Sisters and brothers in Christ, in today's Gospel (9/6), Jesus gives us the model for discernment. "Jesus departed to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God." In other words, he disconnected from the world so as not to be distracted by the world and then prayed to God, all night.
Many of us spend sleepless nights, tossing and turning, as streams of thoughts and decisions race through our minds. Few of us ever stop to say a prayer, asking God into those areas of uncertainty and indecisiveness and ask Him for wisdom and clarity. For some of us, we think to ourselves, there is a simple solution, I just need to figure out what it is for myself. In the mean time, we lose sleep but, most of all, we lose peace.
After spending the night in prayer to his Father in heaven, Jesus was ready in the morning to make the most important decision - who would be his apostles, the people he would entrust to shepherd his flock. This is discernment because it is decision-making that includes prayer to God for his guidance. We can never go wrong with prayerful discernment and, best of all, we do not lose sleep nor peace because God is present with us.
. . .
Jesus departed to the mountain to pray,
and he spent the night in prayer to God.
When day came, he called his disciples to himself,
and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles:
Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew,
James, John, Philip, Bartholomew,
Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus,
Simon who was called a Zealot,
and Judas the son of James,
and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
And he came down with them and stood on a stretch of level ground.
A great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the people
from all Judea and Jerusalem
and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon
came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases;
and even those who were tormented by unclean spirits were cured.
Everyone in the crowd sought to touch him
because power came forth from him and healed them all.
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