How do you know when God is speaking to you? Even in times of prayer, we can wonder if our thoughts and convictions are coming from the Lord or from somewhere else. I like to think of the "three voices" we can hear: (1) the voice of the Lord, (2) the voice of the Enemy, and (3) our own voice. Discernment is vitally important in prayer when following a voice, conviction, desire, feeling, or thought. The Church's teachings, Scripture, the Sacraments, and a life of prayer help us discern well. Simply put, we are to accept the Lord's voice, reject the Enemy's voice, and bring our own voice to prayer and discernment to clarify whether the movement in our heart comes from the Lord or not.

In his memoir, Gift and Mystery: On the Fiftieth Anniversary of My Priestly Ordination, St. John Paul II wrote, "There can be no Eucharist without the priesthood, just as there can be no priesthood without the Eucharist." We may think more about the first part of the quote in relation to the need for more priestly vocations to bring us the Eucharist, but the second part of the quote reveals more fundamentally that we would have no priests at all without the priesthood of Jesus Christ and His Eucharistic offering of Himself. Indeed, the Sacramental power of the priesthood comes from Christ who instituted the priesthood with His own authority to bestow grace upon His Church.

We had a professor at the seminary who would always tell us, “Everybody has something to bring to the party.” He was talking about the presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling in all of us so that each of us always has something to offer.

Everything in our Scriptures today points to staying focused on God amidst suffering, evil, and violence. While Elijah prays on the mountain, there are strong winds, an earthquake, and fire. Finally, he hears the voice of the Lord in a tiny whispering sound. God doesn't speak in the violence of the wind, earth, or fire, but in the quiet of prayer. It is the evil one who speaks through violence as a distraction to get our attention on the mess he is causing rather than on the peaceful and powerful work of God.