Easter 2026 - Reading #33 - Counsel
Reading
Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium, speaks of the role of counsel in the life of the Church and the individual Christian: "Realities are more important than ideas. This principle has to do with incarnation of the word and its being put into practice. There is also a constant tension between ideas and realities, since ideas are elaborated to take account of, explain, and guide reality. But without being connected and applied to reality, ideas can become disengaged from it and can give rise to idealisms and nominalisms."
Francis continues: "The principle of reality also requires us to resist the temptation of reducing everything to a plan, a program, a set of rules. The Spirit blows where it wills. Discernment always takes place in the presence of the Lord, looking at the signs of the times, listening to the things that happen, the feelings of the people, especially the poor. Discernment is not a solitary exercise. It happens in community, in dialogue, in the patient listening that characterizes the people of God."
For Francis, the gift of counsel is inherently practical and communal. It does not operate in the abstract but in the concrete, in response to real situations, real people, real needs. And it comes not through isolated reflection but through dialogue, listening, and attentiveness to where the Spirit is already at work.
Reflection
Thirty-four days into Easter. Francis provides the principle that prevents counsel from becoming mere theorizing: "Realities are more important than ideas." The gift of counsel does not operate in a vacuum of abstract reasoning. It operates in the messy, complicated, unpredictable reality of actual human life, your actual marriage, your actual work situation, your actual community, with its actual problems and possibilities.
This is a necessary corrective for anyone who tends to over-spiritualize decision-making. The gift of counsel does not ask you to wait for a vision or a mystical experience. It asks you to pay attention to reality, to the signs of the times, the needs of the people around you, the circumstances God has placed you in. Often, the Spirit's counsel comes not as a voice in prayer but as the unavoidable reality of what is right in front of you: the job that needs doing, the person who needs help, the obvious next step that you have been avoiding because it is not glamorous enough to feel like divine guidance.
As we close this week of counsel, let the gift settle into practical life. You have been building an extraordinary spiritual toolkit over these five weeks: awe, intimacy, clarity, strength, and now guidance. These are not theoretical capacities; they are meant to be used. In the remaining two weeks before Pentecost, the gifts of understanding and wisdom will complete the picture. But counsel is the gift that bridges the interior and the exterior, that takes what the Spirit has been building inside you and directs it outward into the decisions and actions of daily life. Use it.