How do we know the mind of God? The Book of Wisdom puts it plainly: “Who can know God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the Lord intends?” (Wisdom 9:13). It’s a question that at first feels too lofty, too mysterious. But what if we brought it closer home? How do I know God’s mind in my own life, in this very season I am living, in this relationship I find myself in?
God loves surprises. The Lord’s ways do not follow our maps, and often God’s path leaves us scratching our heads in wonder. Yet that mystery is also the joy of it, the puzzle that makes discernment both thrilling and humbling.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s Example
Think of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. The year was 1521, and the proud young soldier lay bedridden in his family’s castle, his leg shattered by a cannonball at the Battle of Pamplona. His dreams of glory on the battlefield had collapsed along with his bones. Now he had nothing but time and his love for reading.
Ignatius devoured every book he could get his hands on, especially the chivalric tales of knights and romance. But soon, he ran out of novels. Desperate for something, anything to read, he asked for more. The only books available were the lives of the saints and a thick volume titled “The Life of Christ” by Ludolph of Saxony, hardly his preferred genre.
Yet God was at work in the ordinary. What seemed like “second best” became the door to something greater. The stories of Christ and the saints stirred something deeper in him. When he thought about heroic soldiers and knights, he felt a surge of excitement. Nonetheless, when he imagined following Christ like the saints, his heart found lasting peace. Slowly, through that contrast, God revealed a new path.
Sometimes, what is merely available becomes what is needed. God’s strange ways often come disguised in the ordinary.
From that recovery bed, Ignatius began his lifelong journey of discernment. His famous Spiritual Exercises were born from these early discoveries, realizations that God’s will is often unveiled when we let go of our clutter, our pride, and our obsession with control.
Spiritual Writers Shed Light
The great spiritual writers all seem to agree: discovering God’s mind requires a kind of detachment. Not indifference, but freedom from whatever clouds our spirit, whether it’s possessions, ambitions, or the endless noise that fills our hearts. Those could also be the fear of losing out (FOMO), feeling abandoned, or losing an attachment that feels pleasurable but is not good for us.
Jesus himself taught this way of renunciation, a path to true freedom, in Luke 14:25-33, using shocking examples, namely, detachment from even parents, children, siblings, and family, plus a load of cross on top. How on earth could one bear such detachment and surrender?
Modern Saints Example
And in our own times, many are luminous witnesses to this truth as they leave behind possessions and attachments to serve God and be a blessing to many. The saints canonized today,
Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati, the first saints canonized in the pontificate of Pope Leo XIV, shine as young examples of listening to God amid the noise of modern life, whether in the midst of the industrial revolution of Pier Giorgio’s time or the digital revolution of Carlo’s. Like Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who emptied herself to be filled with God and walked the alleys of poverty with a peace that came only from Him, these two young men show us that holiness is lived in the concrete.
At her canonization in 2016, Pope Francis called Mother Teresa “a generous dispenser of divine mercy… an emblematic figure of womanhood and of consecrated life.” In a similar spirit, Pope Leo reminded us that Pier Giorgio and Carlo point us upwards, urging us not to squander our lives but to make them masterpieces. As he said in today’s homily: “Saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces.”
Try It
So perhaps the invitation for you and me today is simple: if you feel uncertain of God’s will, start by letting go of the things that clutter your heart. Those make hearing God’s voice dimmer by day. You already know what they are, don’t you? The noise. The distractions. The burdens that keep you restless. Begin there, and space will open for God’s voice. Try it!
The light of God’s face is already shining. The question is: can we quiet ourselves enough to notice?
I pray that we find the peace our souls thirst. Amen.
God love you. God bless you.
