Everyone has experienced coming to a crossroads in their life. We’re all familiar with the feeling of having to decide between two different directions our lives could go--two different visions of our future. How do we pick between them? How do we know which one is the “right” path to take? St Ignatius of Loyola encountered this very problem when he awoke to his heart for the first time at the age of thirty.

He was given the grace to see how his two different visions, portraying two possible directions his life could take, were fundamentally different from each other. He discovered that only one of these visions--one of these paths--led to his True Heart, and the fulfillment of his inner-most desires.

That is what this ten-week course, True Heart, has been designed by Sacred Story Institute to do for discerning a diocesan priestly vocation. In the course of a ten-week set of spiritual exercises, you will come to understand your True Heart. In doing so, you will approach your own crossroads and be able to discern with greater clarity and confidence.

Armed with prayer and encouraged by peace, you will be able to face whatever crossroads life has in store for you knowing your True Heart--your heart created by God and for God. As St. Augustine said: Our Heart are restless till they rest in Thee!

It is important to note that nearly half the allotted time for spiritual exercises is simply designed for unhooking from technology. This is so individuals can start to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit in their hearts. Why is that important?

Listen to the words of Pope Francis: It has become counter-cultural to choose a lifestyle whose goals are even partly independent of technology, of its costs and its power to globalize and make us all the same. Technology tends to absorb everything into its ironclad logic, and those who are surrounded with technology “know full well that it moves forward in the final analysis neither for profit nor for the well-being of the human race”, that “in the most radical sense of the term power is its motive – a lordship over all.”

As a result, our capacity for making decisions, a more genuine freedom and the space for each one’s alternative creativity are diminished.

True Heart: A Way to Selflessness is a journey worth taking. For those of you who undertake it wholeheartedly, it will turn out to be a marvelous, spiritually life-giving adventure and most likely help you discover is Christ is calling you to His priesthood.

These spiritual exercises are indeed a treasure map to a treasure buried in the field of your innermost self--where we all find our true vocation. That treasure, placed there by God in whose Image we have been created, is the gift of Christ’s peace experienced both in time and for all eternity.

BE NOT AFRAID!