By Caroline Soon / Stephen Chin
KUCHING — “A synodal Church is a Church which listens”. With these words, Pope Francis defines how the Church should go forward in becoming a discerning Church through the Holy Spirit by listening to the Word of God, and listening to the signs of times as articulated by the sharing of people. Every voice is important, every one counts! Wasn’t that how the early Church started?
They developed a custom of coming together to pray and then made collective decisions affecting their communities. Communitarian spirit guided them in discerning God’s will. This ‘synodal process’ of the early church later developed into a tradition for the gathering of bishops around the world to discuss issues consequential to the whole church.
But it was at the hierarchical level, and had involved very few lay people. In fact, when the Synod of Bishops gather in Rome, most people at the base hardly pay any attention. Then months later, a document would be produced, nicely written but in terms of percentage how many of the lay faithful would have read?
A unique Synod 2023
So what makes the coming Synod 2023 any special? Yes, we have been asked to gather, to listen to one another, invoke the Holy Spirit, and then respond to some questionnaires given in Ten Thematic Nuclei. The resource kits given are jam-packed with information, and a very good one at that! But it will remain just information if we do not dissect and use them effectively.
Small steps toward a Pan Malaysian Synodal Church
We are a sizeable number of lay Catholics, who have been blessed with an abundance of gifts, and the last two years saw us coming together in genuine friendship to bridge the gap between the Church of Peninsular Malaysia and the East Malaysian Church.
The pandemic forced us to re-think ways to bring people together, to be formed and be rooted in our faith through the various programmes online.
We use courses like Alpha, and online programmes from FORMED, a digital platform of the Augustine Institute. We cater to the four major language groups and just in a span of over a year, we have more than 2,000 in our database, the bigger number coming from the Mandarin group.
Every voice is to be heard, everyone will have a story to tell. The Church is to listen. So, under the spiritual directorship of Fr John Gnanapiragasam of the Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur, and with the blessing of His Grace, Archbishop Simon Poh of Kuching, we decided to bring the English speaking, together with some BM speaking lay leaders, to go through the Synodal Process.
We chose four out of the Ten Thematic Nuclei. Though we did it at short notice, we managed to get good participation. We are still receiving the responses, written from the hearts. We are thinking aloud among ourselves, of how our responses will be synthetised. But in the Holy Spirit we shall trust, because to Him we invoke even as we pray:
We stand before You, Holy Spirit,
as we gather together in Your name.
With You alone to guide us,
make Yourself at home in our hearts;
Teach us the way we must go
and how we are to pursue it.
We are weak and sinful;
do not let us promote disorder.
Do not let ignorance lead us down the wrong path
nor partiality influence our actions.
Let us find in You our unity
so that we may journey together to eternal life
and not stray from the way of truth
and what is right.
All this we ask of You,
who are at work in every place and time,
in the communion of the Father and the Son,
forever and ever.
Amen.
A Spiritual Exercise on Synodality
Our little spiritual exercise started with Fr John giving us the background into the Synodal process at the level of the laity. The key word is “listening”. Listening to the Word of God, to the biblical passages of John’s gospel where we are being affirmed by Jesus that the Paraclete will be with us (John 14-16). Then we were shown the imagery of the three figures: Jesus, the Apostles and ‘the Crowd’. This is to help us envision the community scene, where faith is lived out in our ordinary lives.
Another three biblical passages showing Jesus with three specific personalities (the Canaanite woman, the Samaritan woman, and the Blind man) seemed to indicate to us that these are part of ‘the crowd’. We can either identify with them one way or another, or we may be the ‘other person’ who looked from the outside and perhaps profiled those who did not seem to belong.
Next few biblical passages from the various gospels point to the appointment of the 12 Apostles, indicating the Apostolic Church in the making. That the appointment of the 12 was not “the privilege of an inclusive position of power and separation, but the grace of an inclusive ministry of blessing and fellowship.”
These imageries of Jesus, we (the crowd in its diversity), the apostles must remain with us as we contemplate and reflect in depth, and make it an ongoing process so that the Church may increasingly become what she is.
Cornelius came into the scene in the Acts of the Apostles; a gentile in the ancient Jewish world, but one with high integrity, though he was a Centurion with the Roman authorities. The Spirit of the Lord came to him, and in the narratives that followed we saw his conversion, that of his household, and of Peter too.
Peter’s vision points us to the Spirit at work, as the Church opened her door to the outside world, embraced the differences in cultural practices, yet remained firm in her Apostolic teachings. The decisiveness of the Council in Acts 15 points us to the movement of the Holy Spirit, and the obedience of the Church to His promptings. From then on, the Church was no longer national but universal.
Before Fr John concluded by giving some guidelines for us to work in our small groups, he reminded us that the Church is always to be at the beck and call for service to humanity. That Christ who has come to serve, and not to be served (John 13—washing of the feet) is telling us to do likewise.
With that we broke into 13 groups and each group took one of the four thematic nuclei:
- The Journeying companions (thematic nuclei 1)
- Listening (thematic nuclei 2)
- Speaking out (thematic nuclei 3)
- Co-responsible in the mission (thematic nuclei 5)
It was felt that the above four themes were more relevant to evangelisation/faith formation initiatives of the Alpha/FORMED ministry.
Prior to the briefing session, worksheets were quickly prepared and then sent out to all the participants. As it was short notice, we could only gather the English speaking.
Plenary gathering listening to the voices
This small group sharing took around one hour, with all participants in the small groups being given a chance to share. After that, all returned to the plenary session where we heard from one participant from each group.
One youth, aged 21, had much to offload from his chest. Though he became a little too excited about the issues close to his heart, he was given the space to air out. We are now collating the responses from those who attended and will do the needful to have them sent to the relevant dioceses.
Will our voices be heard? The Holy Spirit has heard us. And in Him we shall trust. In the meantime, we blissfully continue to journey as a community of faith, having found a common mission to share responsibly.
