As public health experts have been naming for some time, the COVID19 virus is able to cause much more serious disease than an initial onset of respiratory symptoms:
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) leads to multi-system dysfunction.
Some people may well be able to discard masks, cope with catching the virus, and withstand the impacts of vascular disease, re-infection or long-covid. A good number of earnest people, however, have reason for caution. We do not want to catch the virus, encounter serious disease, nor experience longer-term harm to our bodies.
As the World Health Organization mask advice states, “Masks should be used as part of a comprehensive strategy of measures to suppress transmission and save lives … If COVID-19 is spreading in your community, stay safe by taking some simple precautions, such as physical distancing, wearing a mask, keeping rooms well ventilated, avoiding crowds, cleaning your hands, and coughing into a bent elbow or tissue … Do it all! Make wearing a mask a normal part of being around other people.”
The public health experiment of feeling blasé about large numbers of people catching the plague/COVID19 virus should be a cause for public discomfort. Alongside measures like vaccines and ventilation, wearing a mask aims to protect the vulnerable members of our community. That vulnerable person may in fact be you.
On 14 January 2022 I was appointed to the CLC World Executive Council. Co-opted alongside a fellow young person named Daniela (from Colombia/Netherlands), we will serve on the ExCo until the next CLC World Assembly is held in August 2023.
Christian Life Community is a world community of ordinary people who gather regularly to share faith and life. As members of small local communities, we become companions on the way. Animated by Ignatian Spirituality, we walk with each other towards fullness of life in God’s presence (see John 10:10).
The CLC World Executive Council welcomes two new members, Daniela and James.
Discerning the way to Yes
During two weeks discerning the invitation, I spoke with wisdom figures and friends. I looked closely at saying no.
Ultimately I was very moved by the stirrings of joy and consolation which I felt when imagining saying yes, and especially when sharing the question with companions from the CLC Asia-Pacific Animating Team. There was a quickening of spirit and an energy and enthusiasm for our common life in CLC, where people on different paths journey together.
My Ignatian journey and CLC
My experience with Ignatian Spirituality began as an 11-year-old student at a Jesuit high school learning about “Inigo” Loyola. I now have a number of Jesuit friends.
CLC is a world community across 60+ countries.
Some years ago I joined a CLC community in Melbourne. We moved through different life seasons, encouraging each other to listen to the renewing presence of God among us. I believe this is the CLC way: to help one another respond to the Spirit at work in our experiences, friendships and choices.
In my work as a Religious Education teacher, I invite high school students to grow attentive to God’s presence in their lives. Thanks to CLC, I feel comfortable encouraging these students in their spirituality.
Young people and CLC
Australia is a pluralist and secularising society whose prevailing culture views religion with scepticism. Young people close to CLC in Australia may at times feel a certain hesitancy about engaging in church, yet there is a spiritual hunger below the surface which CLC helps us understand and meet. We are each on a personal journey to integrate our spirituality with our public-facing lives.
Feeling at home in a CLC local community, I came to feel at home in the world. Good and true friends are like diamonds.
Click here to read the letter sharing this news with the World Community of CLC.
The “Prayerful and Eucharistic” Discernment and Writing Group (DWG) formed a small church together for six months of prayer, Eucharist, and discernment in person and on Zoom. We had an age group from 30s to 81, with the majority 30, 40, 50, 60…then 75 and 81. We were two bishops, two priests, two religious women and seven lay people. We had four and then three women. We had every decade represented, over pre-Vatican 2 to post-Vatican 2 church and we had all come from diverse experiences of belonging to that church. We took with us our background, our engagement with church, and what manner we had that engagement within parish, profession and vocation. We were committed people of faith as church architect, school educator, academic, scripture scholar, retreat master, church publications officer, church historian, youth minister, parish pastoral associate, professional nurse, Cathedral liturgist, lay, priest, religious and bishop. So we had quite a large experience of belonging to the Church within a group of 13. We represented a cross-section of where God’s people were at in being church, and the reality of Australia. We were faithful to each other in respecting that each of us were discerning where we were coming from.
