We’ve come to the end of the Working Document for the Continental Stage of the Synod. Our last reflection closed with a challenge to explore diversity in worship. Now the working team lays out concrete steps forward.
The first step forward is conversion and reform. Ouch! We will have to change…again…and we flinch at hearing it. We prefer to settle down…we prefer a little do-nothing-normalcy. But no. The People of God have spoken, and they express a desire to be less a Church of maintenance and conservation. They want to be a Church that goes out in mission. They believe that synod communion must lead to a permanent state of mission. (Spanish Report) Because we are a learning church, we need continuous discernment to help us read the Word of God and the signs of the times together, to move forward in the direction the Spirit is pointing us. This sounds like it was taken right out of our Dominican documents. It calls for continual conversion, both personal and communal. As a listening Dominican congregation, we’ve been walking the talk.
What we have been attempting in the past years as a community is now being asked of the entire global Church. How do we proclaim the Gospel today…and listen deeply to where the Spirit might be pointing? What are we to do?
We are to enter a discernment process, and prepare a ‘Final Document’ that describes it and its results. The Final Documents of the seven Continental Assemblies will be the basis for what is called the Instrumentum Laboris or ‘Working Instrument’ to be completed by June of 2023. In this final part of the Continental Stage, all Assemblies are asked to be eccesial rather than episcopal. This means all the People of God are to be represented: bishops, presbyters, deacons, consecrated persons, and laymen and women, and young people. It includes people living in poverty or marginalization, those who work with them, people from other Christian denomination, those of other religions, and those with no religious affiliation. The bishops are then asked to meet, reread the responses from all these voices, and make sure these voices are present in the Final Document. By March 31, 2023, the Final Document of each of the seven Continental Assembles are due, and the Instrumentum Laboris is prepared by June to be ready for the 1st Rome Session. The 1st XVI General Ordinary Assembly of Bishops takes place in October of 2023 in Rome. A 2nd Session takes place in October of 2024. Then global Implementation begins! So that is the big picture. The smaller steps are amazing too!
Each of the seven continental groups prepares a Document for the Continental Stage (DCS). Then these little steps take place back at home base: (for us, the US/Canada DCS)
· The DCS goes to every diocesan bishop, who arranges a discernment process on 3 questions: “Which experiences resonate with your people, are new or illuminating?” “What tensions or questions emerge?” What emerges as a call to action you can share with other Churches globally?”
· These responses are shared with the US/Canada Continental Assembly by a process.
· The sharing process favored is that of the ‘spiritual conversation’ (similar to our ‘contemplative dialogue.’)
· The Final Document (about 20 pages) is drafted from this process on the three questions.
· The seven Continental Final Documents are submitted by March 31, 2023, to be woven into the Instrumentum Laboris.
· This one document is the document the bishops will work with in the 2023 and 2024 October Rome sessions, woven from the seven DCS Final Documents.
Fasten your seat belts…! We are in for quite a ride…! The Spirit may be pictured as a Dove, but it is also Wind, Fire, Water, Oil, Wine, and Blood. We may be looking at the ‘something new’ we have been praying for, unfold before our very eyes.
