What is discernment?

“Understanding whether I should get married or become a priest”

By discernment, we mean that dynamic that inwardly guides the one who lives in the presence of the Lord, as the Lord Jesus stands before the Father. It is the profound orientation of being. It is not a single choice, it exists in all choices. It is revealed in choices, but it does not consist in choices for their own sake.

(FABIO ROSINI, L’arte di ricominciare, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo (MI), 2018, p. 28)

Wakti: Answer the question: who are you?
Amanda: … um… Amanda Brotzman?
Wakti: That’s the sound you respond to when others call you. You are not your name. Who are you then?

(DIRK GENTLY, s02e05)

Discernment moves on the border between the psychological and the spiritual: it is about understanding within my world what is of God, how He communicates with me.

((MARKO IVAN RUPNIK, Il discernimento : 1: Verso il gusto di Dio, 2: Come rimanere con Cristo, Lipa, Roma, 2009, p. 62))

A child of God does not have discernment about the will of God because he has read a book or has heard hundreds of catechesis, but because he ‘sniffs’ the Father in things, since he knows Him. Discernment is not a skill. It is a redeemed identity in action; it is the relationship as children with the Father that becomes sensitivity, keen eyes, tuned ears.

(FABIO ROSINI, L’arte di ricominciare, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo (MI), 2018, p. 28)

“Forty-two!” shouted Loonquawl. “Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and a half million years’ work?” “I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”

(DOUGLAS ADAMS, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Mondadori, Milano, 2016)

Since we are within a strongly technological, rationalistic culture, accustomed to arranging and ordering – and thus dominating – there is a risk that the rules of discernment are taken as a technique, a kind of method to ‘understand’ God, decipher His will, thereby opening the possibility of the illusion of possessing Him.

(MARKO IVAN RUPNIK, Il discernimento : 1: Verso il gusto di Dio, 2: Come rimanere con Cristo, Lipa, Roma, 2009, p. 41)

Discernment is not then a calculation, deductive logic, an engineering technique where I cleverly balance means and ends, nor a discussion, a search for the majority, but a prayer, the constant asceticism of renouncing one’s own will, one’s own thought, elaborating it as if it depended entirely on me but leaving it totally free. Such an attitude is impossible if one is not seized by a wave of love because radical humility is necessary for this. Indeed, the feeling that most guarantees the discernment process is humility.

(MARKO IVAN RUPNIK, Il discernimento : 1: Verso il gusto di Dio, 2: Come rimanere con Cristo, Lipa, Roma, 2009, p. 37)

How can we know if something comes from the Holy Spirit or if it stems from the spirit of the world or the spirit of the devil? The only way is through discernment, which calls for something more than intelligence or common sense. It is a gift which we must implore. If we ask with confidence that the Holy Spirit grant us this gift, and then seek to develop it through prayer, reflection, reading and good counsel, then surely we will grow in this spiritual endowment (no. 166).
[…]
The gift of discernment has become all the more necessary today (no. 167).
[…]
The Lord speaks to us in a variety of ways, at work, through others and at every moment. Yet we simply cannot do without the silence of prolonged prayer, which enables us better to perceive God’s language, to interpret the real meaning of the inspirations we believe we have received, to calm our anxieties and to see the whole of our existence afresh in his own light (no. 171).
[…]
An essential condition for progress in discernment is a growing understanding of God’s patience and his timetable, which are never our own (no. 174).

(POPE FRANCIS, apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, 2018)

Discernment, even the initial one, let’s repeat it, is done in dialogue with the Lord because discernment is not a skill; it’s a relationship. The activity that precedes everything is described as follows:
“But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” (Matthew 6:6)
[Discernment] implies trying to enter one’s own secret, one’s own innermost being, one’s own “room,” and closing the door, that is, creating a zone where there is no access to anything else, where the world is shut out, and speaking with the One who is in secret.

(FABIO ROSINI, L’arte di ricominciare, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo (MI), 2018, p. 32-33)

We may have different thoughts, all good, but not all can be followed. The problem is not only having evangelical thoughts but knowing which of them to dedicate our life to, which one to follow.
[…]
Some thoughts, if followed, exclude other possibilities by themselves. Thus, we must be sure not only that the thought is good, that it is for life, but that it is for me, for my life.

(MARKO IVAN RUPNIK, Il discernimento : 1: Verso il gusto di Dio, 2: Come rimanere con Cristo, Lipa, Roma, 2009, p. 33-34)

But in order that life should be a story or romance to us, it is necessary that a great part of it, at any rate, should be settled for us without our permission.
[…]
A man has control over many things in his life; he has control over enough things to be the hero of a novel. But if he had control over everything, there would be so much hero that there would be no novel. And the reason why the lives of the rich are at bottom so tame and uneventful is simply that they can choose the events.

(GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON, Heretics, Lindau, Turin, 2010, p. 155)