Photo Credit Deborah Stollery (c) 2024 Cannakale, Turkey
"One of the most important features to emerge for our present understanding is the sense that synodality is not only a theology but a spiritual practice...To be a Christian is to have a 'synodal vocation' and this grows through the spiritual life." The International Theological Commission, "Synodality in the life and mission of the Church" (2018), 43.
This is the third is a series of blogs on the spirituality that underpins synodal practices. Why this and why now? As we approach the second assembly of the Synod on Synodality, Pope Francis has already warned us not to expect the hot button issues to be resolved. What should we expect then? Another experience of the spiritual practices that constitute a synodal Church. So these blogs will help us attune our ears and begin or continue these practices ourselves on the way to fully embracing the spiritual practices that make us synodal.
There's no synodality without spirituality. After I'd written this blog, on July 9th the Vatican released the Instrumentum laborum for the Second Assembly of the Synod on Synodality. Take a look, and read it, open to the deep spiritual truths embedded in it. I think you'll see that there really is no synodality with spirituality.
I hope for those of you reading this blog, the spirituality synodality calls for is a work in prrogress. Like the photo above, I hope you are also asking yourself where the path leads, and perhaps, where are the other people on the #synodjourney? And I hope, like was the case in this photo, fellow pilgrims were right behind me and right around the bend, unseen but there. Such is the case in these early days of embracing the Spirit of synodality.
In this blog I want to share with you some of what Towards a Spirituality for Synodality has to say about beauty...a topic that somewhat surprised me by its inclusion. First, this topic should be considered within its broader axiom that "a synodal Church is a contemplative Church." (SS,25) So far we've looked at the contemplative practices of prayer, active engagement with the Deposit of Faith as a reliable voice of the Spirit, naming personal experiences of the movements of the Spirit, and familiarity with the spiritual states of consolation and desolation. Now, we turn to the contemplative subject: beauty.
I was surprised to find beauty here. And right off the bat, I encountered this notion: kinship with beauty is a sure sign of the Holy Spirit's indwelling life. (SS, 19). The text goes on to ground me before I went off on some esoteric flight of fancy about beauty in the eye of the beholder, for it says, but this is not a subjective beauty that is in the eye of the beholder. Ok, then what is it and how does it fit into this notion of a synodal Church being a contemplative Church?
Here are some of the pithy, invitational and challenging statements about beauty that continue for the next several sections in the text. I am going to just list the statements and invite you to pause with each one, contemplate its messages for you, and allow the Holy Spirit to increase your appreciation for beauty as key to a synodal spirituality.
This is a beauty that "transcends reason and engages the intelligence of the heart and mind, for truth possesses its own beauty."
Beauty is the fruit of the paschal dynamic into which we were introduced in our Baptism. For more on this dynamic, read Fr. Ron Rolheiser's work here. It will help you get underneath this statement to mine its truth.
God, who is love, is the only reality that can be present in the contradictions of history, in its tragedies and even in death. Immediately, I thought of St. Franz Jagerstatter whose love for Christ gave him the courage necessary to resist the Nazis. It cost him his life here and gave him life eternal.
St. Franz Jagerstatter's witness is the practical evidence of this aspect of beauty: In Christianity, the only possible aesthetic is the paschal aesthetic, that is, an aesthetic of tragedy and of overcoming tragedy, of sacrifice and the fruit that comes from sacrifice, of hatred and of the love in the midst of that hatred that transforms it into a gift, of death and the risen life that comes forth out of death. (SS, 19)
Beauty is the gift of spiritual integrity communicated to each person by the Holy Spirit. Spiritual integrity is a big subject, to be sure. Here's one insight into where it leads and why it's beautiful.
Beauty touches on our redemption, for it is human life taken up into love. For a perspective on this to support your synodal spirituality, try this.
Beauty is the royal way giving access to the Holy Spirit and the spiritual world. The royal way is the name given to the path of purity, holiness, and commitment to God. It is the road every Christian must navigate in order to find true fulfillment and purpose. Walking on this path will empower the believer to have an overcoming lifestyle. See more here.
For the Christian, beauty is manifest not only (or even primarily) in art, but in the liturgy where we receive this "life in the Spirit" and in the many ways love is communicated through the good that each one does. (SS, 20) Want to delve more deeply into beauty and the liturgy? Start here. Feeling pulled by the Spirit to investigate this notion of beauty and goodness? Read on!
Beauty fascinates, attracts and leads into its rooms. More than any other spiritual reality, beauty will help the Church move beyond expressing herself merely as an institution so that she might be manifest, both in history and in the Kingdom, a the living body she is. Synodality, as constitutive of the Church, will give expression to the dynamic beauty of ecclesial life/communion and the Church's holiness. (SS, 21c)
There's so much depth here, so many spiritual elements to dive into, so many methods to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit's ways of guiding the embrace of synodality through the lens of beauty. I'm richer and more intrigued than ever before by this look at beauty as both a gift and a tool of the Spirit. I hope you are as well, and that you are now more convinced than ever that there really is no synodality without spirituality! I certainly am.
If you are invited by the Spirit to walk down the pathway of beauty, I really hope you'll share with us what you discover along the way. We can link you to others on this same part of the #synodjourney and you can be a light for those of us walking this road with you.
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