Yes a book review is a little unusual for this blog, but the book reviewed is also a little unusual. I came across Kim Meeder’s writings some time ago during my regular internet meanderings, but it has only been recently that I’ve actually read some of her books. All of them thus far have been good, wholesome and inspiring. Her book ‘Bridge Called Hope: Stories of triumph from the Ranch of Rescued Dreams’ is a good place to begin to read her books.

258 pages, Kindle; 256 pages, Paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Bridge-Called-Hope-Stories-Triumph/dp/1590526554

Each chapter is usually a stand alone story, although there are some chapters that form a story arc, so it is suitable for read aloud time with children and grandchildren.

Kim Meeder runs a horse ranch dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating abused horses, and dedicated to assist the healing process for disabled children, youngsters in juvenile detention centres and women who have suffered trauma. It is a safe place to try something new and become a little stronger after taking the risk of learning to ride on a pony or of touching and learning to groom a horse.

The book contains (at least for me) some eye-opening knowledge about horse management, a living example of what it means to live guided by the Holy Spirit, examples of God’s plans being much bigger than our own, and plenty of take-home quotes to chew over.

Horse management
Not ever having gone through a stage of horse-crazy, I learnt a lot about communication between horses and horses and horses and humans. It was a real eye-opener on what it takes to keep a horse healthy, food, water, shelter, sufficient space to move about in, hoof care, medications to deal with worms and other nasties. Likewise it was an eye-opener on the barbaric practices to obtain ingredients for beauty products from pregnant horses. Truly it takes an extraordinary amount of painstaking work to bring an abused horse back to physical and emotional health.

Guided by the Holy Spirit
Time and time again through the stories Kim’s first recourse is to prayer. Then she does expectantly wait for answers, and is also responsive to moments when she is invited to stop, listen and look deeper at situations. Willingness to drop everything at a moment’s notice to serve others in need is another part of that responsiveness to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

God’s bigger plans
Two stories in particular stand out for me as examples of this. One is the sudden death of a much-loved horse, and the bigger plan was to teach a youngster about how to open her heart to new love after a time of grief. The other is the tragic house fire suffered by a single parent family, and the bigger plan was to provide not only a better home, but also a whole new set of supportive relationships.

Quotes to chew over
Horses are incapable of lying.
‘I trust You Lord, I trust You, even though it doesn’t make sense. I trust in You.’
Being loved changes us all.
If God is in it, He will provide for it.
Faith like the wind, is invisible … but what it moves is not.
Words from a father, ‘Maybe sometimes I treated my daughter too much like a princess…but that’s only because when I thought of her as my daughter…I felt like a king.’
Just because we’re not where we want to be…doesn’t mean that God has abandoned us.
Instead of asking, ‘Lord, how can I get out of this season of pain?’ ask ‘Lord, what can I get out of this season of pain?’
Everything changes when we choose to release our grip on ‘my plan for me’ and rest in God’s plan for me.
It never was about serving me… it always was about serving You.’
Hope is not only something we should aspire to attain…it is also something we should aspire to give.
It might not be how you think… but the Lord does answer prayer!

Before the beginning there was God, a being of pure love, infinitely good, infinitely wise, infinitely powerful, infinitely just.

Love delights to pour itself out. This Love who created us in His own image and likeness taught us, ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself’ did it first. Love loved itself first, understood itself perfectly, and such was the power of that Love that Love begat itself, and the perfect outpouring of Love (The Father) to Love (The Son) and the perfectly reciprocal outpouring of Love (The Son) to Love (The Father) together begat Love (The Holy Spirit).

The harmony and unity of this being of pure love is perfect and spectacularly beautiful, and so amazing that determining where The Father ends and The Son begins, and where The Son ends and the Holy Spirit begins, and where the Holy Spirit ends and the The Father begins, and where the The Son ends and The Father begins, where the The Father ends and The Holy Spirit begins, where The Holy Spirit ends and The Son begins is more difficult than pin-pointing the exact location of an electron within an atom.

Love delights to pour itself out, and Love delights even more when its Love is reciprocated. Love is life-giving and fruitful, so the infinite being of pure love began the vast plan of creation. The sheer scope of the intelligence which created matter out of nothingness, and the infinite variety of inanimate things, animate creatures, creatures with souls and creatures of pure spirit, is breathtaking and we only experience a tiny part of it.

Everything created by Love is full of goodness. But for Love to be reciprocated, the creatures with souls and the creatures of pure spirit needed to have the capacity to choose Love or reject Love, and that choice had 3 aspects, to love or not love itself, Love, and other creatures.

Some of the creatures of pure spirit got so caught up in love of themselves that they began to believe that they surpassed their creator and had superior intelligence to their creator and rejected Love by refusing to obey and by refusing to trust in Him. These sad creatures we call demons.

Choosing to not love is a destructive force, and the demons knowing that they could not hurt God Himself, set themselves to destroying creation and especially set themselves to destroying the creatures with souls.

The creatures with souls were tempted not to obey (eating fruit that was forbidden) and tempted not to trust (that God’s instructions were not for their complete good and that God’s instructions were holding them back from better things). They gave in to temptation.

But Love’s plan was much bigger.

The Son consented to enter into creation as a creature with soul and by a sacrificial and expiatory death to pay the infinite price of reparation to the being of pure love, the only offering capable of giving creatures with souls the opportunity to regain the power of choosing Love.

When that Price was paid, The Spirit consented to enter souls who welcomed Him, and wherever He found goodwill in those souls The Spirit empowered them to resist temptation and to choose Love; He empowered them to live the Love that The Son had modelled to them, a life of complete obedience, trust and generosity (a.k.a. outpouring). It is a triple empowering, to love ourselves, to love God, and to love each other; to love in ways beyond our natural abilities due to His sacramental gifts, His spiritual gifts and His charismatic gifts. It is allowing The Spirit full freedom to love through us; to love ourselves, God and others as only The Spirit can.

The Plan of The Father, The Son and The Spirit is to bring each of us fully into the divine communion, unity and harmony of His being.

Every action that is a Yes to Love is a step closer to that Plan.
Every action that is a No to Love is a step away from that Plan.
       
................................................................................
​A one page PDF version of this is available below:                                                

A few days ago this word was released by Heidi Bryden via His Kingdom Prophecy:
https://www.hiskingdomprophecy.com/the-great-outpouring-is-beginning/

While there is far more to it, these few lines from it alone are worth holding close to your heart as 2022 begins. They are worth looking at again and again:

I saw an open portal in the midst of the clouds like a circle, and a stream of water poured down out of Heaven onto the earth.
This was surrounded by the great Cloud of Witnesses as they peered down through the portal into the earth. They were excited, watching where the water was falling.
Upon the earth a few people danced in the stream of water that poured from Heaven, rejoicing that Revival had come.
The long-awaited outpouring of The Spirit had begun!

And indeed there are parts of the world where this has already begun to happen:
https://www.elijahlist.com/words/display_word.html?ID=26590
An excerpt:
A holy fear and awe of the Lord swept through that place as we watched the Holy Spirit, night after night, heal people, deliver people of demons, draw many to Jesus, and fill little children with the Holy Spirit. I've never seen so many people delivered of demonic spirits in my twenty years of ministry. I've never seen the power of God move on this level. I've never seen so many young people become radically changed by one touch from Jesus. Redemption and restoration flooded through that tent and has continued to spread through families and states all across America, as people who visited the revival have gone home to see everything change!
Jennifer Martin, Nashville, Tennessee, USA  20 Dec 2021
 
We have a choice.
We can focus on all the horrible things happening in our world today, and the depths of the swamp.
OR we can focus on what God is doing.

