What Do You Really Want? St. Ignatius Loyola and the Art of Discernment

What should I do?

We ask the question when we pray. We ask it when we run out of answers to our problems. We ask it when we face big decisions. We ask it when we get out of bed in the morning: How should I live this day as well as I can?

We can find answers through learning the art of discernment-the wisdom that enables us to see and interpret the leading of the Holy Spirit as it is manifested in the inner lives of our hearts. The great master of this art was St. Ignatius Loyola, author of The Spiritual Exercises, who believed that the ability to discern the spirits is one of the most important skills a Christian could have. Ignatius believed that the answer to the question "What Should I Do?" is found in the shifting sea of feelings, insights, leadings, and intuitions of our affective lives.

What Do You Really Want? shows us how to understand these emotions and use what we learn to make the choices that best serve God and bring his love to the people in our lives. It shows the truth of one of Ignatius's greatest insights-that when we find what we really want, we find what God wants too, because the deepest desires of our hearts were placed there by God.