Pope John XXIII announces his plan
Less than ninety days after his election as the successor to Pope Pius XII, on 25 January 1959, Pope John XXIII announced his decision to convoke a new Council. His audience was a small group of cardinals gathered in Rome. Two years later, Pope John was to recall that the cardinals received the announcement with “impressive, devout silence.”
Reflection #1 of 3:
When Moses encountered God on Sinai, a promise was given to him: “I will be with you” – see Exodus 3:12. Moses replied: “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you’” – see Exodus 3:13-14 – NRSV.
Reflection #2 of 3: In our first Reflection, we noted how Luke spoke of the Spirit:
I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high (Luke 24:49).
Perhaps the best-known event that celebrates this bestowal of “power from on high” is found in Acts 2:1-4 – also written by Luke:
Reflection #3 of 3: I begin with a word of warning – a warning that is already implicit in everything written so far in these reflections on the Holy Spirit:
Do not look for clear-cut definitions or conclusive statements that end all debate and questioning or pre-set packages that save you wrestling with the Presence of “I AM” in the messy stuff of daily living!
Such definitions and statements and packages say more about our yearning for certainty and control than they say about the Holy Spirit and our submission to God’s will.
Historian, Giuseppe Alberigo, offers a good summary of the context within which the Synod of Bishops was re-born in our day:
“Pope John XXIII had decided that the first topic the Council would work on would be the liturgy. This was the aspect of the Church’s life in which renewal had already made the most progress, and the preparatory project for it was the only one that had found a consensus among the bishops, who had already been sensitised by the liturgical movement.
Synod, synodality and conversation
Michael Whelan SM PhD
Pope Francis’ writes:
“Dialogue is much more than the communication of a truth. It arises from the enjoyment of speaking and it enriches those who express their love for one another through the medium of words. This is an enrichment which does not consist in objects but in persons who share themselves in dialogue” (Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, #142).
Martin Buber (1878-1965)
“A time of genuine religious conversations is beginning—not those so-called but fictitious conversations where none regarded and addressed his partner in reality, but genuine dialogues, speech from certainty to certainty, but also from one openhearted person to another open-hearted person. Only then will genuine common life appear, not that of an identical content of faith which is alleged to be found in all religions, but that of the situation, of anguish and of expectation” (Martin Buber, Introduction to Between Man and Man, London: Collins, 1947/1961, 24).
Without God All Things Are Lawful
Michael Whelan SM PhD
The Emmy Award winning TV writer/producer, Norman Lear, in 1992 addressed a Joint Faculty Seminar of the Harvard Divinity School and the Harvard Business School. In his presentation he argued that the traditional institutional sources of values in our society – the church, family, education and civil authority – have waned. He argued that business has now become “the fountainhead of values in our society”, largely suppressing in the process “that mysterious inner life”, what we refer to as “the spiritual life”.
By Michael Whelan SM
Three months before he died on 7 March 1274, St Thomas Aquinas had an extraordinary “experience” while celebrating Mass. As a result of this “experience”, St Thomas refused to do any further work on the Summa Theologica – his major life project. The English Dominican Thomistic scholar, Brian Davies, tells us that Aquinas’ secretary, Reginald of Piperno, begged him to return to the writing. St Thomas replied: “Reginald, I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me” (Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas, Oxford University Press, 1993, 9).
Spiritual Practices and Attitudes 11 – A Primary Conversation
Notes by Michael Whelan SM