As we enter these final days of Advent journeying with Mary towards Bethlehem, it is a wonderful time to seek to take on Mary's attitudes of listening, receptivity, and wholehearted embrace of God's will.
A wonderful free little app, Discern It! is a novena that provides the perfect atmosphere for deepening your vocational discernment, to understand how God is calling you to love. Discern It! gives you the opportunity to:
◊ Focus your mind, energy, and time on God for nine days.
◊ Do something daily to help you discover God’s plan for your life.
◊ Learn how to be more open to the gifts God wants to give you.
◊ Find out ways to move past the hurdles in discernment.
◊ Grow in your intimacy with God.
Continue Your Discernment with Trust
A novena naturally builds a special intimacy with God—and it’s the perfect atmosphere for deepening your vocational discernment.
The entire novena is structured so that, by the end, you can take a step forward in your discernment, no matter where you were when you started. The purpose of a novena isn’t to have an answer or solution at the end of nine days—especially for something as precious as your vocation that needs to gently unfold.
Ideally, we pray a novena to purify our desire to do God’s will, as well as to nurture an openness to what the Lord wants to give us. The materials in this novena are offered so that you can grow in this openness to God’s will and gifts.
Deepen Your Vocational Discernment
The novena in Discern It! is set up with four elements to use each day to deepen our vocational discernment:
- A beautiful invitation from Jesus
- A Scripture passage in which we can receive God’s light and guidance on our spiritual journey of drawing closer to him, along with a reflection geared specifically for those discerning their vocation
- Journal questions that can help us to grow in our self-knowledge and discernment
- Suggested concrete actions we can take each day
In addition, a series of short interviews by Daughter of Saint Paul Sr. Margaret Michael, an experienced vocation director, offers practical insights for your discernment.
May your last days of Advent be richly blessed, and may Christmas be a season of discovering the Lord's "coming" into your life and your heart. We will remember you in our prayers during these beautiful days!
