+THE SYNODALITY OF THE HOLY RULE 20 February 2022
This morning I would like to say more about one aspect of the whole synodal process that is critical to it and to the whole or our community life together. This is the matter of “listening.” As I looked through the various documents helping parishes and various religious communities to participate in the coming Synod of 2023, I found myself encountering time and time again the importance of listening.
The first word of our Rule by St Benedict is “obsculta: or “ausculta” meaning to listen as you are well aware. I see now that the first sentence of the Rule is loaded for it goes like this: “Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s instructions and attend to them with the ear of your heart.” It is not a listening with your ears but with the ear, in the singular, of our hearts. This kind of listening is something we can do all day long if the ear of our hearts is attentive, if we are open to the movement of grace and ready to carry out whatever God may be asking of us at any given moment. God is really speaking to us in all the circumstances of our lives, wherever we may find ourselves, whatever we may be thinking or doing.
As St Benedict says a little later in his prologue: ‘Let us open our eyes to the light that comes from God, and our ears to the voice from heaven that every day calls out this charge: If you hear his voice today, do not harden your hearts (Ps. 94:8). From the diocesan convener’s guide about the listening sessions we are to have in our communities and parishes, we hear of how all the baptized are to participate:
“by sharing their experiences, hopes, and concerns for the Church and to listen to the same from others… Whether highly engaged in the faith, disengaged, or somewhere in between, our people have personal stories and views to share. In fact, Pope Francis has repeatedly stressed that the Synod needs to hear from those who are frequently on the margins and who feel distance from the Church.”
As I touched on last week, the importance of everyone being heard is for the simple reason stated in the Rule of Benedict that God’s Word comes to those whom we may think to be the least likely vehicles of it. In the presentation given to members at the General Chapter by Br Mauro-Giuseppe Lepori of the Cistercians of the Common Observance, he offers the following about calling all the brethren for counsel on important matters where the youngest may be the ones to whom the Lord reveals what is best:
“… this awareness of God’s preference for the smallest, the least, the least important in our eyes or in the eyes of the world, becomes a discipline not only of the listening but also of the word. Each brother is invited to make himself small, to make himself “last”, to take the last place at the banquet of the sharing of the Word: “The brothers then express their advice with all humility and submission, without pretending to impose their view” (3:4). …Only a word expressed by an “I” who sacrifices itself to the “we” is an echo of the word of God, of the good will of God who wants what is best for everyone. The “I” that sacrifices itself to the “we”, in reality, expands, becomes greater, so much so that his word becomes the word of God, his will becomes the will of God.”
In our sharing with one another, done with humility and submission, the Word of God is allowed to speak in us and through us. This kind of listening and sharing builds up the whole community and as I indicated earlier, this is something we can do with one another all day long wherever may be our encounters. By our inner dispositions, we allow God’s presence to be active and abundantly fruitful in our life together, in our community experience. And there are indications everywhere that this is precisely what many young people today are looking for, community filled with divine charity, reflecting God’s own Trinitarian life.