2023-10-26: Introducing the lay woman who ran the US Synod plus my dream for this community
Fellow pilgrims
The backdrop of the Middle East conflict reminds me of all the other tragic polarization happening in our world, and also why this particular Synod process has given me some hope. One of the reasons for hope is a young woman whose leadership has had an immeasurable impact on the church in this country.
All of my interactions and emails with the USCCB with respect to the Synod were (to my surprise) with a woman. Yes, a young lay woman with a PhD in dialogue – Julia McStravog. She was put on staff to help run the Synod.
Below is a link to a very engaging interview with Julia on American Media’s’ “Inside the Vatican” podcast. She has clearly been humbled and profoundly affected by her experience and describes her journey and what she has seen.
Listen carefully to what she describes as the biggest challenge she has encountered: becoming deeply self-reflective and self-aware. Instead of pointing at other people as challenging, the impact of the Synod process of turning to prayer and inviting in the Holy Spirit at every stage has led her to focus inward – and do her own work. And she has been profoundly changed.
But I want to focus on what in my mind is probably the most important information we will get about the Synod.
Her statement that this process is working and that it’s very much driven by the Holy Spirit addresses the concerns and hopes that I raised in my reflection last week. I stated that I believe we need to spread the message that progressives need to chill on wanting any specific outcomes from this Synod other than we learn how to do Synodality together and learn how to trust it. To trust God.
Because the people (even and especially bishops who were cynical about the process) are learning to talk to each other across divides. That people are learning how to dialogue and still disagree and that this is giving them surprise and joy is very telling.
It is this process of engaging with and being impacted by the Holy Spirit and speaking from and listening with our hearts that transforms us and starts to provide healing.
Experiencing that process over and over during the second Vatican council changed the heart of Cardinal John Dearden. He came back a changed man and went on to lead our Detroit diocese in the same Holy Spirit driven transformation and inspired the whole church.
Could Detroit, with our influence and prayer, once again teach the world how to speak to one another? Could the Catholic Church lead a revolution of how to effectively engage in civil and productive dialogue instead of reacting from our fear and biases, scoring points, being defensive, and dehumanizing one another with labels?
Only once we get comfortable learning how to listen and speak from our hearts and truly see one another can we then effectively talk about church reform. Because when we let the Holy Spirit drive a process of mutual accompaniment, we will be able to see and understand a bigger and better picture. And reform will just happen organically, not forced through power. This is Pope Francis‘s spirit-inspired scheme and has been all along.
To put it plainly, this Synod is about teaching us to stop debating, and turn to engage with each other in the Holy Spirit so the entire Body of Christ can be healed and take on the big issues and glorious opportunities to build the beloved community from that perspective.
In so many ways St John Fisher modeled aspects of Synodality and this has shaped who I am and we are. On one hand it would be nice to be left alone to just be SJF again. But I don’t think that’s God‘s plan for creating the beloved community. I think we are called to build on what we are and stretch to meet the challenges before us.
God’s dream is not that we be an insular community any more than the church be insular.
If we are to engage with and evangelize the gospel, we need to get out of our comfort zone and prison of bitterness, and learn how to go and seek to understand the people who made very stupid decisions that hurt us. Accepting that they and we “know not what we do”. And trust that if we do that, God faithfully redeems the stupid actions of all of us. Easter always comes.
To make this more clear, Julia reveals in her interview that the team has learned that there’s a profound sense of woundedness all across the church.
Everyone is carrying pain. Not just “us”. “They” are too.
Perhaps then, we could all learn from Julia’s and the Synod’s model. Invite in the Holy Spirit at each turn, learn to be humble, do our own self reflecting, accept ourselves as loving and loved children of God, and turn and look at “them” with the same lens.
It isn’t easy. It was never easy.
But I have learned that once I make that my heartfelt intention, God faithfully steps in and makes it a little bit easier each step of the way. I just have to show up.
It doesn’t matter who goes first in this relationship, as long as one of us does.
It is my dream that the Servants‘ Entrance community “goes first” and helps facilitate Synodality in this way.
As a first step, listen to this inspiring and impossible young woman at this link.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-the-vatican/id1439165420?i=1000631053511
May we continue to hold one another as we walk through the Servants‘ Entrance.
-terry
servantsentrance.com 