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

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Synod on Synodality: Communion, Participation, Mission
We continue our discussion as we prepare for the Synodal Listening Session to be held at St. Paul’s.  Specific dates are forthcoming but will be in the month of 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 is at work “on the ground” by giving 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?
Be sure to read last week’s column first (if you haven’t already) for an introduction on discernment of spirits.
This week we review the basic process of Christian discernment of spirits.  We can think of it in 3 stages: 1) awareness, 2) understanding, 3) action. 

First is awareness.  As Christians we must grow in the awareness of the presence of God working in and through (and often in spite of) us.  We have received His sanctifying grace through baptism and the other sacraments. He continues to offer us actual graces as well.  We also must be aware that due to our fallen nature we are susceptible to the evil spirit as well. Our concupiscence afflicts us as the world, the flesh, or the devil tempt us away from God.  The evil spirt wants to undo what the Holy Spirit is trying to accomplish in and through us.  This means we must grow in awareness of our mind, our heart, our bodies, what goes on around us - our feelings, thoughts, and movements within the soul.  Do not confuse this with eastern religious meditation or new age mindfulness or psychological introspection. No, this is qualitatively different.  What I am talking about NECESSARILY means we must pray! Not just Mass on Sunday, not just before meals, not just an Our Father before bed, not just the St. Paul Novena (as good as all of those are).  We need time of Christian meditation or mental prayer. Anyone who thinks, “I don’t need that,” is basically saying they are more holy than every saint and mystic and even Jesus Himself - all of whom took time for personal prayer and meditation.  Without this we can never become aware of the good and evil spirits to discern.  In fact, by not praying, we are already following the evil spirit who prefers we not be aware of him since that keeps us more susceptible to temptation and sinning.
Just in case I wasn’t clear - PRAY! St. Francis de Sales says everyone should pray a half hour a day, but for those who are busy, they need to pray an hour a day! Make it a priority and do it! Even if you start small, that’s fine, but keep the goal of growing in perseverance to meditation. I will be reviewing next week the Christian method of lectio divina as a way of meditating.  Also good is the examen prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Here is a link for more info. This link may seem complicated, but the prayer itself is not. Give it a read, and try it.
http://www.sfcatholic.org/youth/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2020/04/Examen-St.-Ignatius.pdf

Second is understanding.  As one grows in prayer and thus awareness, the reality of the spiritual consolations and desolations we experience will become more apparent.  There are rules of discernment to help us grow in understanding how they work. I cannot go into great detail here but just like understanding anything, the spiritual life too takes perseverance, time, and God’s grace.  If you want to go deeper on this, 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.  This understanding will lead us to greater clarity as we grow in the spiritual life, in making certain moral choices, making big decisions, and better responding to God’s call. Understating helps us to know what movements in our life are of the good Holy Spirit and what movements and inclinations are of the evil one.

Finally, having come to understand whether a choice or inclination or movement is of God then we act. We follow it, we strive to say yes and move forward to cooperate with the will of God that has been discerned.  Or on the other hand, we have come to understand the movement was not of God, coming from the evil spirit.  Here we act as well, but by rejecting it. We refocus our efforts again on God’s Spirit leading us away from evil and toward God’s will.  

I will write more on this next week, but 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 and we can’t do that together unless we know how God is working in our personal prayer life.


Sincerely in Christ,
Fr. Pfr