We can choose to fill our hearts with bad news or with good news.

One will fill us with fear, the other will fill us with faith and expectancy and hope.
 
For many of us it is time to turn from alerting others that the swamp is real
and to watch for what the Holy Spirit is doing, and to align with that.

Others are doing a great job with swamp alerts eg
https://www.theblogmire.com/reflections-on-another-year-of-covidian-lies-and-how-the-truth-will-ultimately-prevail/
 
Consider this: St John the Baptist leaping and dancing in his mother's womb, welcoming Jesus on behalf of all Israel, and that it was only after this leaping and dancing 'a la King David', that the Holy Spirit hit St Elizabeth.
​
Maybe it is time to practice a bit of extravagance in worship.
 
My son took the imagery given to Heidi Bryden and put in on paper.
​
May it help you to keep this promise of God close to your heart.
May it help you to bring to nothing all the attacks of fear.
May it help you to focus on what God is up to in 2022.

(www.CavanaghArt.com or at Instagram @cavanaghcreative
 
Of course, sometimes it is the extravagance in worship that calls forth the Holy Spirit, and sometimes it is the active presence of the Holy Spirit that starts the leaping and dancing, and sometimes each builds on the other in a glorious holy spiral towards more of God.

​Come Holy Spirit!

In recent days a document containing the proposals arising from the 1st Assembly of the 5th Australian Plenary Council has been released. The updated version, released 15 Dec 2021, has 110 pages. If you would like to read it, the link is provided below:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wi8RrPZPBKSHX-b6jjY3gvMdQQ26tcse/view

Yes, I have read it, but confess to skimming over sections that contained repetition because a few small groups dealt with 2 questions instead of 1 question.

In advance I apologise for how brutal my assessment of this document is.

As I read each page, I did expect something fresh and surprising to galvanise me with enthusiasm. Because that’s the hallmark of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is full of fresh vitality and loves to surprise us with new solutions to old problems and cause all of us to say, ‘Yes! Aha! That’s it! How come we never thought of that before? That’d actually work! Count me in!’.

What I did find were:
lots of personal agendas
lots of special interest group agendas
lots of human solutions, most of them anything but fresh,
lots of expensive requests for best practice research
expectations that formation will solve everything
expectations that better resources will solve everything
expectations that national standards will solve everything
expectations that things are quite OK, with a grudging openness to minor tweaks

So I conclude that the majority of participants were unable to relinquish their own agendas and their own pre-conceived notions.

I further conclude based on the complete squashing of the notion that ‘when considering the success or failure of educational facilities that the percentage of graduates who have become missionary disciples while at that educational facility really matters’ – that really listening to each other didn’t happen.

Listening to majority opinions happened; but listening to minority opinions not so much. Sometimes the voice of the Holy Spirit is in the consensus, (Acts 6:5, Acts 15:23-29) but sometimes the voice of the Holy Spirit is in a Daniel. (Daniel 13:41c-62)

Here are some interesting statistics:
In the document, the Holy Spirit (the One we were supposedly listening to), was mentioned 15 times, and 5 of those times were in the 9 Oct 2021 Concluding Statement.
Family was mentioned 33 times; families 19 times.
Evangelism and Evangelisation were mentioned 31 times.
Formation was mentioned a whopping 163 times.

Several proposals are good, but of the kind that cannot be imposed from without, and can only happen through people anointed by God, in His timing, to make them happen, eg a religious order dedicated to the care and healing of the abused and traumatised.

What we have is a list of very well-intentioned human solutions.

Yet all the questions considered by the Plenary Council small groups were based in Evangelii Gaudium 27

27. I dream of a “missionary option”, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation. The renewal of structures demanded by pastoral conversion can only be understood in this light: as part of an effort to make them more mission-oriented, to make ordinary pastoral activity on every level more inclusive and open, to inspire in pastoral workers a constant desire to go forth and in this way to elicit a positive response from all those whom Jesus summons to friendship with himself. As John Paul II once said to the Bishops of Oceania: “All renewal in the Church must have mission as its goal if it is not to fall prey to a kind of ecclesial introversion”.

And none of the questions considered the source of a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything.

Missionary impulses do not come from man,
they come from God.

Pentecost, (Acts 2), was a missionary impulse that changed everything.
Another missionary impulse that changed everything happened in Acts 4:23-31.
The conversion of St Paul (Acts 9:1-22) contained a missionary impulse which changed everything.

Likewise the conversions of St Augustine of Hippo, St Francis of Assisi, St Dominic, St Ignatius of Loyola and St Teresa of Avila changed the world, and are still changing the world.
The missionary impact of Our Lady of Guadalupe is still changing the world too.

None of these Plenary Council questions considered how to practically cope with the results of a such a missionary impulse (Isaiah 54:1-10).

People who believe that God is initiating a missionary impulse do make room, do enlarge the size of their tents, do spread their tent cloths wider, do lengthen the tent ropes, and secure the lot firmly with tent pegs.

If you really believe that God is going to send you a deluge of rain, then you stock up on umbrellas and gumboots, and you get extra water-tanks, you increase the capacity of your dams, and you clean out the gutters and fix the places that normally leak.

What, sincerely, do we need to do to prepare for a massive missionary impulse?

For example what would need to change if you had 3000 people show up at the parish office in one day; 1200 needing confession, 300 begging for deliverance, 500 begging for baptism, 700 wanting to know how to serve God better and do effective penance, 400 begging to become Catholic/do RCIA, 300 seeking explanation for the weird spiritual experiences they have been having, and 300 wanting to donate goods and large sums of money as evidence of their repentance to God?
What if that happened every day for a month?
Or for 3 months?
What if the numbers of the spiritually needy kept increasing each day?

My proposal is for the 2nd Assembly of the 5th Plenary council to spend half its time in prayer begging the Holy Spirit to grant such a missionary impulse to Australia, and to spend the other half of its time earnestly seeking guidance from the Holy Spirit for how to both effectively plan and respond to the results of such a missionary impulse.

Then we might see this land truly embrace its destiny of being the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit - and see that longed for missionary impulse happen.
​
Amen? Amen!!
..........................................................
​
​A printer-friendly version is available below, 3 x A4 pages

It was put to me that a 3000 person response in a day was unlikely, even with the Holy Spirit as the instigator.

I think that is under-estimating the Holy Spirit and there are numerous historical precedents.

Pentecost, when 3000 were added to their number, is the first precedent.

But we’ve also seen in recent history the extraordinary pulling power of St John Vianney and St Padre Pio, people came from all over the world to see and experience the holiness of these men, and their God-given gift of reading souls.

We’ve also seen the numbers of people who continue to flock to pilgrimage sites like Lourdes, Fatima, and Medjugorje.

Even 30 spiritually needy people in a day would overwhelm the resources of an average parish office, and 300 spiritually needy people per day even more so. But 3000 is mild by Holy Spirit standards.

Our parish is rather average. About 25% of the people in the area might culturally identify as Catholic according to Census records. That’s around 10,000 people, and pre-pandemic we were getting 5-10% of them at Mass each weekend. Could a wave of Holy Spirit power bring 3000 of them to the parish door in one day? Yes, He could, easy-peasy.

You could ask, why doesn’t He? Many parishes have fire evacuation plans, and In Case of Emergency kits. But how many of them have In Case of Revival resources and plans? How much capacity has your parish to welcome and respond adequately to spiritually needy people? If you could only adequately cope with 10, and 300 came to the door, how many of the 290 would persevere until they were helped? How many would walk away? How many would begin doubting that the experience of God they had was real? How many would never return?

