A pivotal part of every hero’s journey in life is hearing the call to action and responding.
We all face this discernment. Promptings and desires surge out of nowhere during our life, and we hope that what is beckoning to us is that call.
It’s anything but simple.
There always seem to be competing voices and variations on the call. We know there are false voices that come to confuse us and lead us off our heroic path, but can we tell which voice is which? Can we sort out God’s voice from the noise?
And how can we be sure we’re hearing things correctly? We might think, “Am I just making this up? Do I only think this because I secretly want it to be my calling?” Or maybe we think we are only doing something because we know others expect it of us.
Then, what do we do when we’re into the heart of our calling and suddenly everything goes dark?
We question everything we thought we knew about our mission and wonder where we took a wrong turn.
When asking ourselves these questions of discernment, we looked to Fr. Dwight Longenecker, author of Immortal Combat and expert on spiritual battle and the role we play in it. Fr. Dwight talks on our podcast about how to approach the call we each have intrinsically within us. He stresses that often the first step is to admit that we don’t have all the answers and reminds us that every call starts with the nudges and inclinations of our heart.
We start the conversation with an overview of Immortal Combat, looking at the surprise nature of every heroic calling. He shows us how we’re just a mindset shift away from countering all the toxic virtue signaling and corresponding shaming that increasingly define our society today.
This episode is the first installment of a new series called The Heroic Journey. Over the next five episodes we’ll explore how we discern a calling, form allies, battle through trials and tribulations, confront our mortal enemy, and return victorious to do it all again.