A Pentecost experience
The experience was all-consuming and constant. Our induction was in late October 2019. We soon were mourning the sickness and then death of our first chair, Perth scripture scholar Sr Clare Sciesinski PBVM. Gathering in her memory over Zoom, God’s Spirit moved among us like the disciples in that Pentecost room. That prayer evening brought us together and revived our faith in God’s presence and action within our group.
We prayed the Plenary Council prayer fervently: “Come Holy Spirit of Pentecost, Come Holy Spirit of the Great South Land”. And true enough, God’s Spirit was poured out on us and we were given language for our sorrow and words for our work.
1. The grace and challenge of communal discernment
“Please note: the discernment papers are the fruits of communal discernment, which does not necessarily reflect the individual perspectives of each of the group members. The Plenary Council team sincerely thanks all contributors.” This small note on page two of the paper acknowledges that all our process and writing came about because of “communal discernment”. Our Church has only begun to learn how to do this. As a Discernment and Writing Group, we struggled to know how to grow together into our discernment and then see how it impacted our writing.
It was a very difficult process, one which had never been attempted before. We were grappling withthe unredeemed parts of the Church, those areas where we have not let Christ’s love transform us. The voices in our DWG were somewhat representative of the voices of many people among the people of God in phases One and Two of grassroots participation. Thankfully, the discussion never stooped into recriminations. Yes, people spoke out of their experience, theology and tradition. Differences of opinion within our group and in the grassroots data were there, named and expressed. In bringing these into the light, the Holy Spirit could move among us.
Our communal discernment, then, involved bringing seemingly incompatible positions together, with something new emerging that everyone could hold to. We couldn’t grasp onto our own opinion too strongly in this process. It wasn’t majority rules as in a parliamentary democracy. It was a process of calling on God’s Holy Spirit for help with discerning, writing and editing the paper.
The paper names Communal Discernment as one of the major fruits of the Plenary Council already:
“For many within the Church, the Plenary Council ‘communal discernment’ has been a new and graced experience. By its very nature, communal discernment can build community. This important practice needs leadership and training, however, for many among the faithful are unfamiliar with its aspects of basic listening, depth of prayer, time and letting go of attachment to one’s own opinion.”
The Prayerful and Eucharistic paper
The Church in Australia was encouraged to bring together lay leaders and clergy for training in communal discernment, affirming this path as a “privileged way of making important decisions” which affect the body of the Church. This way of being church builds conversation, community and attentive commitment to the movement and action of God’s Spirit.
2. Four desires in phase one leading to four major challenges. A golden thread in the structure of the paper.
The discernment question for our Discernment and Writing Group was: How is God calling us to be a Christ-centred Church in Australia that is Prayerful and Eucharistic? The first part of the paper makes sense of the Listening and Dialogue responses from the People of God, 222000 peoples’ voices and 18000 submissions, sometimes called ‘Phase One’. These responses “revealed the deep faith, integrity and sincerity of all the people who gave of themselves in their offerings”.
In Phase One, God had brought forth four key desires among the People of God for discernment within the paper:
Desire 1: to be invited and empowered to “full, conscious and active participation” – which was later named as participation
Desire 2: to meet God in daily life and so experience encouragement through appropriate faith formation
Desire 3: to nurture the communal aspect of our life together – which was later named as community
Desire 4: to nourish, accompany, give witness, support, invite, welcome, engage and be present to others – which was later named as mission.
In seeking to be faithful to the people’s offerings, the Discernment and Writing Group explored these four desires as four Major Challenges: community; participation; formation; and mission – which then became four areas for Prioritised Questions and Proposals for Change.
3. A changing pastoral reality
The Pastoral Reality part of the document aimed to take a snapshot of the social and communal context of the Church in Australia pre-COVID19. In so doing, it names the decline of trust in church leaders. It acknowledged that parish sacramental and communal life was on the periphery of the lives of the majority of those who made contact with the Catholic community. The paper states that “In 2016, approximately 12% of all Catholics were regularly participating in the celebration of the Eucharist.” Overall those who do participate at Eucharist have “a strong desire not to be merely spectators, but active participants”.