After the first Divine Renovation conference in 2014, the parish office in Halifax was getting something like 100 phone calls each day from all around the world asking for more information and asking specific questions. It was to meet that need, and to allow parish staff to attend to parish needs, that Divine Renovation Ministries was set up.

Have a read through some of these accounts of Holy Spirit activity, often called revivals:

The Welsh revival 1904-1905
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1904%E2%80%931905_Welsh_revival
The revival lasted less than a year, but in that time 100,000 people were converted.

The Azuza Street revival
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azusa_Street_Revival
The core membership of the Azusa Street Mission was never many more than 50–60 individuals, with hundreds if not thousands of people visiting or staying temporarily over the years.

The 1859 Ulster revival
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1859_Ulster_revival
It has been reported that the revival produced 100,000 converts.

The 1859 Welsh revival
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/nostalgia/welsh-history-month-wales-religious-10248368
It is estimated that as many as 100,000 new converts were added to the Welsh nonconformist churches in the year in which the revival burned most brightly.

The Cane Ridge revival
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_Ridge,_Kentucky
It was estimated by military personnel that some 20,000 to 30,000 persons of all ages, representing various cultures and economic levels traveled on foot and on horseback, many bringing wagons with tents and camping provisions.
https://www.caneridge.org/

The Jesus People movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_movement
Unlike many other Christian movements, there was no single leader or figurehead of the Jesus movement. Many of the 80,000 young Jesus People attended Explo '72, an event organized by Campus Crusade for Christ.

The Brownsville revival
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownsville_Revival
During the revival, nearly 200,000 people gave their lives to Jesus, and by autumn of the year 2000 more than 1,000 people who experienced the revival were taking classes at the Brownsville Revival School of Ministry.

The Toronto blessing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Blessing
Charisma Magazine reported that an estimated 4,000 churches in England and another 7,000 churches in North America had been impacted by this new revival movement

As the song goes….
God can do it again, and again, and again,
He’s the same God today as He always has been
Yesterday, now, forever
He’s always the same.
There’s no reason to doubt, God can do it again.

With the Holy Spirit, the arrival of 3000 spiritually needy people a day is more than possible.

But are we ready, willing and expectant for the missionary impulses He loves to bestow?
​
We do have to do our bit, and work on increasing our capacity to receive His missionary impulses, locally, regionally and nationally.

In a few days’ time the first session of the Plenary Council of Australia will begin. From Sunday 3 Oct to Sunday 10 Oct there will be all kinds of online meetings going on.

The timetable is here (if you scroll down a bit)
https://plenarycouncil.catholic.org.au/assembly-1/

(But as that website page has been a bit glitchy, this is the timetable as it was online as at 30 Sep 2021.)

And the YouTube channel where you can find the livestreamed Masses and ‘open to all’ sessions is here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPKFmOZcjJfMQ9SfcotyZJg

The second session will happen mid-2022.

If this goes according to normal Vatican Synod precedents, the first session tends to be a bit of an ice-breaker, and sets the conversation going, and then second session is where the nitty gritty stuff happens – because the first session gives everyone a handle on where the battlelines are and what the stakes actually are.

Yes, the first session is necessary, just like a football game the first half is where you size up the strengths and weaknesses of the other team, and the second half – like the second session – is where the game is decided.

It is a process that involves real people, with their own talents, responsibilities and agendas; the prayers of the church local; national and universal, and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Do not underestimate the Holy Spirit;
we know from holy scripture that He is just as adept at bringing God’s plans to fruition through the evil, the skullduggerous, the fool, even through a donkey, as well as through the well intentioned and the truly good and holy.

Obviously the Holy Spirit can do far more with willing collaborators than with the unwilling ones. The degree of willing collaboration determines whether the Father’s base plan, His better plan, His outstanding plan or His jaw-droppingly-wonderful plan is enacted.

l want to see the jaw-droppingly-wonderful plan happen,
don’t you?

Yes, there are massive forces working against this,
including the enemy of our souls and his minions as well those who independently want to shape the church in their image rather than in God’s image, and the potent zeitgeists of our era.

Yet this is the great south land of the Holy Spirit.
We have yet to see anything here that would deserve a smidgeon of that epithet.
But that’s what gives us hope, that this is the time,
among the chaos and lockdowns,
among the inability to freely and publicly access the sacraments,
when it most certainly can’t be by our doing,
that God can do it,
that He can do it in such a way that we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God alone did it.

That’s why beyond all our fears that this is going to be a secular-agenda-led talk-fest and a complete waste of time,
that it will be known as the Plenary Council of the Holy Spirit.

That doesn’t mean we stop praying.
It means we intensify our prayers.

One way to do that is to join in with the full rosary (20 decades) being livestreamed through St Mary’s Cathedral Sydney from 3pm to 4.30pm on Sunday 3 Oct 2021.
https://www.stmaryscathedral.org.au/event/holy-rosary-with-the-cathedral-clergy-3rd-october-2021/
(Remember Daylight Saving starts in NSW that morning! Fix your clocks.)

Another way to pray is to do what Archbishop Polding did when times were tough on the sea voyage from Sydney to London via the bottom of South America in 1846, when they risked being becalmed for weeks.
He got everyone to pray 5 Our Fathers, 5 Hail Marys and a Memorare for suitable wind.

We certainly need the wind of the Holy Spirit in our nation Australia,
and in the people of God who reside here,
in the Plenary Council of the Holy Spirit,
and in those who are on the path to seeking Him
but don’t quite realise it yet.

It seems like a good plan,
and achievable between now and 10 October,
especially as a family or household group,
to pray the 5 Our Fathers, 5 Hail Marys and a Memorare daily;
and if you feel so led,
to continue to pray them daily until the close of the second session in 2022.
…………………………………………
Our Father
Our Father, Who art in heaven,
hallowed be Your Name.
Your kingdom come,
Your Will be done,
on earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen.

Hail Mary
Hail Mary, Full of Grace,
The Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit
of your womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners, now,
and at the hour of our death. Amen.

The Memorare
Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary,
that never was it known
that anyone who fled to your protection,
implored your help,
or sought your intercession was left unaided.
Inspired by this confidence,
I fly to you, O Virgin of virgins, my mother;
to you do I come,
before you I stand,
sinful and sorrowful.
O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
despise not my petitions,
but in your mercy hear and answer me. Amen

The Gospel for this Sunday, Pentecost Sunday, Year B, comes from the two segments of St John’s Gospel, Chapter 16, containing promises about the coming of the Holy Spirit.

These promises go some way to helping us understand why Jesus ascended to the Father, and sent the Holy Spirit.

If Jesus was still present on earth in His glorified body, we would all be pre-occupied with everything He said and did, and would never get around to doing what God wants us to do. Think of the biggest celebrity you know, and multiply that pulling power by at least 100. Yet on earth, Jesus continually refused anything to do with celebrity in favour of building long-term personal committed relationships. Superstar celebrity is not the modus-operandi of Jesus.

What He did is very different, and far more effective. He sent each and every one of us who have committed our lives to Him the gift of a Master Tutor, a.k.a. the Holy Spirit.

At the time these promises were given at the Last Supper, the disciples had not been through the crucible of the death and resurrection of Jesus. So there were plenty of things at that level that they had no hope of understanding until after they had experienced His risen presence.

But the ‘I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you to bear now’ went even deeper than that.

A young child is incapable of understanding anything at an adult level. A lot of growth, maturity and learning about the world we live in is necessary before anyone attains an adult understanding of anything.

