Meeting 2 — “On the Shore of Signs”¶
Goal of the meeting¶
Meetings in groups “On the Shore” are to create primarily a space for dialogue and mutual listening to the voice of other members of the Church. The conferences preceding the meetings were subordinated to this goal - to inspire, to create a common experience, to which we can now refer together.
Today’s prayer is the Akathist to the Holy Spirit. The goal of today’s meeting is to return to our sacrament of confirmation and remind ourselves of the role of the Holy Spirit in knowing the Mystery.
Faith requires questions - about the role of curiosity¶
Let’s read:
Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”
—Jn 14:1-5
We listened today to conferences that touched on the topic of asking questions regarding faith, mystery, but also simply signs and religious activities. St. Thomas in the above fragment dares to correct (!) the master.
Note
Have we ever witnessed a similar situation (not necessarily religious)? How did we feel then?
What would I like to take from St. Thomas’s attitude to my religious life? How would it look in 2022?
Faith as development and path¶
Questions, curiosity, kindly confronting lead to our development. It is the courage of the student who to the teacher’s question “is everything clear?” answers “no, I don’t know why we are learning this” that begins the most important stage of education - descends to a deeper level of motivation. Like every other sphere of our life, faith goes through different stages, matures together with us. Paul writes:
When I was a child, I spoke like a child,I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child;when I became a man,I gave up childish ways.– 1 Cor 13:11
When we are children, our way of perceiving reality is childlike. When we mature, we see the world differently again and experience faith differently, and so at every stage of life. Faith is not a static phenomenon, but dynamic, it changes and evolves, therefore attempts to drag out some of its stages usually do not lead to good results.
How did my faith and its experiencing look once? (e.g. when I was a child)
And how does my faith look in a narrower time horizon? What is working in me now? What is changing/has changed recently? On what planes is it “changing”?
Note
Animator’s testimony: about seeing in their life the role of “light” and its development just like “life”. The development of faith rises on both these wings. When there is too much light and life is lame I am closer to Pharisees. When I neglect the development of conversation my faith will be threatened with stagnation.
Decision-making in faith¶
The possibility of making decisions is one of the most direct effects of the freedom with which we are endowed. We make thousands of barely visible decisions a day. We also make those that stick in our memory for a lifetime and literally change reality. We often say that “one cannot run away from them”, because they can be difficult, but decisions are the space of pushing our life forward, and without them we would not have a chance for development. Increasing decision-making/agency is the best indicator of our maturation.
Let’s try to look at the decisions of characters known to us:
St. Francis
St. Peter
Mary
What decisions of this person do we like?
What allowed these persons to make such decisions? What traits and resources of theirs can we list?
My decision-making (faith)¶
Let’s focus on our decision-making:
- Decision 1:
You have a certain sum of money that you decided to donate to charity, for what purpose will you allocate the money?
- Decision 2:
You are buying a Christmas gift for grandma. You can buy her vitamins good for her health or a scarf in her favorite color. What would you choose?
- Decision 3:
Prayer is also a dynamic path, think, what could you change in it?
On what resources are my decisions based?
What are my “resources” (charism) in spirituality? (question asked without answer)
What was easier for us to indicate - our resources or the resources of St. Peter, Mary and St. Francis? What does this tell me about myself?
Role of the Holy Spirit in my decision-making¶
God wants us to be mature, to achieve wisdom on which our decisions will be based.
Let’s read:
For old age is not honored for length of time, nor measured by number of years; but understanding is gray hair for men, and a blameless life is ripe old age.
—Wis 4:8-9
What is the determinant of our maturity in faith?
What role does the Holy Spirit have in my life?
The sacrament of maturity is confirmation. It is a sacrament often “undervalued” in pastoral practice. We return to it relatively rarely. During the Holy Mass when administering this sacrament, the prayer after communion sounds like this:
Almighty God, grant full Christian maturity to those whom you have showered with the gifts of Your Spirit and fed with the Body of Your Son, † that they may constantly show to the world the freedom of Your adopted children * and by their holiness fulfill the prophetic office of Your people. Through Christ our Lord.
Which fragment of this prayer seems to me most relevant to my current life situation? Why?
In what way does the Holy Spirit help us in making life decisions?
Introduction to evening prayer (Akathist)¶
The Akathist is a prayer being on the shore of the Eastern and Western Church. Its name comes from the Greek words a - “without”, kathiden - “to sit”, this hymn is sung standing.
We will pray using the Akathist. It is rich in content and a certain (perhaps new?) sensitivity to the Holy Spirit. We think that a quite common experience of believers is that we have a certain difficulty in focusing on the content of sung prayers.
Note
As examples: theological depth of the carol God is born, Exsultet, I approach in humility, Te Deum.
Let’s read now together selected fragments of this prayer and share them.
IKOS 10Source of reason and genius of creators – dwell in us,Who sing in songs, whom music proclaims – dwell in us,Source of delight of poets and soul of beautiful things – dwell in us,Who speak through orators and guide the painter’s brush – dwell in us.– Akathist to the Holy Spirit
What in this fragment is closest to You?
What in this fragment surprises You?
What from this fragment can you take for your spiritual life currently?
The Akathist is an airing of our way of thinking about the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. Have you ever before thought about him like above?
Depending on the time of the meeting we propose at this point to read other fragments of the Akathist - they can be randomly selected by someone from the group. To each of them we ask exactly the same questions as those above.
Application¶
For those willing: during today’s prayer with the Akathist let’s have in hand not only a notebook to follow the text but also a pen. Let’s mark on the margin moments to which we would like to return in the near future, or simply which seem to us particularly directed to us.