4. A Church that is open to change
A conversion moment for me occurred around one simple phrase which made its way into the Theological Vision statement. The phrase is: “A Church that is open to change”. The Pastoral Reality section had made clear the ways our Church is marked by change. But now, in the Theological Vision the paper claims that we are a Church that is open to change. A Church that is open to change is one which encourages all of us to be centred on what matters most while being bold in embracing God’s call for today.
This heralds a new path for being church – an exciting opening. This movement itself is significant for the Plenary Council. The Council is built on the grassroots prayer and thinking of God’s people. Professor Ormond Rush has described this as a “reverse pyramid”, where God speaks words of renewal and grace through God’s people, and what we hear transforms our Church, its ways and structures. All Plenary Council consultations relied on a deep trust and prayerful discernment of what the Spirit was saying.
5. Encouraged by the Emmaus encounter
The Emmaus encounter (Luke 24:13-35) forms the heart of the paper’s Theological Vision. The text offers much encouragement and insight into the encounter with God which is at the heart of us being Prayerful and Eucharistic. The Risen Lord meets the disciples in their sadness, disillusionment and discouragement. Jesus walks with them, hears them out, breaks open the scriptures, and joins them at table.“It is when Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it and gave it to the disciples that they recognise him”.The disciples were able to go on to the communal gathering in Jerusalem with joy and hope, their faith rekindled.
6. Four thematic areas of challenge, questions and proposals for change
The four sections outlined in the Major Challenges section provided a response to the four desires which came through in Phase One consultations. They also delivered four areas for discernment and four frames for Prioritised Questions and Proposals for Change for a Prayerful and Eucharistic Church: community, participation, formationand mission. The paper did not look with ecumenical glasses, and there is a strong focus on the Roman Rite. It is worth considering how the paper may have been different if we were writing during the pandemic.
A. Community – how can we develop as a Prayerful and Eucharistic community that is united in Christ while valuing and celebrating diverse spiritualities, customs and authentic liturgical practice?
In the Response to Phase One Listening and Dialogue, the paper noted that “there is a yearning among God’s people to nurture the communal aspect of our life” as the Church in Australia. In reimagining how we can develop as a Prayerful and Eucharistic community, the paper took inspiration from the example of the early church. Small and intimate communities made a great impact on the people of the first centuries of church life. Inspired by this example, the Church in Australia can reimagine the model of parish and connected communities, prioritising “the creation of small communities of faith and life”.
The paper proposed that the Church in Australia implement collaborative decision making and communal discernment as an ongoing way of proceeding. The paper also proposed easing the limitations on local bishops being able to permit communal celebrations of the third rite of the Sacrament of Penance – a restorative sacramental liturgy for the whole community. These proposals would allow the Church in Australia to become more and more a Prayerful and Eucharistic community “one body, one Spirit in Christ” (Ephesians 4:4),
B. Participation – how can we best encourage full, conscious and active participation in the liturgical and prayerful life of the Church community?
One of the key desires emerging among God’s people through the Listening and Dialogue phase was that they would enjoy the “full, conscious and active participation” in liturgical celebrations which the Vatican 2 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy declared as their right and duty.
The paper lamented that this “full, conscious and active participation” is not always evident in the sacramental and daily life of the church. Like Jacob wrestling with the angel, the paper tussled with this phrase and its implications. It meditated on the fact that at baptism we are proclaimed “priest, prophet and king”. The paper noted that “the prayers at Eucharist are translated in a style that many feel excludes them from engaging”. It then considered the “priesthood of the baptised laity” and argued such priesthood is not promoted well in church life. This meant that Eucharistic celebrations were diminished as we were not drawing out all the gifts of the faithful, gifts given by the Holy Spirit.