Similarly if you started to explain the finer points of performing a Beethoven symphony to someone who has only just learned to play ‘chopsticks’, it is going to be completely lost on them. To get them from playing ‘chopsticks’ to giving a credible performance of a Beethoven symphony is going to require many lessons that build on each other, and lots of homework, practice, tests, and time.

The same is true for the difference between someone learning the first 10 nouns and the first verb declension of a new language, and someone reading and writing literature in that language; or the difference between someone who has just begun to learn how to do a plie and a tendu and someone who dances as prima ballerina in Swan Lake.

Everyone begins at the beginning.

When we hear ‘Advocate’ or ‘Paraclete’ to describe the Holy Spirit, it may be useful to translate that into Master Tutor.

Because that is exactly what the Holy Spirit is, and what He graciously does. He takes us step by step, lesson by lesson, from baby steps in our relationship with God and our ability to administer His love to others, on a perfectly designed individual learning plan, to heights of relationship with God and ability to administer His love to others that we can’t even start to imagine. And there’s always more that He wants to teach us, and far more that He is capable of teaching us.

But He is a perfect gentleman, and He adjusts everything to our pace, and to the degree of co-operation and trust we give Him, and to our diligence (or lack thereof) in doing the necessary practice and homework to get to the next level/lesson.

Is it not absolutely amazing that God gives us this Master of Master Tutors in the Holy Spirit?

That promise, ‘He will lead you to the complete truth’ is both personal and corporate. If you look carefully at Christian history, you will notice that each era was learning something extraordinary which built on the lived response and understanding of previous eras and generations in the Church. eg. The monastic orders grew out of the desert fathers, the mendicant orders grew out of the monastic orders; devotion to the Divine Mercy was not possible before devotion to the Sacred Heart had permeated the Church.

There are things the Holy Spirit is leading the Church into in our times, that could not have been done in any earlier era. Over the past 120 years some of that has been a rediscovery of the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit, which is an ongoing process. We can also see a greater openness to ecumenism led by the same Holy Spirit over the last 50-60 years.

There is always more He wants to lead us into, point the way to, and teach us about.

Are we willing to diligently co-operate with Him?

Let’s pray….

Dear Holy Spirit, I am so sorry for how much I have been underestimating Your work in my life and in the life of the Church, and the superabundantly enormous gift You are from Jesus and the Father. I am so sorry for grieving you, and for being an unwilling, unappreciative, lazy and un-co-operative student. Please forgive me. I want this to change from today onwards, and forever. I want to learn and co-operate with anything and everything You want to teach me. In particular I ask your special help to attain competency in those areas where I have been resisting You the most. I don’t want to do that any more. Please forgive and help me. Amen.    

A strange thing happened on Good Friday; an email asking if I’d like to pen 600 words of an inspiring nature about my 2021 Paschal Triduum experiences. At that point the Holy Thursday ceremonies had been sub-par and disappointment was beginning to creep in. With this unusual time in history and the unusual confluence of Passover coinciding with Easter, I had dared to hope for some of the more dynamic manifestations of the Holy Spirit during these holy days.

Rants I could provide.
Inspiration – not so much.

But the consideration did clarify some of what I wanted to see during these holy days:

I'm never going to be happy until I see signs of God's supernatural action during the Triduum.

That means:
*Homilies that are beyond human wisdom and convict and uplift the heart at the same time.
*Pandemonium because people have come back from Holy Communion and have found themselves healed.
*People sitting in the pews long after the ceremonies are over because they have been caught up in God.
 
Things like that.
 
But I haven't seen it yet, so I remain disappointed, because that's how Easter is supposed to be.
 
The Triduum liturgy has the structure and the capacity to hold and channel Resurrection power.

I don’t know about you, but I believe in an Almighty God who can do far more than give me uplifting emotions, and I want far more than that. Emotions come and go. Action changes the status quo. I want action, not only for me and my loved ones, but for everyone present and their loved ones.

I want the newspapers filled with testimonies about what happened during the Triduum.

But I know we can’t get there if the homilies are lacking the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

“Everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved. But they will not ask His help unless they believe in Him, and they will not believe in Him unless they have heard of Him, and they will not hear of Him unless they get a preacher…. Faith comes from what is preached, and what is preached comes from the Word of Christ.” Rom 10:13-15a,17

The first homily spoke primarily of the gifts of the eucharist and the priesthood, and didn’t speak much about the Giver, on His night of nights.

The second homily was long, but began to improve mid-way, touching many of the right notes but without any power riding on or through them.

The third homily didn’t mention any of the banquet of scripture readings, and could have been a replay of similar homilies given in different locations; did say all the expected things, but didn’t have Jesus as the primary focus.

When a homily is as it is supposed to be, it makes Jesus present, and enables us to encounter Him.

But that takes not only study, and time, but assiduous prayer and more than ordinary levels of holiness, and it also requires responding to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit (no matter how ‘out there’ they might feel) both in the preparation phase and in the delivery phase.

We also can’t get there without intercessory preparation, i.e. a parish army praying daily all through Lent for those who will attend the Triduum (in whole or in part), that their hearts and souls will be good soil for the Gospel, and further, for the Holy Spirit to act upon them to convict, save, heal, direct and commission those attendees according to His holy will.

Truly inspired parish armies will also pray afterwards that the good seed sown in hearts and souls will come to full harvest under the action of the Holy Spirit.

Yes, God can act sovereignly without these levels of human co-operation, but generally His modus operandi is to work with us rather than without us – as long as we take all our cues from Him.

In all honesty we can’t expect Him to show up and take our plans from good to great without seeking His input in the planning – even though planning without seeking His input (but, perhaps, for a brief 30 second prayer at the beginning of a planning meeting) appears to be our normal modus operandi.
​It takes more intentional effort than that!
​
Please God, may He make us so dissatisfied with our Triduum experiences that we put Him first, front and centre next time, and ever after. Amen.

​The Instrumentum Laboris (working document) for the first session of the Australian Plenary Council was released on 25 Feb 2021, and I eventually finished reading it sometime in mid-March.

You can read it yourself:
https://plenarycouncil.catholic.org.au/instrumentum-laboris/

It wasn’t an easy read, despite it being beautifully presented. Penitential, it was. Firstly it takes a very long time to set the scene and give a situational analysis of the Church in Australia. Many times I wondered if the document would ever get to the point. Secondly it uses lots of ambiguous language that feels like it was written by a combination of church bureaucrats and school teachers. It would be easy to decode for them, but not for me. I longed for some footnotes that gave situational examples to aid understanding.

In particular I longed for concrete and contextual explanation of this passage from 166:

“Not infrequently, Catholics and their family members find themselves in an uneasy situation regarding particular Church teachings or disciplines, not because they identify any less as Catholic, and not because their attachment to Christ has grown “lukewarm” (Rev 3:16), but because of shifts in cultural norms and expectations that they once relied on to support their Catholic faith. Very often, however, this tension between people’s lived experience and the teachings of the Church reaches the point where people withdraw from parishes or communities, and no longer identify as Catholic.”

Is this about going to Mass on Sundays, cohabitation, same sex attraction, blended families, or about some, all or even more than this? How do you even begin to discuss this passage without knowing what the original catalyst for the passage was? How do you begin to frame questions that ask, ‘prove to me how attachment to Christ hasn’t grown lukewarm despite being out of synch with Church teachings, disciplines and practices…by what other means can you show strong attachment to Jesus Christ (John 12:26, James 2:17-18)?’?

