Monday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time
Luke 11:29-32
When I was in my thirties, my pastor asked me if I’d ever considered the permanent diaconate. I said no. In my forties, another priest asked me the same question. I looked into it a little but didn’t take it seriously. Then, in my fifties, I began to feel unsettled. I’d gotten a lot of education, including a degree in theology, but didn’t know how to use it to serve the Church. After a Mass at the Cathedral in downtown Chicago, I met with a priest and told him my struggle. He listened, then asked me if I’d ever considered the diaconate.
I laughed and said, “You’re the third priest in my life who’s asked me that.”
He looked at me and said, “Let me get this straight: You’re looking for a way to serve the Church, and I’m the third priest who’s asked you about the diaconate?”
At that moment, I thought of today’s Gospel. I was looking for a sign — imagining a moment, a feeling, something that fit my expectations. But God had already been speaking to me. Three times! I couldn’t hear it because I had decided in advance what His guidance should look like.
Recognizing the sign didn’t mean I could skip discernment or assume that every coincidence was a command from God. I still had to pray, reflect, seek counsel, and examine whether this path would truly serve God and the Church. Nor did it mean I was wrong to hesitate or feel uncertain.
What it meant was that signs aren’t a substitute for discernment. They’re an invitation to it.
Of course, discernment requires a lot of prayer, but it must be done with the right frame of mind and a great deal of humility. There’s a huge difference between praying, “Lord, help me to recognize Your will,” and praying, “Lord, give me the sign I’m looking for.” Prayer is about openness to the will of Almighty God, not control over it.
In the same way, faith includes trust and obedience, but not to the point that it’s blind or irrational. Faith involves reason, prayer, and a free response to God. He welcomes our honest questions, but asks us to remain open to His answers — even when they arrive differently than we expected.
So that raises the question: Are we overlooking the signs God has already made present? What could those be? Where do we look? Remember that the Holy Spirit can guide us through prayer, conscience, and spiritual inspirations, but also through other people, Scripture, and the circumstances of our lives. Not every coincidence is a message, and not every desire is God’s will. But perhaps there are conversations we keep remembering, opportunities to use gifts we’ve neglected, invitations we keep dismissing, or people who see something in us that we don’t see in ourselves. These may be worth bringing to prayer. God may be inviting us to look more closely at what has been right in front of us.
So then, let us continue to pray, ask questions, seek wise counsel, and discern with care. And let us never assume – as I once did – that God’s answer must look exactly as we’ve imagined.
May our prayer be not only, “Lord, give me a sign,” but also, “Give me eyes to recognize the signs you have already given.”
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