The Proposals for Change were tangible ways “full, conscious and active participation” could be imagined for our time. A review of the translation of the Missal and a revision of the Lectionary would make the prayers and readings at Mass more accessible. Commissioning lay women and men to exercise their leadership more frequently in our sacramental life would enrich the Church. Drawing forth the ministry, experience and insight of lay people, however, requires being open to “the Spirit’s boldness, to trust in, and concretely to permit, the growth of a specific ecclesial culture that is distinctively lay” (Pope Francis, Querida Amazonia, 94).
C. Formation – How do we walk together as a pilgrim church that effectively accompanies, ministers to and forms people, in light of secular and religious practice, as a community of Christ’s disciples?
In contemplating the desire of God’s people for formation, the Church in Australia ought to remember Luke’s Gospel when the disciples ask Jesus “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). Jesus’ response is the Our Father. The paper affirms that God’s people seek formation in faith, prayer, and discernment so as to “flourish in faith and grow into our full stature” as disciples. The paper affirms that formation is best when God shapes lay and ordained together.
The paper proposes renewing the sacramental life of the church by reviewing the steps for inclusion in the Catholic community and developing new liturgical and prayerful experiences which meet transition moments in peoples’ lives. There are proposals for an online hub which would encourage prayer in the Church through theologically-sound video and audio prayer resources. The paper encouraged dioceses to prepare programs to form people in prayer and discernment. There was a need for national and local formation opportunities of spiritual formation for young people, couples, liturgical musicians, and alumni of Catholic schools. There was encouragement for the Plenary Council to consider how we may form priests and lay people together. These Proposals for Change attempt to revitalise our pilgrim church and pave the way for mission.
D. Mission – How can our practice of being prayerful and Eucharistic draw us and others to Christ?
In surveying mission for a Church that is Prayerful and Eucharistic, the paper draws inspiration from the conclusion to Mark’s Gospel. Jesus calls us to “go out into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). Mission in daily life calls us to hands-on commitments. Christ calls us to love the poor, build justice and care for creation. Following Pope Francis, the Church needs to open wide the doors of its life to people.
The Proposals for Change sought to build encouragement for people: through the dismissal rite, and through invitations to God’s people to discern commitments to concrete ministries of service, justice and ecology. The paper affirms the development and implementing of strategies to relate with people alienated from our Catholic community by disillusionment, injury and isolation. These Proposals for Change sought to ensure that we become a people who reconcile with rivals and hear the cries of the earth and the poor, ever mindful of welcoming and including the isolated.
Conclusion
All told, our Discernment and Writing Group prepared a paper for the good of the people of God as the Church in Australia. We experienced an outpouring of the Holy Spirit as at Pentecost. We were sent out from the upper room as companions, graced with new words of encouragement and hope.
“Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
In this time of great change and challenge, as we stare down a pandemic, prayer seems all the more urgent and necessary. Many of us need God’s strength in these days. I believe that seeking God in prayer is indeed a more urgent longing than anything else. The God I long for is the One in whom I find comfort and consolation. This is a God in whom we can hope.
God of my longing
God of my longing, I wait on your movement within: draw me close to you lead me to rest in your embrace.
God of my longing,
I cry out for your presence:
make yourself known to me
grant me your compassion.
God of my longing,
I seek your peace in the quiet:
the embrace of your Spirit
the joy of your life.
God of my longing,
I believe your light is the true north star:
shine brightly in the night of darkness
be the guiding hope of this age.
God of my longing, I ask for your invitation today: send a new call to my ears give me the grace to respond.
Prayer and discernment
The inner encounter in daily life renews us for what we are to do. In calling on God’s name, and resting in God’s presence, prayer opens the heart to experience God moving within and among us. So it is that the door may open into a deeper peace and a renewed sense of hope – and other gifts from the giver.
It is on the days of distance that my heart expresses its deepest yearning. It is on the days of darkness that I seek the light with which to see. It is on the days of distress that my plea for comfort is heard.