I admit I was struggling to reconcile the somewhat rosy view the Working Document paints compared to what I am seeing in the pews. Then Philippa Martyr’s article came up while I was trying unsuccessfully to find any online commentary on the Working Document which wasn’t a clone of the official press release. It is well worth a read:
https://gaudiumetspes22.com/2021/03/05/stranded-under-the-southern-cross-news-from-a-shrinking-church/

I found it a more accurate analysis of the Catholic Church in Australia 2021.

In particular I found her imagery of a carapace to be valuable, viz:

“I tend to see the Church in Australia as consisting of the ‘real Church’ and an unpleasant outer structure that I call The Carapace. The Carapace is like The Borg in Star Trek, if it helps. It attaches itself to the real Church and feeds off it. Its principal purpose is to employ people, and its mission is to protect the Church’s assets at all costs.”

What bothers me greatly is that the Instrumentum Laboris seems to be written by the carapace, and the vast majority of the delegates for the Plenary Council sessions will come from the carapace.

What else bothers me is that God seems to be a minor stakeholder among many instead of the One and Only opinion that matters.

Why else would there be so much virtue signaling about sexual abuse, indigenous issues, women in leadership issues, ecology, etc? I’m not saying that they aren’t important, just that they pale into insignificance against the urgency of saving souls from eternities in hell. Dealing with these things of necessity will be part of that primary mission, for the salvation of the people in these minorities, but they should never overshadow that primary mission.

Which matters to God the most?

What matters to God the most?

I put it to you that growth in relationship to Him (holiness), family (His plan that predates Scripture), and bringing people into relationship with Him (mission) and co-operating in expressing His love to others (service: which is the natural overflow of increase in holiness and mission) are what matter most to God.

On everything but service we are not doing well at all, and even our service is usually human powered service rather than Holy Spirit empowered service.

My view from the pew looks like this:

Everything starts from Holy Spirit inspired preaching. But for Holy Spirit inspired preaching to happen lots of prayer, study of scripture and sacred tradition, openness to the charismatic workings of the Holy Spirit and surrender to the workings of the Holy Spirit are necessary; and the preacher has to be able to effectively use the language and language idioms of those he is preaching to.

It is ‘hymns, hospitality and homilies’ or ‘music, ministry and message’ that either engages a newcomer and keeps them returning or turns them off for good. Generally we are mediocre when it comes to hymns and hospitality with the occasional flash of brilliance, but where we consistently fall down is in homilies.

When was the last time a homily encouraged you to pray?
When was the last time a homily invited you to go to confession? (and made it available)
When was the last time a homily opened your eyes to how good and great God is?
When was the last time a homily made you want to know Jesus better?
When was the last time a homily kept you awake and hanging on every word?
When was the last time a homily contained anything memorable that wasn’t a pre-prepared joke?

Every day I pray that God will use the words of the homilist that day to touch hearts. Often I wonder if God hears me because even I can only decode on average 3 words out of 5 from our overseas-born priests, and the most common question when Mass is over is ‘What did he say?’.

But a preacher doesn’t have to be in a pulpit. We pew dwellers are just as bad because we talk far more about parish politics, weather and medical ailments than we ever do (if we ever do) about Jesus, about inspiration we have found in Gospel passages, answers to prayers, and about living out the vocations we have been called to.

There is such laser focus on encouraging priestly vocations that you could be forgiven for thinking that vocations to family life, religious vocations, career vocations and vocations to special non-ordained ministries aren’t important at all. Yet apart from a very few exceptions to the rule, priestly vocations grow in strong families and in devotionally vibrant parishes.

When was the last time you saw any parish-based initiatives for encouraging and supporting marriages and families?

Did you know that Australia has no (nil, nada, ziltch, zero) Retrouvaille ministry/weekends for marriages in crisis?

Schools. Shudder. They are supposed to be places where the Catholic faith is taught and flourishes. Yet they are places where those who do teach the demanding parts of the Gospel are persecuted in various subtle and non-subtle ways. But these days no one in the parish knows anyone with children at the local Catholic primary school, and vice versa, and about the only person who visits both places is the parish priest and any assistant priest. What we actually have are non-government schools. At what point do we call a halt to the massive investment in schools that don’t evangelise, barely catechize and consistently churn out students indistinguishable from atheists and agnostics?

Families with faith have been choosing not to send their children to Catholic schools, many have chosen to home-school, some have chosen Christian schools, and the rest are sending their children to state schools partly because the cost/benefit analysis has swung the other way. In times past parents were willing to pay the extra cost of the Catholic school because it helped support the development of faith in their children.

The view from the pew can look very different from the view of the carapace.

An example may be useful…
In recent years the St Vincent de Paul Society went through a centralization process, and created regional hubs for furniture and other items. The people managing the hubs were happy. Some of the people in the local outlets were happy ‘it’s great, we refer them to the hub’. But those who knew how things worked pre-hub, and the people in need were not happy. Locally there used to be a room where furniture could be stored on a temporary basis. For the hubs to work, they were told rooms like these had to be stopped. The thing is, those rooms enabled society members to respond quickly when needs became manifest. With a hub, you have to send requests up, wait for decisions, and for action to be sent down, and sometimes have to follow-up the requests, all of which means many days, if not weeks, before needs get met. As for the person in need who had enough trouble asking for help the first time, now they have to travel to the hub to get help; and ask for help a second time. How many of them don’t take the extra step? For some the transport costs alone would be prohibitive. For others it was so hard to admit they needed help, it would be a long time before they attempted to admit it again. Or they would seek other alternatives with quicker responses to their urgent emergencies.

Even more seriously, the local outlet loses the opportunity to begin a relationship of accompaniment with that person in need, and the probability of needy people falling through the cracks increases. But the hub managers will only see the turnover of furniture and other items, and fluctuation in staffing levels, and never record or quantify these other losses, and will assume everything is going great guns.

Thankfully there have been moves towards decentralization again.

There are very good reasons why the Church values the principle of subsidiarity, and why any moves towards adding bureaucratic layers for co-ordination of smaller entities has to carefully make sure that the principle of subsidiarity is not violated.

Pope Francis has encouraged leaders to take on the smell of the sheep, to take time to be with those on the fringes and on the front lines. It is the only way to find out what is really going on.

An example may be useful…
A person serving at the diocesan curia has responsibilities for parish support. Most of this person’s time is spent liaising with parish staff and with parish members who voluntarily take on co-ordination roles. The parish support team puts together a Lenten discussion group programme, sends it out to the parishes. Some groups will meet every year regardless. Other groups will only form if there is active encouragement from the pulpit, and some recruitment and engagement of group leaders. Some parishioners will use the contents of the programme privately.

The parish support team will know how many programmes got sent out, and have a rough idea how many groups formed and how many participated. But they don’t usually get information on how many programmes were thrown out because they were still on the display table several weeks later, nor information about why parishioners left them there, nor information about why groups didn’t form, nor why anyone gave up part way through (individually or group). The only way you get that information is by talking incognito (without them knowing what your role is) with people in the pews whom you have never met before and truly listening to what they have to say, even if it isn’t what you want to hear. (eg. “I picked it up, but I put it back when I saw you needed to download stuff. I’m not that good with computers, and there’s no one at home who is any better at it than me, no one who could help me if I got myself into computer trouble.”)

Can you see how from a curial vantage point everything could look rosy, and better than last year? And yet from a pew dweller’s view point it could look very different indeed?

That’s why I am so worried that the Instrumentum Laboris seems to be written by the carapace, and the vast majority of the delegates for the Plenary Council sessions will come from the carapace who haven’t taken on the smell of the sheep.

