St Athanasius and Discernment

Today of course we celebrate first friday of the month

but also a memorial of saint Athanasius bishop and doctor of the church especially

um renovated in the eastern um right today um very interesting reading from

the acts of the apostle the well-known um and the famous teacher of the Shalom Gamaliel,

who is very much respected by the people, and he begins to speak in ways that

I guess are surprising to those who are listening to him.

Basically, he's giving us a lesson about how to approach confusing situations

or situations that we don't know how to tackle,

things that are unknown to us that can be tricky, that we don't know if are good or bad.

We don't know what can come out of it.

And he's urging his fellow men and those who are judging the disciples to wait,

first of all, and then to discern the spirits in a sense.

We know this from the Jesuit spirituality about the discernment of spirits to

follow and notice certain characteristics.

What are the fruits of this possible decision or what can be the fruits?

But it's very important for all of us to approach situations that are yet unknown

to us, but promise some good with discernment.

To be just like Him, to remember that God sometimes challenges us with new things

that we don't know yet, that we are not comfortable with,

and yet it may be His will so that we don't find ourselves as,

Gamaliel says, fighting God.

And that's how it is sometimes, you know, when the church is persecuted,

and we see it in the lives of the apostles from today's reading,

when the laws of the church are being challenged, that's nothing new for us.

But what these people don't understand, these who are attacking the laws,

those who are pushing for contrary agendas, What they don't understand is that

they may be fighting the Creator themselves.

And unfortunately, within the church, we obviously have a division,

just like political divisions of the progressives and the conservatives,

and sometimes it goes to the extremes.

And we find ourselves on opposite sides of our fellow Christians, Catholics.

It's never good for the church.

And it's very important for us to exactly discern.

We are about to get a new pope elected and we all have our opinions about who

we want, what kind of pope we want.

I don't know, the longer I am a priest, the less I'm interested in,

to be honest with you, of who the pope is going to be.

As long as he's going to be a man of prayer and of holiness and he will have

the good will, which I believe he will, to lead the church according to the mind of Christ.

And all divisions that are being created oftentimes by media,

by things said of cough, all kinds of things affect us.

And we have to be careful what we do with it because we may spend a whole entire

pontificate on fighting for opinions instead of growing ourselves in holiness.

And I think there is only one who is interested in the fact that we should waste

our time on fighting instead of growing in holiness, and that's Satan himself.

We don't want to serve him. We want to serve Jesus, and Jesus comes to us in

the Eucharist, which is a sign supposedly for us of unity.