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It is late summer here we’re picking apples and bottling peaches, watering kawakawa so the leaves float and don’t droop, and harvesting lemon verbena.
We’re flicking mosquitoes at dusk so they won’t bite and listening to noisy cicadas and hearty piwakawaka and spotting a ripening fig before a blackbird pecks at it.
The Synod on Synodality
The Northern Hemisphere-based Vatican inside their ruminative winter period asks the Catholic Diocese of Waitaha, Tai Poutini, Rekohu Canterbury, Westland, Chathams Islands to unravel the second stage of the Synod here, in our late summer.
They’re asking us to sit inside buildings and pray and ruminate about concrete actions we can take and structures we can build to enhance co-responsibility and inclusivity in our decision-making, homilies and liturgies, and scriptural and spiritual formation.
The first stage of the Synod was on the principles and this second stage is on the concrete actions.
Karoro gulls drop pipi from a great height onto the sand, cracking them open just wide enough to get in and get the kaimoana out and feed themselves.
Somehow in all of this we need to feed ourselves in these motu far from the Northern Hemisphere, with good nourishing kai for our bodies, our spirits and our souls.
Feeding out souls
Kevin Burns says at Mass this morning that the fish was the symbol of the early church, and the empty tomb.
We here know about fish, we know how present you need to be when fish.ing, to the swellings of the tide, the presence of the sun, the passing of a cloud, the stillness of the moon, the whakarongo – the deep listening with all of your senses that brings healing – needed while watching for fish.
So this is where we start with the Second active phase of the Synod in our late summer. We watch for the fish and go to that place of deep listening to the breath, the wind, the sea, the sky.
This place of stillness, this quiet, is the place where each synodal discussion begins.
We open ourselves and we become like an empty tomb, and we move with Mary, outside the empty tomb and into the garden, where she sees the gardener is Jesus, and she is not afraid.
Recognising Jesus in synodality
We pray that we can recognise Jesus here in our late summer, walking as some of us did alongside other Christians and the Anglican Bishop from Rangiora to Al Noor Mosque of Light where most of the 51 people were killed on 15 March 5 years ago.
The walk took us through Hagley Park to the Transitional Cathedral on Saturday evening 9 March carrying a cloth inscribed with the names of the children killed in the Holy Land since October 2023.
We were praying as others of us do on Wednesday nights at 7.30pm above the water under the Bridge of Remembrance.
We are vigiling for peace in the Middle East and vigiling for the end of all wars – an intention, a prayer, a deep longing, a silencing of the busyness, a stilling, a profound listening.
Second synod phase
At St Mary’s our Synodal discussion begins with Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Son – the compassion, the embrace, the kiss, the placing of sandals on the bare feet, the forgiveness.
This is where the second phase of the Synodal discussion begins – outside walking across rough and uneven ground, in whakarongo – in deep listening with all of our senses that brings healing – like the prodigal son.
It is from this place during our late summer, where we – the Catholic Diocese of Waitaha, Tai Poutini, and Rekohu – are invited to begin the second part of the Synodal discussion on concrete action – with compassion, forgiveness and deep listening.
And it is as we move forward in this korero, from this place of quietness, we will begin to feed ourselves alongside others in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres, with good nourishing kai for our bodies, our spirits and our souls.
- Kathleen Gallagher writes from Christchurch.
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