A few passages from the Instrumentum Laboris caught my eye:

Passage 74 page 27
Rather, Pope Francis, echoing the thoughts of his predecessors since the Second Vatican Council, insists that an authentically Gospel-inspired renewal of the Church flows from a renewed encounter with Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit and gives rise to a ‘pastoral conversion’ of the entire Church, a renewal that is expressed in a ‘missionary option’ or ‘missionary impulse’ for making the saving love of God known in every place.

Amen. Amen. What we all need more than anything is a deeper encounter with Jesus, and a deeper encounter with the Holy Spirit. Without that, nothing, but nothing changes for the better. We can’t make it happen, that is up to God Himself. But we can make the conditions and environment more conducive for those encounters to happen. Things like encouraging private individual prayer, corporate prayer (prayer meetings, public devotions, liturgy), scripture study, reconciling strained relationships, forgiveness of wrongs done to us, getting to know each other better so as to grow in unity, self-discipline, generosity to others, encouraging more frequent visits to the sacrament of penance, and asking God (individually and corporately) to grant us these precious encounters.

Passage 123 page 41
Submissions to the Council also raised what Pope Francis, among others, has identified as the danger of an unhealthy culture of clericalism within the priesthood and in the wider Church. At its most extreme, this has been identified as a significant factor in the sexual abuse crisis in the Church. It can also undermine the mission that belongs to the entire Church and discourage the exercise of gifts within it. Some fundamental questions arise in light of this concern: What are the causes of such a culture of clericalism? What are the theological, structural, psychological or spiritual influences that can contribute to it and how might the Church better equip its clergy and laity for mission today and for increasing co-responsibility in the decades to come?

Clericalism encourages an ‘us and them’ mentality, with ‘us’ being far superior to ‘them’. Sadly our seminaries are still full of it. We have seminarians visiting parishes on placement and making the assumption that no one in the parishes knows how to use incense properly except for them. That assumption most certainly gets up the noses of parishioners who have been serving at the altar and using incense for decades. Then there’s the practice of getting 2nd year seminarians and above to always wear soutanes at Mass, even if they are sitting in the congregation. That’s visibly making an ‘us’ and ‘them’ distinction well before the vocational discernment process has scarcely begun. It is very difficult to get to ‘we’ and ‘team’, albeit with different gifts and vocational callings, if from the ‘get go’ seminarians are treated as heroic and special. For the mission of the Church to proceed, ie the making of disciples of Jesus, clerics can’t do it without laity, and laity can’t do it without clerics. We vitally need each other. It is one of those ‘both/and’ things. Mutual respect will get us much further in that mission than clericalism.

Passage 131 page 43
There is not a well-developed understanding and practice of the Church as a community of missionary disciples. The Plenary Council offers the Church in Australia an opportunity to consider carefully, and prayerfully, what steps must be taken to awaken this awareness of the missionary vocation of every Catholic, for all the baptised are called equally to live and proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

This is true. Although there are sub-groups within parishes that have this awareness eg catechists. Vatican II speaks eloquently of the universal call to holiness and the universal call to mission and so have subsequent papal documents. Encouraging us pew dwellers to read these texts is one thing, helping us to understand how to respond in our own lives is quite another since most of us have no idea what that looks like, nor what it feels like. A possible way forward is gathering and sharing testimonies of how God has used pew dwellers to make disciples, with particular emphasis on how pew dwellers came to understand what God was calling them to do, and how that mission developed over time.

Not everyone is going to be called to be an evangelist (nor to the same evangelistic mission field eg family, co-workers, young people, PSTD sufferers etc); not everyone is going to have a calling to specific works of mercy; not everyone is going to have a calling to accompany people through the RCIA process. So there needs to be intentionality about gathering a wide range of stories, and in presenting them with an openness to the multiplicity of God’s callings. It is really easy to unconsciously fall into the trap of ‘God has called me to be a preacher, it is so wonderful and exciting, therefore God is calling everyone to be preachers’, thereby putting unnecessary burdens/guilt on listeners who may be called to very different missions.

Passage 135 page 44
Underpinning such renewal of practices and methods within dioceses, parishes, migrant communities and movements must be the renewal of sacramental life and prayer among all Catholics for it is the encounter with Christ in the midst of the Church that rekindles hope and makes genuine renewal possible. This is seen in the Emmaus story in Luke’s Gospel (24:13-35) where, in the midst of the disciples’ difficulties and even disillusionment, the faith of the followers of Jesus is restored and a new future opened for them by this encounter.

Without prayer and the sacraments, there is no fuel for mission. We can’t give what we don’t have. What we most need to give are God’s love and access to Jesus. Prayer and the sacraments give us access to the infilling of God’s love, and to experiential encounters with Jesus. We haven’t done a good job of proclaiming this truth about prayer and the sacraments, by and large it has been a well-kept secret, when it should have been ‘shout it from the rooftops’ stuff. Again one of the best ways to renew sacramental life and prayer is to gather testimonies from pew dwellers who are living as missionary disciples. We need to share with each other what a difference prayer (personal and communal) and the sacraments (baptism, penance, eucharist, confirmation, anointing of the sick, marriage, holy orders) make in our lives. It is good news, in fact it is great news. All of them make a big impact. But again, sensitivity is needed, because some people feel and experience lots and some people feel and experience little even when God’s grace is just as active in both. It is all too easy for a focus on feelings and experiences to get us chasing them rather than God, and for this focus to make those who barely feel or experience anything to rate themselves as second class citizens of the kingdom of God. For this reason it is always wise to focus more on the fruits eg growth in patience, generosity, peace, trust, improvement in relationships etc.

Passage 197 page 67
It is this assurance that should encourage us and empower us to speak and act with that parrhesia, that boldness and courage, which are a gift of the Holy Spirit: We need the Spirit’s prompting, lest we be paralyzed by fear and excessive caution, lest we grow used to keeping within safe bounds. Let us remember that closed spaces grow musty and unhealthy. When the Apostles were tempted to let themselves be crippled by danger and threats, they joined in prayer to implore parrhesia: “And now, Lord, look upon their threats, and grant to Your servants to speak Your Word with all boldness” (Acts 4:29). As a result, “when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31).

It is my dearest desire that when the delegates gather for both of the sessions of the Plenary Council that they dedicate somewhere between a half day and a full day as representatives of the faith communities of Australia to imploring this parrhesia for Australia – and that they do so before they start any discussion of the Working Document. What this needs to be is heartfelt spontaneous prayer ebbing and flowing as the Holy Spirit prompts. Apart from an introduction and a conclusion, it needs to be totally unscripted. It needs to be allowing God to dredge up from the depths of our soul’s expressions of our personal, corporate and national desire for Him and for the dynamic action of the Holy Spirit in our midst, in words, songs, groans and anything else He inspires. It needs to include our leaders begging pardon of God for the ways we have failed Him personally and corporately, to include confessing our failures and our shortcomings, and asking God to step in, to take control, to take leadership and give us sure guidance and the courage to respond with an active Yes to everything He wants us to do.

Without this, nothing else will really matter.

Come Holy Spirit, Come!,
and through this Plenary Council
make of this nation Australia
the promised great south land
in complete synch with You.
Amen.

...........................................................................
​
​A printer friendly version is available below, 6 x A4 pages:

On Pentecost Sunday 2020 the Reports from the Plenary Council’s six Writing and Discernment Groups were released. I have read Philippa Martyr’s and Fr John Miechels’s commentaries on these Reports. Both commentaries are well worth reading. But they do make a person reluctant to read the Reports themselves.

