Looking for ways to grow in the faith, listen more carefully to friends and family, discern the call of the Holy Spirit and be gently held accountable in daily living?

Eager to help people do just that, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has put together a five-week, online series of 45-minute segments called “Synod at Home: Tips and Tools for Growing in Faith.” The sessions begin Feb. 18 and run through March 18.

Each session will feature a presentation, reflection and formation materials. Pat and Kenna Millea, parents of seven children and parishioners of St. Joseph in West St. Paul, will be the primary presenters.

Kenna Millea is a therapist. Pat Millea is senior high youth director at his parish, and also is a member of the executive committee of the Archdiocesan Synod, which has organized the series to help families understand and live the Synod process of listening, discerning and acting.

The archdiocese is doing the same in its three-year preparation for a Synod on pastoral priorities to be held Pentecost weekend, June 3-5, 2022.

After holding 30 Prayer and Listening Events across the archdiocese between September 2019 and March 2020, Archbishop Bernard Hebda determined three pastoral priorities: forming parishes in the service of evangelization, forming missionary disciples who know Jesus’ love and respond to his call, and forming youth and young adults in and for a Church that is always young. The priorities will be discussed at the Synod and further developed by the archbishop to help pave a way forward for the archdiocese.

While the archdiocese is listening and learning on a large scale, similar attention to listening and learning can take place in the home, said Pat Millea, 39.

“Part of the archbishop’s understanding of what a Synod is includes an opportunity to listen to the Holy Spirit and each other,” he said. “To discern a path forward and move there together.”

The Synod at Home series will begin with a first-week introduction, followed by four weekly segments on ways to grow in faith — as individuals, families and ministries — through prayer and the sacraments, lifelong learning, generosity and service, and traditions and fun, Millea said. People can go to archspm.org/synod to learn more, sign up for emails, download the Synod app for a mobile device and access the online sessions.

Synod at Home is not a specifically Lenten exercise, and it is not a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But it is timely because it falls during Lent, which begins Feb. 17, and because many families and friends, being careful not to spread COVID-19, have been more isolated at home, with additional time together, Millea said.

“Lent is a fruitful time for growth as Catholics,” he said. “We tend to strip away distractions and harmful practices — (excessive) media, food, that gets between us and God.”

And as people experience the pandemic, it makes sense at this time of the Synod process to present something for families and individuals that can help them grow in their faith, Millea said.

“Listening to each other, discerning and acting on what we hear — it is a beautiful time to take these principles as a family, to listen to the Holy Spirit consistently,” he said.

A tool being offered with Synod at Home, called a Faith Plan, is designed to help people establish faith goals and stay on track. It was introduced to the executive committee by a committee member, Chris Kostelc, director of faith formation at Holy Name of Jesus in Medina. His parish used the resource after Holy Name parishioners Dave and Megan Rahe developed it in their own home.

The Faith Plan helps people determine faith goals such as growing closer to Christ, and measurable ways to achieve them, such as daily, weekly or monthly intentions to attend Mass, go to confession, to pray and to serve others. A “champion” in a family or ministry is assigned to remind people to meet the established marks, Kostelc said. The plan and progress in carrying it out are periodically evaluated.

“We measure things we find important,” Kostelc said. “If it’s important and we want to do well, we measure it. But traditionally, we don’t put a lot of measures on our faith lives. These are actions that can be answered: ‘Did we do it, or did we not?’”

An openness to the Faith Plan’s method, a discernment about whether to offer it to the whole archdiocese, and careful thought into how to present it represent ways Archbishop Hebda and Bishop Andrew Cozzens are living out listening and discernment in the Synod process, Millea said.

“It’s been really beautiful to see how they are open to the way that lay people experience God in their own lives,” Millea said. “They want to hear what’s in the hearts of their people and how they can lead all of us to Jesus and the Church.”