Like many of you, I am guessing, I play Wordle. The player has six tries to guess a five-letter word that the creator, Josh Wardle, chooses for the day. Each attempt brings the player additional clues for solving the puzzle.
I’ve been making it a practice to begin my Wordle each day with the word “SYNOD” and have discovered that it’s a decent place to start the thought process and get the creative juices flowing. Given that my prayer these past few years has been that our Archdiocesan Synod will lead our local Church to soar, I found it particularly fitting that my “SYNOD” starting place recently led me successfully to solve the puzzle with “ALOFT.”
Not unlike Wordle, the Synod process seems to produce new clues at each step. You may recall that I began our archdiocesan process by putting together a prayer team to help me discern whether and how we should proceed with a synod, the first in roughly 80 years, and then testing the idea with the members of our presbyteral council and with the lay ecclesial ministers who participate in our annual ministry days. That experience gave me a working hypothesis for moving forward.
As a second step, we undertook widespread prayer and listening events, involving over 8,000 members of the faithful and 35,000 written comments. From that I discerned three focus areas for the Synod: Forming parishes that are 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.
Using the context of the three focus areas, we went deeper into these areas with last fall’s parish consultation with small groups. Once again, the response was amazing and Spirit-filled. I received over 68,000 feedback forms with 46,000 suggestions in the “my best idea” category. I felt blessed to have had the opportunity to visit a good number of our parishes in that phase of the consultation and I routinely found those consultations to be true laboratories of the Holy Spirit. I remain so grateful to those who participated directly in the small groups and to those of you who supported that effort with your prayers. As was the case at the vigil before Bishop Joseph Williams’ ordination, I continue to hear inspiring stories about the personal fruit that has already come from the parish Synod small groups.
Based on the additional information that we acquired last fall, we are now planning to take our discernment to the next level with what is now called the Parish Synod Leadership Consultation. While COVID is preventing us from gathering in large numbers at the deanery level as originally planned, I am comfortable that this revised next step, scheduled to take place on either the last weekend of this month or the first weekend in March, now involving only the pastor and the 10 designated Synod leaders from each parish, will be able to assist me in refining the draft propositions that represent our attempts at capturing the earlier discussions in a way that will assist the Synod Assembly in recommending priorities for our work together over the next three to five years.
I am extremely grateful to the parish leaders who will soon be giving up most of a day for that deeper dive, which I’m hoping will give us the last guideposts that we need for setting up a successful experience at the Archdiocesan Synod that will take place this Pentecost. I am praying that the Parish Synod Leadership Consultation will continue our discernment trajectory. I am particularly excited that the process is designed to give our parish Synod leaders an extended opportunity to discuss with their pastor how one of the draft propositions could be brought to life in their particular parish, envisioning the concrete steps that an individual parish could take to bring that to fruition, while also contemplating the benefits that could flow from collaboration among neighboring parishes and defining how the archdiocese could assist in that important work as well.
It sure seems that the Holy Spirit is continuing to bless the Synod at each step along the way. We want and need our Synod, and the pastoral letter that will flow from it, to be the work of the Holy Spirit. Pope Francis has stressed that for a synod to be a true “journey of spiritual discernment,” it has to take place “in adoration, in prayer and in dialogue with the word of God.” That’s true not only for those who will be directly participating but also for all of us. As your parish Synod leadership prepares for the upcoming consultation, I hasten to invite all of us to pray for them and for the success of their important work, as well as for all at the archdiocesan level who continue to be so generous in sharing their time in support of this effort.
Adsumus, Sancte Spiritus
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.
Mary, Mother of the Church, Pray for us.
Prayer for synodality, USCCB