But read them I sadly must.

Before I do that, I wish to outline the lens from which I am approaching these documents.

From the start I thought that the process was flawed, because we know what God wants us to do – it has been outlined in Novo Millennio Ineunte and in Evangelii Gaudium. The question is how to do it authentically in an Australian context.

While the phases of the Plenary Council up till now have had paperwork reminding us to ‘Listen to what the Spirit is saying’ and ‘What do you think God is calling us to do’, in practice people have been answering very different questions, viz ‘What do you think the Church ought to be doing?’, ‘What would you like to see change in the Church?’, ‘What could we actually, concretely do, towards these themes at diocesan, deanery and parish level?’. Notably absent has been any question about what God wants me to do to contribute, and likewise absent any consideration about where all these mythical people and unlimited resources who are going to make it happen are going to come from (and how to motivate them). In practice people have been told, ‘This Plenary Council is your chance to change things, speak up for what you want, the more vocal you are, the more likely something will happen’.

In such a climate, consensus is not a reliable indicator of the will of the Holy Spirit.

Further absent, and most disturbing, is how often God’s action is left out of the deliberations: it’s a kind of, ‘He can join in if He wants to’ mentality, instead of seeking His input, guidance and power first and foremost. How strange it is when we say we are guided by the Holy Spirit, and then act as though only more committees and layers of hierarchy are needed to achieve anything.

God’s will and purposes have not changed. Always He calls us back to the original blueprint. Even before the Bible existed, family was the foundation of God’s plan. The Bible is the story of the family of Abraham, and it contains the accumulated wisdom about how God wants that family to live in fulness of life. As the family goes, so goes the Church. Where do we get the power to live as members of the family of God? From the Holy Spirit. A new evangelisation is not possible unless there is a new Pentecost, and there is no Pentecost without the Holy Spirit.

Thus for me, Scripture, Family and the Holy Spirit are the non-negotiable essential keys for discovering what God wants us to do in this Great Southern Land of the Holy Spirit. However none of them were referenced in the titles of the 6 Themes of the Plenary Council, and this continues to disturb me greatly.

So as I read (plough through) the 6 Reports, I am going to tally up any references to Scripture, Family and the Holy Spirit, and if I come across any ideas worth pursuing, I will list them.

Obviously it was not an easy task for the Writing and Discernment Groups because they had so many answers to the wrong questions to sift through.

Scripture references are counted when they occur in the body of the text (not in the footnotes) and are recognisable quotations (not cf.’s). Family has to be specifically referenced, references to parts of families eg women, children, elderly etc do not count. All too often we do not view families holistically, which is strange if we believe that each family is a domestic church, and when there is plenty of evidence in the Scripture for God entrusting specific ministries to specific families in perpetuity. Recently during the pandemic lockdown without the usual institutional church structures, we had to live church as domestic churches and began to rediscover this ancient reality. Both ‘Spirit’ and ‘Holy Spirit’ are counted.

Please take these as ‘about right’ numbers and not as exact tallies. Your own tally is likely to be different to mine, but definitely similar.

Theme 1: Missionary and Evangelising
Scripture references: 23
Family references: 6.5
Holy Spirit references: 10
(from page 6) The renewal of our world begins with personal renewal of our lives lived according to the Gospel which invites us to a personal encounter with Jesus, who offers us the gift of God’s love.
(from page 12) For our sacramental initiation to bear fruit, our journey will be one of growing in our relationship with Jesus, the community of His followers and our wider society. This growth is facilitated through the family, the school and the parish community.
(Prioritised Question 6) Given the importance of the family for the missionary and evangelising activity of the Church, how can we best promote a Catholic vision of marriage and family?

Theme 2: Inclusive, Participatory and Synodal
Scripture references: 16
Family references: 4
Holy Spirit references: 7
(from pages 6 & 10 ) Inclusion recognises that every person is a doorway into the mystery that is the Body of Christ.
(from page 9) Our society has become increasingly indifferent, sometimes even hostile, to family life in all its stages, and to those who make family a priority. At each stage of the growth of their children, families experience unique joys but also struggles which, if left unattended, can lead to disengagement and rift, both with each other but also the Church.
(from page 16) Catholics must tirelessly and fearlessly affirm the unique dignity of each and every child, and the inestimable value of the labours of every parent.

Theme 3: Prayerful and Eucharistic
Scripture references: 15
Family references: 6.5
Holy Spirit references: 11
(from page 7) The family is the usual birthplace of faith and the Church recognises that parents are the first and foremost educators of their children (Gravissimus Educationis
(from page 12) When we are formed in the Gospel, God’s people recognise Jesus in daily life.
(from Proposals for Change 1b) Equip each of our Church communities and organisations to support the creation of small communities of faith and life, centred on prayer with Scripture and sharing heart to heart. Encourage these small communities to gather regularly for the development of faith, the sharing of life over a meal and for spiritual nourishment.
(Are not families also small communities?)

Theme 4: Humble, Healing and Merciful
Scripture references: 13
Family references: 1.5
Holy Spirit references: 5
(from page 11) We are invited to witness the wounds of Jesus in those who have been wounded by the Church.
(from page 12) God is asking us to recognise it is restoration to the family of God that brings true wholeness, and that all the faithful have a role to play in the healing of the wounded.
(from page 12) We cannot separate Christ from the wounded: “just as you did it to one of the least of my family, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40).

Theme 5: Joyful, Hope-filled Servant Community
Scripture references: 3
Family references: 5.5
Holy Spirit references: 1
(from page 5) Australia is a land that prizes freedom, equality and egalitarianism, a ‘fair go’ and mateship. However, mental illness, sickness, loneliness, family or financial pressures afflict many Australians.
(from page 8) “the joy of love experienced by families is also the joy of the Church.” (Amoris Laetitia)
(from Challenge 1, page 11) Particular attention should be given to the reasons why so many young people and their families are absent from our parishes, and how schools and parishes might address this concern.

Theme 6: Open to Conversion, Renewal and Reform
Scripture references: 5
Family references: 3.5
Holy Spirit references: 3
(from page 5) “...if the parish proves capable of self-renewal and constant adaptivity, it continues to be ‘the Church living in the midst of the homes of her sons and daughters.’” (Evangelii Gaudium 28)
(from page 11) The consultation highlights the importance of a personal encounter with Christ as the basis of the life of faith, and the need for a supportive and faith-enriching Church community in which to deepen and live out our Catholic identity. Catholics sense a call for greater integration of faith and life, for discerning ways of discipleship — at home and at work, online and in local communities.
(from Question 2a on page 15) How can the structures and ministries of the local churches reach out and be more connected to today’s Catholics in their family life, communities, workplaces, culture and leisure?

                         - - -    - - -   - - -  

If we believe that the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church, and the goal of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit (St Seraphim of Sarov), then is it not exceedingly strange that the charisms of the Holy Spirit were not referenced in any of the Theme Reports? How can we possibly do the work of the Kingdom of God without prophecy, healing, intercession, discernment of spirits, words of knowledge, words of wisdom, miracles, deliverance, signs & wonders, and those with anointings from the Holy Spirit to preach, teach and evangelise? Working out how to make room for them in normal parish life, and normal family life, is what we need. Because without God all of our efforts will be fruitless, and utter wastes of time.

It is said that where you have been under the greatest attack from the evil one is the very place to expect the greatest victories. All aspects of family life, from conception to the grave, have been under extreme attack. Is not this where we should no longer be on the defensive, but positively placing our resources to assist the growth of families as domestic churches and households of grace?