We may in time notice a growing sense of ease in relating with God and an encouragement to keep going, both sure signs of God’s Spirit with us. We may also grow in our ability to recognise contrary movements for what they are – disturbances from the spirit of dis-ease and discouragement. Thus, we grow in our felt need for ‘discernment’ in daily life.
A prayer for these times
God of all goodness and consolation, be with our communities. Make us aware of your presence with us. Give each person the deep peace, comfort and patience needed to get through this time. Send life to our minds and joy to our hearts. May we see ourselves and each person as indeed precious in your eyes, honoured and loved (Isaiah 43:4). Send out your Spirit and renew the face of the earth. Amen.
The delegates to the CLC Asia Pacific Assembly, held in Seoul, Korea from 17 to 20 October, 2019, experienced a movement of the Holy Spirit as we communally discerned our response to the theme ‘Living Faith in the Crowd’.
Brought together as 36 delegates from 13 national communities in the region (Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Macau, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Vietnam), we felt a sense of family and communion as we prayed, discerned and dreamed together.
The new CLC Asia Pacific Animating Team of Agnes Shin (Korea), Gregorius Tjaidjadi (Indonesia), Jeraldine Ching (Philippines), Cosmas Tsao (Taiwan) and James O’Brien (Australia) with Fr Jeong Ho An SJ (Korea) and Fr Jun Nakai SJ (Japan).
CLC Korea offered attentive hospitality and the Asia Pacific Animating Team (of which Australian Michael Walker was a member) led the Assembly.
Christian Life Community
Christian Life Community is a world community of ordinary people who live out Ignatian spirituality and who thus act as close collaborators with the Society of Jesus. CLC is grateful for the support and friendship of the Jesuits in Australia and throughout the region.
In our Australian presentation our delegation was able to share with the delegates that within Australia the key CLC-Jesuit collaboration over the past 25 years has been the Jesuit Tertians-CLC retreats in rural and more isolated parts of the country. In recent years these have been First Spiritual Exercises retreats, through which many people have experienced significant graces for their lives.
The heart of the Christian Life Community is the local small community which meets regularly throughout the year. As a world community, however, there are global, Asia Pacific, Australian, and state-based dimensions to membership of CLC. It is experiences such as this Asia Pacific Assembly which reaffirm that we are in fact one community living out our spirituality on mission throughout the world.
Communal Discernment
‘Communal discernment’ was an important theme in the Assembly, both in response to socio-political situations and the needs of the universal Church. We desire to make this contribution to the needs of the world and the Church that labours for its good. In this we recognised that personal discernment needs to occur alongside communal discernment.
In our Ignatian spirituality we attend to the Holy Spirit bringing light to our experience. Through our Awareness Examen at the end of each day, we became more and more conscious of the Assembly as a Spirit-led experience.
Throughout the Assembly there were ‘open spaces’ for communal discernment bubbling up from among the delegates based on the needs we find in our national communities and local situations. We noticed that we desire to continue to serve among young people.
A Community of Collaboration
One common work for the CLC Asia Pacific community in recent years was contributing to the 2017 Asian Youth Day in Indonesia. An important grace we received from that experience is that we desire to encourage deeper and more regular collaboration and communication across and between CLC local and national communities. In both formal and organic ways, we want to work together.
On the final evening we celebrated each culture through songs and presentations from each national community. The Australian delegation of Michael Walker, Gaby Grimaldo, Ana Rita S. and I sang ‘I am, You Are, We Are Australian’. As we came to the end, the screen above us revealed that we had changed the final line to ‘I am, You Are, We Are CLC’.
This was an appropriate ending sung with joy by the entire crowd of Assembly delegates and participants of the accompanying Immersion Program’ for CLC members in the region.
New Animating Team elected
At the end of the Assembly, a new Animating Team was elected to serve the regional community for the next five years. The members of this team are Agnes Shin (Korea), Cosmas Tsao (Taiwan), Jeraldine Ching (Philippines), Gregorius Tjaidjadi (Indonesia) and James O’Brien (Australia). We invite your prayers for the new Animating Team.
