Encouraging the Culture of Encounter with Jesus Christ, His Church, and All People

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Don’t forget to keep praying that St. Paul Novena!
Even though I am out of town, I am praying it with you!

Synod on Synodality: Communion, Participation, Mission
We continue our discussion as we prepare for the Synodal Listening Session to be held at St. Paul.  Dates are forthcoming but will be later February and into March.  One may ask why all this preparation time?  Well, I want people to know what it is we are trying to accomplish in the sessions. Because of its potential spiritual fruit, it deserves proper preparation rather than throwing it all at everyone at the meeting itself.  Plus, proper preparation means the meetings will be more gracefully efficient in order to respect everyone’s time. 

Here are some other sources you may want to explore.
https://www.dioceseofcleveland.org/synod
https://www.usccb.org/synod

So, what is this Synod thing?
Our listening sessions will be an exercise in “communal discernment.”  Think of this process like a father calling a family meeting.  In this meeting, dad gives some basic guidelines but says, “I want you to go and reflect on this and come up with ideas and resolutions that will help the family.  Afterward I’ll give some comments and directives, but I want to hear how you discern God is calling our family forward.”  Another analogy could be a football team.  There are coaches in the booth watching from on high, but rather than dictating the plays, they allow the team to huddle and design some new plays based on their own experience and the conditions on the ground.  The huddle breaks and the team executes the plays to see how they work.
Everyone is given an opportunity to share in this communal discernment. We are the ones “on the ground” and the Holy Spirit gives His gifts according to His will to everyone throughout the church.  These gifts are meant to build up the communion of the Church, thus they must be ordered accordingly in their communal dimension.

What is discernment?
In the classical Catholic Tradition, “discernment of spirits” has a rich history.  In a spiritual context, discernment is not just pondering a decision.  Non-Christians and even atheists can prudently decide on a course of action.  For Christians, discernment is focused on fulfilling the will of God, for in His will is our good.  Discernment thus means knowing Jesus Christ as the Son of God and welcoming the Holy Spirit into our hearts by grace.  This leads us to cooperate more and more with that grace in order to fulfill the will of God in our lives. 

Due to our fallen nature, sin clouds one’s intellect and weakens the will.  Even after Baptism we know all too well our tendency to sin.  This is the influence of the “evil spirit.” Classically this evil spirit is known as “the flesh, the world, or the devil.” The “flesh” means our unruly passions that too often guide us toward sin rather than following God’s law. The “world” refers to the outside influences that tempt us away from God. The “devil” means the devil - the real devil, not some clown with red tights and a pitchfork.  Mysteriously, God’s Providence allows these evil spirits to still have influence in the world.  Our call is to wrestle, run the race as St. Paul says, and fight past the entanglements that can trap us.  This is possible only with God’s grace which we receive in prayer, the sacraments, and doing the works of mercy. 

So, in prayer we want to develop our ability to discern the spirits well.  Sometimes this discernment is easy.  When we are tempted to skip Mass or steal or gossip or anything else we know in the moment goes against God’s commandment of love, we know it is wrong - discernment is done.  Now actually choosing to follow the right path in that moment might be difficult, but there is nothing further to discern.  But what about other situations where the action called for is not as clear cut?  When does my support of a family member become enabling of sin? When it is right for me to admonish another?  Some moral choices need time to discern how God is calling us to act prudently.  Discernment then goes beyond our moral choices to questions of vocation.  Is God calling one to marriage, to priesthood, to religious life?  These choices are not between good and evil, but between goods.  To which is God truly calling me?  When it comes to big decisions in a family, profession, church involvement, financial issues, how to serve the poor, how to guide a parish or the wider church? These all require proper discernment of those involved to respond well to the Holy Spirit which inspires and guides us.
When we go to prayer and ask these questions of God, the answer is not always clear, in fact most of the time it isn’t.  Remember the evil spirit is at work trying to get us away from God’s will.  And due to our fallen nature, we can easily become confused. 
But God does not leave us to flail by ourselves.  He gives us the Spiritual Tradition of the Church to help us as well as His Holy Spirit Who bestows actual graces now.

I will write some more on this next week, but for now hopefully we can see that the communal discernment the pope is calling us to practice is not just sharing the spontaneous emotions or thoughts that come to us. He wants us to grow in this practice of Christian discernment.

If you want to go deeper I highly Highly, HIGHLY recommend the book, Discernment of Spirits by Fr. Timothy Gallagher.  Get it. It will change your spiritual life for the better.

Sincerely in Christ,
Fr. Pfr