Praise be Jesus and Mary, today we celebrate the Marian feast of Our Lady of Mother of Good Council who's venerated at the Augustinian sanctuary dedicated to her in Genazzano, Italy, which is just outside of Rome. In Proverbs 15-22 we read, without council plans go wrong, but with many advisors or counselors they succeed. So why is Our Lady called the Mother of Good Council? Well for one, she's the Mother of Our Lord whom the prophet Isaiah calls the Wonderful Counselor in Isaiah 9 verse 6, plus as St. Francis of Assisi teaches us, she's also the spouse of the Holy Spirit. Our Lord calls the Holy Spirit the Counselor.
In John 14 and John 16 and one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit is that gift of counsel which the Spirit gave to Mary, his spouse, in superabundance. It's one of those many special wedding gifts that He gave to her. And Mary's counsel, as we heard in the Gospel, do whatever He, Jesus, tells you, John 2 verse 5. Her counsel is very similar to that of God the Father, who on Mount Tabor told the three apostles, this is My beloved Son, listen to Him, Matthew 17 verse 5. So in their counsel both Our Lady and the Heavenly Father point to their Son and they tell us to listen to Him, to live as He tells us to live. 
What's the Son's main counsel, His main advice to us? Well you can essentially read it in the Sermon on the Mount, chapter 6, where we read, seek first His kingdom, meaning the kingdom of God, and His righteousness and everything else you need will be given to you as well. Verse 33. That's the main counsel of the wonderful Counselor. Put God and His kingdom and His righteousness first. In eternity we won't regret having done that, if we do that now. 
The gift of counsel builds on, or rather it perfects, the virtue of prudence. Prudence means using your reason to do the right things, to make the right choices. So you try to think and try to see the best ways to achieve some goal that you have. The prudent person also reflects on past experiences and studies the circumstances of what they're dealing with now, and with all that you come up with a wise solution. 
One step above that, above the natural virtue of prudence, is the infused virtue of prudence, which helps you to make right choices in view of your supernatural end. So in view of your relationship with God and union with Him in mind. So the infused virtue helps you really to put God first, to learn to do that. The gift of counsel perfects all that. With the gift of counsel it's the Holy Spirit who inspires and motivates you. He speaks to your heart and makes you understand in an instant what needs to be done. The Holy Spirit gives you a supernatural intuition, as it were, and again He helps you to discern promptly and surely what you need to do, especially when there are difficult situations. Plus if we're given charge of guiding others in some capacity, especially being a spiritual guide, the gift of counsel suggests to you in practical ways that you need to conduct yourself and the advice you need to give in order to help others. 
Now counseling itself, so psychological counseling, mental health, is certainly in vogue nowadays. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Anything that helps you to understand why you do what you do and how to unlearn or how to counteract certain faulty thinking or certain bad habits or destructive actions or reactions or certain unhealthy or immature tendencies, anything that helps you to really work on overcoming these things is a good thing. But counseling, one, will always be at best an incomplete solution, and two, frankly, not all counselors are good counselors. Some have a materialistic, relativistic, or atheistic, and anti-transcendental worldview as their foundation. So the advice that they'll give will be at best partially helpful. At worst it could be downright ungodly at times. Proverbs 12.5 says, the thoughts of the righteous are just, the counsels of the wicked are treacherous, and Psalm 1 verse 1 starts off by saying, Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, so beware of bad counselors. 
Good counseling incorporates the reality of the spiritual dimension of the person as well, which means the fact that we're made for Christ. We see that Colossians 1.16, the fact that God's goal for us is to become like him, Romans 8.29, that our destiny is eternal glory and also is eternity and also glory as well. We read that in Romans 2.7, that we have to be faithful to God's commandments if we want to find true happiness and true peace. We read that in John 8 verse 34. So without these basic truths, mental health counseling will again be at best incomplete. At worst it can leave you caged up in a materialistic and relativistic worldview and life view. We have the blessing of being able to turn to Our Lady and ask her in prayer for her counsel. 
What should I ask her about? Well obviously first of all for spiritual things.
How do I fulfill God's will in my life? How do I discern his will? How do I better follow Jesus? How do I free myself from certain sins or certain bad habits or certain bad situations? Whatever is for your spiritual good is what I should first bring to the Mother of Good Counsel. I can even ask her, you know, where was God? Where is God in my struggles? Where was God in my struggles in life? Perfectly legitimate to ask her those things.
Bring your serious questions and struggles to her. The closer you are to her, the closer you stay to her, the more you'll be led and guided by her grace and her wisdom, which truly is a good thing. To guide you into the freedom that Christ her son has for you, what's important is not to give up on the relationship with her. Don't give up on your relationship with her, on your relationship with her son, or on your relationship with the church. 
As a side note, it's really bad counsel when you're being pulled towards heretical or schismatic groups that present themselves as the real church, but in reality they aren't. And there's no heretical or schismatic group that doesn't believe that they're the real church, okay, and doesn't present themselves in that way. Historically, all heretics and schismatics believe that they're the true church, but doesn't make it so. So be careful not only to shun bad psychological counseling, but also bad spiritual counseling too. 
One of the passages that comes to mind here is 1st Corinthians 11 verses 18 and 19, where St. Paul says to the believers in Corinth, he says, I hear that there are divisions among you, and I partly believe it, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized, he says. The Greek word for division that he uses there is schism, where we get the word schism from. The word for factions is heresies, where we get the word heresy from. So it's the heresies and the schisms which divide those who are really followers of Christ, on the one hand, from those who are his followers in name only or only superficially, on the other hand. We'll end the side note there. 
Question, going back to Our Lady's counsel, how about bringing maybe trivial or seemingly trivial things to her? Should I do that? Should I bring things like that to her? Well, I would say this, do what a child who knows that his mother loves them would do. Bring to her what you bring to your mom or would have liked to have brought to your mom when you were growing up. Whatever is important in the child's eyes becomes important in a good mother's eyes as well, too. So if nothing else, Our Lady will help you to understand when trivial things really are trivial and aren't worth a lot of your attention. Plus, the counsel of a loving mother is usually softened and sweetened more easily to more easily reach the heart of their child, not just the head. You have to speak to the head, yes, but you also have to speak to the heart, too. As a mother of good counsel, Our Lady knows how to do that. So again, as the mother of good counsel, we should ask her for counsel, but we also need to be able to receive it, too.
We have to be receptive. We have to learn how to listen. Prayer, since it's a relationship, isn't about just talking and asking always for things. Prayer also means learning how to listen to God, how to listen to Our Lady as well. In the Office of Readings every morning, the Invitatory Psalm, Psalm 95, we hear today, listen to the voice of the Lord. Verse 7. 
How do you listen to God? We'll close with this. One, ask Him for help to do that. Ask Him for help to learn how to listen if you have trouble listening to Him. Two, learn to be quiet, interiorly and exteriorly, so you can be better open to listening to God. And three, very simply, give your attention to God. Give your attention to Him at Mass, in prayer, when reading scripture or catechism or other spiritual reading. If you do these very simple things, you'll begin to hear His voice and you'll understand better how He's leading you and how He's speaking to you. 
Lastly, literally lastly, let's not forget the very simple, very important counsel. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus and Mary. Not fixed on others, not fixed on life's problems or successes, not fixed on ourselves, not fixed on the latest YouTube video that just came out. Let's keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and Mary. Let's do that through thick and thin, through better or worse, in sickness and in health, till death when we hopefully will be united with them for all eternity. Praise be Jesus and Mary now and forever.