Recently I was speaking to a sister who was a member of the General Council of her congregation. I asked her what the main topic of their discussion in the next meeting would be. I was quite taken back by her response. She said: “We do not discuss much. The General and one or two of the Council Members decide what is to be done. And they tell us what to do. There is very little listening, discussion and discernment.”
This may be one way of getting things done, but it is not the way God wants us to function. God has called us to be a synodal Church. Synod means “walking together.” And one of the primary conditions for “walking together” is to listen to one another to find out what God wants us to do in any situation. Decisions are to emerge as a fruit of listening to one another. The Preparatory Document for the forthcoming Synod says: “Listening is the first step, but it requires having an open mind and heart, without prejudices.” (n. 30 §2). Vademecum, the official handbook that accompanies the Preparatory Document, says that “The heart of the synodal experience is listening to God through listening to one another, inspired by the Word of God. We listen to each other in order to better hear the voice of Holy Spirit speaking in our world today” (n. 4.1).
Listen to Everyone
We are all familiar with the saying: “The older you get, the wiser you become.” Taking this to be literally true, we give prominence to the elders and fail to listen to the young. We assume that the young do not have much to contribute. While it is right to give due value to the lived experience of the elderly, it is to be done without neglecting to give a hearing to the young. St Benedict, the father of Western monasticism, in the rule that he wrote for his community, asks the abbot to listen to everyone in the community, especially the young. He insists: “The abbot calls the whole community together; all of us have been called to give advice… because often it is to the youngest that the Lord reveals the best solution” (Rule, 3, 1.3).
Fr Jose Kuttianimattathil SDB
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