+THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING IN A SYNODAL CHURCH 16 July ‘23
It is becoming ever more important for the Church and all of humanity to become more synodal. The idea of a synodal Church is based on our common dignity and co-responsibility as baptized Christians, for the life and mission of the Church. St Benedict had a deep sense of this as he looked out for the good of his community. He saw how much depends on mutual listening, collaboration, a renewed sense of shared responsibility if his community was to thrive.
Needless to say “listening” runs all through the Rule of Benedict, for from its first sentence, we are invited to listen carefully to our master with the ear of our hearts. Benedict would have the abbot listening to advice given him by his Council and he reminds his monks to practice silence since the tongue holds the key to life and death.” Each day we are to open “our ears to the voice from heaven that every day calls out this charge: If you hear his voice,.. do not harden your hearts.” He has the art of listening running all through his treatment of holy reading. Listening with the heart allows us to be attentive to the Word of God however it may come to us in our daily lives. This is what the Church is also seeking to attain through the practice of synodality.
The idea of a synodal Church is not something new as one author, Nicholas Healy reminds us in the Catholic World Report:
The word “synod”…suggests the notion of the “common journey” of Christians or the assembly of those who have been called together by God. More specifically, the word synod refers to “ecclesial assemblies convoked on various levels (diocesan, provincial, regional, patriarchal or universal) to discern, by the light of the Word of God and listening to the Holy Spirit, the doctrinal, liturgical, canonical and pastoral questions that arise as time goes by.” From the time of the early Church councils or synods have played an essential role in the life and mission of the Church.
When important matters needed to be dealt with, ecclesial assemblies have been called together. With Vatican II our whole understanding of “collegiality” was made a crucial part of this for our own time but it was there from the beginning.
The wisdom that St Benedict offers these gatherings is listening with our hearts. This is what makes our assemblies life changing and lasting. In a presentation to a gathering of Benedictine superiors, a Sister Clare Condon offered the following:
To listen with the heart doesn’t come easily. It is a difficult and challenging journey. I need to empty my heart of my own agenda, of all that clutters my life and my survival: to empty my heart of my own assumptions and prejudices; to empty my mind of all the preconceived answers and solutions I might conjure up. This is a place of inner openness to receive the other, the word, whether that be the Word of Scripture, the word of a confrere, the cry of despair, or the hope of forgiveness and reconciliation. That inner openness is what the desert fathers and mothers called “purity of heart”.
As human beings we are always listening but the quality of our listening is what changes everything. If we listen with our own agenda, we really don’t hear very well. But if we empty our hearts of our own “assumptions and prejudices,” empty them of “preconceived answers and solutions” then we are truly open to others. I suspect this is what really loving our brother or sister is about. The whole end of our monastic way of life is learning a “purity of heart,” which is what truly seeking God is to accomplish.
Sister Clare goes on to say:
Listening with the ear of the heart can be a scary experience because it can call me to radical change, to a transformation of my limited human perspective. This is not simply a change in my opinion or even in my ideological stance, but a much deeper change in my attitude, a real change in my way of being and doing…
Benedict, in his Rule, expects us to be constantly listening: to one another in the community; to the community leader (the abbot); to the guests; to the sick; and most of all, to God in the Scriptures at communal prayer and in personal lectio and private prayer.
This is the challenge many are experiencing within the Church today. Any real growth will always involve some challenge and struggle. As we know from our own experience it was when we thought we were losing everything that authentic transformation took place. St Benedict has shown the surest way to this inner growth and so we have hope for what is unfolding in our Church and in our monastic communities.