12/2/2021
WHAT ARE WE CALLED TO DO?
WHO ARE WE CALLED TO BE?
HOW DO WE NEED TO CHANGE?
We are all invited to engage and to be a part in a listening and dialogue encounter. Please take the time to read the first of the six Thematic Discernment Papers (found on the Plenary Council website) and ring or email the Parish office if you would like to attend the first communal ‘listening and discernment’ group to be held in Our Lady of the Bay Church on Saturday, 6 March at 4pm.
The first paper: HOW IS GOD CALLING US TO BE A CHRIST-CENTRED CHURCH IN AUSTRALIA
THAT IS MISSIONARY AND EVANELISING? Father Tony explains discernment as: We listen to each other as a way of coming to hear what God is saying through the Holy Spirit in the community. The test of our true listening is whether we are prepared to shift our thinking once we have truly heard another point of view. Not to always abandon our position; rather to be open to seeing the bigger picture.
29/1/2021
HOW IS GOD CALLING US TO BE A CHRIST-CENTRED CHURCH IN AUSTRALIA THAT IS: 1. Missionary & Evangelising? 2. Inclusive, Participatory & Synodal? 3. Prayerful & Eucharistic? 4. Humble, Healing & Merciful? 5. A Joyful, Hope-Filled & Servant Community?
6. Open to Conversion, Renewal and Reform? We each have a call to God’s mission by virtue of our baptism, and we have been asked on a local level to take part in very small communal Listening and Discernment encounters. The goal is not what each person has to say but rather the collective exercise of hearing what we might hear God whisper and the spirit calling us to respond. Each of the six Thematic Discernment Papers can be read on the Plenary Council website. Please take the time to read them and if you feel called to be part of a discernment group on one or more of these papers, ring or email the Parish Office and we will try our very best to match you up with a group and a facilitator. Remember Discernment is listening, to God, to yourself and to others. Those who could not attend last weekend’s Summer School missed out. As always Fr Tony was brilliant in his manner of imparting information (no one nods off when he has the floor), but the section delivered by Deborah Robertson and Maria Parkinson was excellent. We were given a guide and carried out a practical exercise on how to participate and share in contemplative dialogue . All the small group encounters will follow this guide, which allows everyone a voice without interruption and an opportunity to hear what God may be saying through others. “The Church herself in Australia will not be fully the Church that Jesus wants her to be until you have made your contribution to her life and until that contribution has been joyfully received by others.”Pope John Paul II