Catholic · Emmaus course
More Than a Decision: Discernment and Human Development for Helping Professionals
Listening, Growth, and the Movements of the Heart
Earn 1.0 NBCC clock hour and gain a whole-person, developmental way to help clients hear the deeper question beneath a major life decision.
NBCC CE · 1 clock hour · Human Growth and Development (HGD)
With Fr. Robert Presutti, LC and Fr. John Pietropaoli, LC
- Length
- 1 hr
- Lessons
- 1
- Level
- Intermediate
- Version
- Catholic
- Price
- Free
a whole-person, developmental way to sit with a client stuck at a crossroads, one that reads the deeper question under the surface decision instead of refereeing a pros-and-cons list.
About this course
Discernment isn't picking A or B. It's a relationship of listening — and it keeps growing.
Learn why a client's growth doesn't remove their struggles — it changes their shape — and how to read that shift.
One focused lesson, about an hour, on a single reframe you can use with your next client.
Who this course is for
Licensed counselors
A licensed counselor is not shopping for theology; they are hiring this course to do two jobs at once — earn a clock hour that is actually worth the hour, and walk away with a way of working they can use with a real client on Monday.
Also for Pastoral professionals and spiritual directors.
From the course syllabus
Most clients who arrive at a crossroads describe it as a choice between two options and a fear of picking wrong. This short, practical lesson from a Divine Mercy University faculty panel reframes that moment from the ground up. Discernment, the instructors argue, is not first a technique for deciding; it is a living relationship of listening and response to God, and it grows over a lifetime. Along the way learners meet a genuinely developmental insight with real clinical use: as a person matures, temptation itself changes shape, becoming quieter and more spiritual, so that the pride or vanity troubling an advanced person looks nothing like its coarse beginnings. The material is grounded in the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person and in the discernment tradition of Ignatius of Loyola, John of the Cross, Augustine, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Learners leave with a whole-person, stage-sensitive way to sit with someone in transition and to hear the deeper question beneath a surface decision.
Curriculum
-
Module 1
More Than a Decision: Discernment and Human Development for Helping Professionals
- 1.Lesson: Discernment as Relationship: Listening, Growth, and the Movements of the Heart
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