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‘The Fire is in your hands’ by Father Philip Inch and Father Matthew Nunes, Synod Moderators ‘The Fire is in your hands.’ These are the words with which the Synod film ended on the morning of Saturday 19 June 2021. The film had been commissioned to remind the Synod members of the Synod journey and help them prepare, after discerning, for the moment of voting. (You can view the film on the Synod Website.) With confidence in the presence of the Holy Spirit we were all conscious that this was a historic moment. The people and clergy of the Archdiocese were charged with discerning a new sense of direction for the years to come. There were 420 people on the zoom meeting. The Synod Members were joined by observers, by ecumenical partners and by some invited guests. The Archbishop opened the day from the Cathedral (the place where the Synod had been promulgated on 4 February 2019.) He handed over to the Nuncio, Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, who reminded us of the link with Pope Francis and his call for the work of synodality to be the way of the church in the 3rd millennium. Dr Jessie Rodgers, Dean of the Faculty of Theology at the Pontifical University Maynooth, guided us into the place of discernment as we prepared to vote. ‘I invite you to hear in these words that the prophet Jeremiah wrote in a letter to 4
Catholic Pictorial
a group of exiles, the Word of God for us today: “Yes, I know what plans I have in mind for you, the LORD declares, plans for peace, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. When you call to me and come and pray to me, I shall listen to you. When you search for me, you will find me; when you search wholeheartedly for me, I shall let you find me.” (Jeremiah 29:11-14) Those words were written to a people whose experience in many ways reflects our own. They had been torn away from Jerusalem, from the world as they knew it, and forced to march across the desert and into exile in Babylonia. They had lost everything that was familiar, and it had seemed like God was powerless or unwilling to come to their rescue. Some people in their midst, claiming to speak for God, were reassuring them that things would soon get back to normal. They just needed to hunker down and sit it out. But Jeremiah tells them something different. He says that they need to make their home in this strange new world and to find God there. God who was with them in the past, is in their present here and now, and is leading them into their future. God only plays hide and seek to make us look - God wants to be found. And that is what the listening and the discernment process has been about, seeking God in the reality of what is in the Archdiocese of Liverpool, in the nittygritty of people’s lives, and then paying attention to the signs of the times, the seeds of the kingdom that are already
‘Seeking God in the reality of what is in the Archdiocese of Liverpool’
sprouting. Jessie encouraged us with these words: as you come to vote we are reminded of these bedrock truths: 1. God loves your communities even more than you ever could. 2. God notices what is happening, especially on the margins, and God cares deeply. 3. As the Church, the People of God, our calling is to bring God’s light and love to the darkest corners. And since God cares so passionately about the people in the archdiocese, God will provide/not withhold from you whatever you need to be able to work alongside God. 4. God is God. God will not be coopted into our plans - we are invited to join with God’s. Before voting we were left with time to reflect on these words. ‘I know what plans I have in mind for you, the LORD declares, plans for peace, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’ The voting took place on the 19 Recommendations (29 votes). Each member had to make a choice of one of the 4 options below on the 19 Recommendations: A: This is a high priority which the Archdiocese should enact soon B: This is an excellent idea but not at the top of my list C: This doesn’t strike me as vitally important
