say stay close to the Lord, keep asking Him, “Lord, do you want me to do this? What do you want me to do?” You can always go through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, there’s some books written that simplify the Spiritual Exercises, which were written in order to help people discern vocations.
And then oftentimes the Lord, after we’ve discerned, we think, “Well, this is what I should do,” He wants us to try things and then pay attention to circumstances. I thought I was called to be a permanent Deacon one time–nothing worked out at all for me in that regard, so now looking back I don’t think it was the Lord’s will for me. But I would say stay with Him, keep asking Him, and then if you get an inspiration, try it and see what happens. Mother Angelica was big on that. If she got an idea, she ran with it, and she said, “If it’s from the Lord it’ll work; if not, it’ll fall apart.” Hope that helps.