SO GOOD QUOTES

Think about how many times you believed that something was a sign from God; what if it wasn’t? And then people who think that they have these signs – I’m not saying that they never do – but that haven’t had them discerned, they’re the first ones to get angry and lose faith after because they’ll say, “no, God gave me a sign and when I did it I got screwed over. I’m so mad.” or they’ll say, “it’s all fake” or “you know what, everyone’s making it up because I thought I had signs and it turned out it was nothing. so all these people are claiming that they have signs must all be lying too.” The devil is not an idiot; he knows how to set you up for exactly what it is that he needs for you to fall and for you to renounce everything. That discernment is necessary, and it doesn’t mean that the discerner is going to know this is God or this is not God every time, but as somebody who knows the voice of God, this sounds like or isn’t; let’s be cautious. Is this routed in the Gospel, is this rooted in the elders, is this rooted in the teachings? Is it safe? We’ll proceed with caution, it maybe that it is it maybe that it isn’t. 

There’s another who might be able to immediately know. There’s people who have the gift of discernment and there are others who have to learn it, but the point is that you are entrusting it with someone else so that you are in the safe, that you are in the clear because it’s not theory, it is reality to those people.

—Fr. Antony Paul