Waiting for God to speak: the risk involved in community discernment

Sofia Baranda

We are spending seven days in community discernment to choose the new Superior General and suggest to her the people who could best help her in her Council. It has been a profound, disturbing, and at times, difficult and arduous experience. The suggestion was that we should take the risk and build consensus by listening to the Spirit, trusting that He would bring us little by little to what would be for the greatest good of the Society.

We had several weeks of preparation for the discernment. We got to know one another, as well as the situation in the various provinces, the cultural, ecclesiastic and political contexts; we shared our experience of the Heart of Jesus, and how we endeavour to reveal it through our mission. We were honest in acknowledging our differences, our weaknesses, the desires and the thirst that move us. On the basis of this truth, accepted in great peace, we tried to find what God was asking us as a Society for these 8 years, and what type of government we needed to inspire us to answer these calls. And so we entered into the discernment for the Superior General and her Council.

Mary Cavanagh’s invitation was to begin and continue this discernment by two attitudes: trust and silence.

Trust in the Spirit who is leading us, sure that what we seek is already present as a gift in our midst, though hidden from our limited perception. This allowed us to introduce ourselves to one another in truth and simplicity, without being ashamed of our weaknesses, aware that none of us can be the complete fulfilment of the desires of God or of the Society’s charism. And so we discerned the future, thinking always of what we need to complement one another, in the teams for the various kinds of service, among provinces and regions, in our own communities.

Silence to listen to ourselves and to each other, without fear, without the interference of prejudices or projections, “fasting” from words, detaching ourselves from our opinions, allowing ourselves plenty of wide-open space and time. We must know how to keep quiet so that the word of the other, and of the Other, may come into its own space, and so that we may know how to say just what is needed, in an appropriate way and at the opportune time.

Trust and silence have forced us to wait until the Spirit of Jesus makes His way through our impatience and insecurity. He has filled our space and has taught us anew to put ourselves at the disposal of the community, and so at His disposal too. We have gone along this road sure that God is at work among us in His own discreet way.