And neither can happen without returning to the Scriptures and sincerely studying how God relates to families, and how to co-operate with the Holy Spirit.
  
To focus on family, on the Holy Spirit, and about what God has to say about them in the Plenary Council deliberations, with those two aforementioned papal documents for guidance, now that would be truly worthwhile.

#plenarycouncil  #plenarycouncil2020

​In my roving internet travels I came across a post that grabbed by attention. The gist of the post was that an intercessor wanted a seat at the leadership team table, and the response was 'No', with the major argument being all leaders are intercessors but not all intercessors are leaders.
 
It struck me that the situation was handled poorly, when it could have had quite positive outcomes if handled better. The context seemed to imply that the leadership felt a bit threatened and weren't too keen on the personality of the intercessor.
 
So I want to come at this situation from 2 angles. The first angle is where intercession sits in the body of Christ, and the second angle is 'Why would a request like this be made in the first place?'
 
Each believer in Jesus Christ who has been incorporated into His Body through baptism shares in the priestly, prophetic and kingly ministry of Jesus. The priestly ministry is offering up prayer and sacrifice for others, the prophetic is telling of God's good news of salvation, and the kingly is service of the needy and vulnerable (eg traditionally widows, orphans and strangers).
 
We know that Jesus is continually interceding for us. Heb 7:25 'His power to save is utterly certain because He is living forever to interceded for all who come to God through Him'. We know that we are to follow Him and to imitate Him, our leader and Head.
 
This means that intercession for others is an expected and normal part of being a Christian. But just as with the prophetic and kingly ministries of Jesus, we share in them in various degrees according to the call of God upon our lives.
 
There is the ordinary call as given in 1 Tim 2:1-2, 'First of all, there should be prayers offered for everyone – petitions, intercessions and thanksgiving – and especially for kings and others in authority so that we may be able to live religious and reverent lives in peace and quiet'.
 
To some the Holy Spirit gives a charism of intercession, which can take the form of a gift, ministry or office.
 
The gift normally manifests itself in an impulse or nudge from God to pray for a certain person or situation, and that impulse or urge lifts when the breakthrough is obtained. These tend to be short in duration and carry a degree of urgency eg You get woken up in the night with the need to pray for your nephew, you pray until peace comes, and the next day you find out he had been in a life and death situation. God can operate a gift like this in anyone at any time. You have a certainty that God wants you to pray for this person or situation, to pray right now, and even an understanding of how you are to pray – including what tools in your prayer arsenal you are to use in prayer. This is far beyond sitting in a circle and praying one after each other for your best guess at what the greatest needs are and your best guess at what prayers are aligned with God's will.
 
The ministry is the next level of charism where the Holy Spirit places prayer burdens upon a person, with some regularity and frequency, and involves responding with fasting and commitment and can include the experience of travailing in prayer. Generally the community catches on that when this person prays, God seems to answer quickly and powerfully, and those with a ministry of intercession get invited to intercessory prayer meetings.
 
The office is the next level of charism where it becomes increasingly obvious to the person and to the community that there is a special anointing upon their lives to pray for 'big stuff', think John Sanford and his intercessory metron for weather patterns and natural disasters. Other metrons could be for a city, a region, a nation or for particular groups of people (law enforcement, catechists) or particular situations or causes (cessation of abortion, conversion of teenagers, prayer partnering a ministry of the community). Those with an office like this usually develop mentoring and impartation roles to others less experienced in being used by the Holy Spirit with this charism.
 
If we recall the parable of Jesus about the persistent widow and the unjust judge, Luke 18: 1-8, then you can expect those with this charism to be people of perseverance, 'pester power', a bit intense at times, and maybe even a little pushy (think Abraham in Genesis 18:22-33). But if you remember that God made them this way for His special intercessory purposes, then you won't take too much offence at them, and give them a bit of leeway because you don't know just how heavy a burden God has placed upon them, and such a burden makes a person less able to see the big picture and wider perspectives. That is why they need good and understanding leadership which takes time to really listen to them - when the temptation is to fob them off at the first opportunity because they feel like an annoyance.
 
All leaders have a duty to intercede and pray for those who have been entrusted to their leadership. It is part of the job of a leader. Often those prayers are at the ordinary level unless there is a major threat or opportunity coming towards the community, when the charism at gift level will manifest. Leaders with prophetic gifts will have associated intercessory gifts because many times the promises of God require long term intercession in order to come to fruition.
 
Frequently a prophetic charism will lead to growth in intercessory charisms and an intercessory charism will lead to growth in prophetic charisms.
 
Why would a request like this be made in the first place?
 
It could be a genuine request according to the Will of God.
It could be a symptom of something lacking in the way leadership is conducted.
Or a bit of both.
 
A good leader will know whether the person claiming to be an intercessor has the charism of intercession and at what level he/she has it. If you don't know, then you will have to ask questions, listen carefully, and pray for discernment. It is part of the task of a leader to see the beginnings of ministry level charisms, to notice them, to nurture them, and to put boundaries, protections and communication channels in place to enable them to grow safely.
 
A wise leader will have communication channels in place so that regular updates of what God is doing in and through the prophets and intercessors in the leader's community are received. If independent reports from your intercessors show a shift to several intercessors praying for unmarried mothers, then that's probably a heads up from God about where He wants to develop the community's next outreach ministry.
 
If your leadership pipeline has stalled, and there have been no changes in senior leadership team in the last 5 – 10 years, then this request could be a symptom of not raising up the next generation of leaders.
 
If there has been a leadership emphasis and community culture of honouring those in visible positions of ministry leadership (preachers, pastors, worship leaders, youth leaders, administration) and not giving honour to the invisible positions of ministry (intercession, street evangelism, caring for the infants, sick and elderly, hospitality), then there is going to be various levels of frustration and not feeling valued among those in invisible positions of ministry and corresponding desires to be seen and appreciated. There is a human tendency for this imbalance to happen, and it has to be consciously fought against on a regular basis.
 
The request could be a disguised plea for help in discerning where God wants them to serve and/or the manifestation of a desire to be more involved and committed.
 
Therefore the first thing to do when a request like this comes to your leadership is to see it as a gift and opportunity, and not as a hassle.
 
Then you do your due diligence and work out whether at what level of charism the person is experiencing God's action in his/her life. The higher the level, the more likely God is in the request.
 
Then you do your due diligence and determine whether there are other charisms of the Holy Spirit regularly active in his/her life. The more there are, the more likely God is in the request.
 
Then you obtain some objective assessment of leadership potential. The StrengthsFinder questionnaire is a very good tool for this. The presence of influencing themes means that he/she should be in some form of leadership. Your task is then to work out where that should be happening, and the other theme results will give good clues to that answer. For example if the person is high in empathy and harmony, and has a theme from the influencing domain, then leadership of a hospital visitation or aged care visitation group might be the answer.
 
However the absence of influencing themes doesn't let you off the hook. You then need to look at the mix of themes of everyone on your senior leadership team and compare them with your intercessor requester. If the themes of the intercessor requester fill in the domain weaknesses of your senior leadership team, then God is in the request and you need to at least give it a 3 month trial and see how it goes.
 
If there no influencing themes and the themes they do have will not bring greater balance to the senior leadership team, then that's not where they are called at the moment. But there could be other ministry teams in the community for which they are a perfect fit. Work out where that is and plug him/her into it, reminding them that every leader is only as effective as the team they have around them, and every 'supporting the leader' role is important.
 
The bottom line is that if a person comes to you with a request to join your leadership team, you do them, yourself and the community a grave disservice unless you help get them into the ministry role that God has uniquely equipped them for.