Who can ever learn the will of God? Human reason is not adequate for the task, and our philosophies tend to mislead us, because our mortal bodies weigh our souls down. The body is a temporary structure made of earth, a burden to the active mind. All we can do is make guesses about things on earth; we must struggle to learn about things that are close to us. Who, then, can ever hope to understand heavenly things? Who has ever learned your will, unless you first gave him wisdom, and sent your holy spirit down to him? In this way people on earth have been set on the right path, have learned what pleases you, and have been kept safe by wisdom. (Wisdom 9,13-18)

As you can see these words are not mine, but come directly from the Book of Wisdom. If you recognize yourself in these questions, you are clearly in good company. The believer’s foundation is to recognize God’s will, and St. Francis was one of the living examples of this: “Lord what do You want me to do.” His life embodied both the urgent need to understand the will of the Lord and the fullness derived from finding and fulfilling it. Yet recognizing God’s will in our lives doesn’t seem to be easy, at least not for me. Over the years —especially thanks to help of who was ahead on the journey (Fr. Max, my spiritual guide)— I learned to recognize some peculiar features of His will, some specific ways the Lord uses in practice to reveal Himself in the lives of people, and especially in mine!

Listening is the primary ingredient to understand Him: listening to the Word of God and to its resonance in the deepest part of ourselves (our consciousness). The passage of Wisdom quoted above points the way: Who has ever learned your will, unless you first gave him wisdom, and sent your Holy Spirit down to him? Therefore listening is based on prayer and meditation over the Holy Spirit.

On my path, and thanks to Fr. Max, I discovered there are three aspects that are necessary in order to recognize God’s will (all three are required, but not necessarily in this order).

1. Concrete facts

This is often the first condition I recognize: concrete facts. Here we are talking about practical things. Let’s say you want to date a girl, Monica. Monica now lives in another country, you have rarely met her, you have different interests (which makes meeting her even more difficult), but above all… she is dating someone else! (… and maybe they even set the wedding date). Now, you can be very attracted to Monica, and for some reasons you may have understood she is the girl you want to court… however, facts clearly say that you’re making a blunder! Let’s imagine, instead, you are interested to work in a certain field. With not much effort you meet the right people —in fact it seems these people come towards you—, opportunities arise by themselves, it is confirmed in the Word of God and you have a sense of peace in all this… maybe this could be the right direction! For example, although there were more than 700 miles between Alessandra and me, we randomly met more than five times in Assisi during the year before we started dating… when you say God-incidences…

2. The Word of God

This example brings us to the second point: confirmation by the Word of God. In fact, once dating, a great discouragement immediately arose because of the many differences (and miles) between us. The Word of God came to our aid by simply going to church and listening to the Gospel of the day:

Because you say so, I will let down the nets (Luke 5,5)

These words clearly resonated in both of us: “This is My work, not yours, so go ahead! In your life you have always fished your own way, and you got nothing. Trust me this time!”. Without this help I think we would have given up right away from the beginning. From this I learnt a great lesson. I understood that every thought of my heart and every project I picture needs to be examined and inspected through the Word of God. Before leaving for France in 2007, I was very concerned and stressed, since I really didn’t want to leave my hometown, Rome. But a word ripped through the lies of my heart: those who want to save their lives will lose them (!). This was the very thing I had in my heart: the fear of leaving what was familiar to me for something I didn’t know (and which also turned out to be pretty hard).

3. The confirmation of the spiritual guide

All this must finally be inspected by the spiritual guide… you shouldn’t mess around with others’ lives, but neither with your own! In Rome we would say “four eyes are better than two”, but above all it is important to understand whose are these extra eyes. The spiritual guide has to be someone who has much experience with the Lord because he spent much time with Him. Once you have found this trusted person, open your heart to him, with no reservation: only then he will be able to help you. Otherwise it could even become counterproductive. You’ll see how his advices will help you to see situations under a different light, and to perceive a greater perspective on your path. In addition, the spiritual guide will push you to get involved in situations you would have gladly avoided! Here is the fundamental point of having a guide: obedience. When Fr. Max told me to go to visit Mimmo and Cynthia in order for me to understand what a Christian family is, I absolutely didn’t want to go… but there I then clearly realized I should court Alessandra. Having seen how it turned out, it’s clear that God rewards those who submit to obedience!

Once these three aspects are verified, what gives you the confirmation that you are on the right track? Peace. When you do the will of God you are in peace. This is the ultimate test that confirms and encourages. Any decision that brings worry, stress or anger is not of God. Where there is peace, there is God. This doesn’t mean situations are necessarily simple… for us living in Strasbourg was very hard, but we were in peace knowing that that was our moment of difficulty. Giving up everything and going back home would have brought us nothing but worries.

The understanding of God’s will requires prayer and discernment. It requires time and prudence. His will upon us is all-encompassing. This is why discernment is based on more points; if all the points confirm our intuition then we can go on and make choices in that direction (always with prudence and gradualness). It is clear that we must be always cautious in discernment, and I don’t mean to provide a handyman manual with this post, don’t even think about it! As it was for St. Francis too, we can understand God’s will only little by little: it is a mystery that is revealed slowly. When St. Francis heard “Go and repair my house, which as you see is brought to desolation”, this was referred to the whole Church, not the small church of St Damiano that he had in front of him.

Finally, I conclude with a blessing, wishing the path may become clearer: