January 30, 2022 - Pastor Message
November 21, 2024SYNODALITY: LISTENING TO THE HOLY SPIRIT TOGETHER
SYNODALITY: LISTENING TO THE HOLY SPIRIT TOGETHER
“Whoever has ears ought to hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Revelation 2:7).
In last week’s column, I reflected on the Holy Spirit and how the Spirit works out our salvation in the world. I stressed the importance of listening for the Spirit’s often subtle promptings, so easily drowned out by the noise that surrounds us. While the Spirit can make himself known in dramatic ways sometimes, like the raging wind and tongues of flame at Pentecost (Acts 2:14), he more often speaks in the silence we read of in 1 Kings 19:11-13, as he appears to the prophet Elijah. The task for us is to develop the inner ears to hear the Spirit in that silence.
Left to our own devices, this can be a daunting, even impossible task. It is far too easy to mistake our own voice, our own preferences and desires, for the voice of the Spirit and to mistake our will for his. We need a sounding board against which to test the spirits we are hearing and to sort out which are of the Holy Spirit and which are not. This is one of the chief purposes for actively participating in a faith community (i.e. the Church), so that by listening together we can more assuredly hear and more faithfully respond to the promptings of God’s Spirit.
We call this process of listening and responding to the Spirit together “synodality.” This is largely an informal process, happening all the time, in which our encounters with the Spirit in and through the Church (Mass and the sacraments, prayer and Scripture, the teachings of the bishops) help enlighten our personal encounters with the Spirit, and our personal encounters with the Spirit help inform the celebration of the sacraments and prayer and the Church’s teachings on Scripture and doctrine. However, at certain times, it also takes on a more formal structure, led by the shepherds of the Church, the bishops, in union with the chief shepherd, the pope, through a process called the “synod of bishops.”
Pope Francis has called such a synod, which has already begun and is scheduled to formally culminate in a meeting of the world’s bishops next year. He has invited the whole Church around the world to participate, reflecting the subject of this synod, synodality itself. He has asked us all to reflect deeply on the working of the Holy Spirit in the Church today and to share our own insights, as well as to listen to the insights of others, through this formal process. Three fellow parishioners have stepped forward to lead the process here at St. Boniface: Rosanne Jaworski, Marty Kosiorek, and Jeanne Yaple. They will host a number of listening sessions, the results of which will then be compiled and sent to the diocese, who will incorporate them into a diocesan report to be sent to the synod via the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. While I cannot guarantee the outcome of this process, nor any possible changes, the process itself is what is most important as it refocuses the entire Church, and each of us as individual disciples of Christ, on the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. I hope you will consider participating in the listening sessions, and may our renewed focus on the Spirit lead us together to more fully and more faithfully carry out God’s will.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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