Objective:
The middle school youth will develop a deeper desire to seek counsel from God to guide the path of their lives.
Overview:
One of the greatest signs of God’s love for us is in our free will. As it says in Sirach, “When God, in the beginning, created man, he made him subject to his own free choice” (15:14). With that freedom comes the responsibility to live our lives in a way that is pleasing to God. Sirach continues:
If you choose you can keep the commandments; it is loyalty to do his will. There are set before you fire and water; to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand. Before man are life and death, whichever he chooses shall be given him. Immense is the wisdom of the LORD; he is mighty in power, and all-seeing. The eyes of God see all he has made; he understands man’s every deed. No man does he command to sin, to none does he give strength for lies (15:16-20).
The gift of counsel allows us to be open to the inspiration and guidance of God and the Holy Spirit. It helps us to discern how to apply or live out our relationship with Christ in specific situations. Often times it is there simply to remind us what we already know, and that is that God is with us and he wants to help us. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains how we use the gift of counsel in union with our free will:
God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. “God willed that man should be ‘left in the hand of his own counsel,’ so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him” (1730).
Through a healthy, balanced faith life that is rooted in prayerful solitude we can begin to place all things in the context of God’s divine love. The gift of counsel allows us to think clearly and simply when we need to figure out where the spirit is leading us.
[…] In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will.” We ask insistently for this loving plan to be fully realized on earth as it is already in heaven (CCC: 2823).