Little Salvations? : eloquent-ized sample of my Taizé journal

So on Catholics on Call, I learned the luminous gem of little discernments from my wonderful group mentor, Sr. Lisa. The basic idea is that discernment is not just a grand process but also a moment-to-moment/day-by-day thing-- smaller decisions you make in the short-term or even in the parts of your day play a part in the grander scheme, contributing to and shaping your formation and leading to vocation.

Well, I came to a new version of "little" by reflecting on one of my favorite prayers, the Song of Simeon. I pray the words that the monks of Gethsemani use in their sung version of it for Compline; it's based on the excited reaction of Simeon upon seeing Jesus in the Gospel. I wrote it out, prayed it, and reflected upon it. So here it is followed by my progression of thoughts leading to a new "little"...

Lord, save us! Save us while we are awake;
Protect us while we are awake
That we may keep our watch with Christ,
And when we are asleep,
Rest in His peace.

First off, sleep can be a prayer. There is some middle ground between just doing the sign of the cross then passing out and trying to find such an intense prayer that you'll dream up revelatory inspired visions. I like to find a place of peace and subdued prayer before God that kind of overlaps with sleep. Somehow, I believe there can be a connection between intentional prayer and peaceful rest in sleep.

For a while, I just let Stay With Me, a song from Taizé, run in my head: Stay with me; remain here with me; watch and pray; watch and pray.

Next, I found in the prayer the reflection of the human need and desire to achieve or accomplish things that lives so strongly within me-- often, too strongly. However, here that kind of feeling is manifested is a way that feels rightly directed toward God. It reflects an appropriate and right idea of love motivated by a longing urgency to be with God and know Him and His will better.

The other element that this prayer upholds so well is our prayerful desire to be with God and Him with us in all times of our life. This prayer talks about the two major parts of our lives, asking God for specific help and aid within both sleeping and waking life. We strive to know God and be His instruments while awake, but our lives leave us tired and needing rest, where we also need God to provide us peace and recharge us so we may grow when we awake.

Finally, thinking about the repetition of pleading to God to save us, I wondered what it meant to ask to be saved. Christ has already defeated death, and through Him and the satisfaction He made for sin, we can access salvation and intimacy with God. Ok, so the eternal range of salvation is addressed, but what about the smaller things? the day-to-day? So I bounced some questions and thoughts around that I'll leave floating here:

-Does God save us little by little? Does He save us in small ways daily? I am not suggesting we have like a savings account of salvation increments, but do we have smaller moments of grace that are salvific?
-Can this perhaps be true in narrower terms? Maybe not in terms of smaller moments "on the way" to eternal salvation, but in smaller ways in daily life?
-The way I tried to process it: There are moments of grace or inspiration that direct our spirituality, faith, life, or decisions and guide us closer to God or prevent us from straying from the right path by making bad judgments or exposing ourselves to bad circumstances. <-- If that's true, how does that relate to little discernments?

A Chat with a Monsignor

Today I had the opportunity to meet with Mgr. Andrew Faley, Assistant General Secretary for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales--an intimidating title for a man who is far from intimidating. He wears three hats for his title, and one of them is Ecumenical Officer for the CBCEW. I met with him for my special studies project into Ecumenism into the UK, so we chatted about various things pertaining to Catholic theology on The Church, Anglican-Roman Catholic relations, and Local Ecumenical Partnerships. He was quite candid and well-informed and is a personable man.

The cool part I wanted to share to evoke thought was when I confronted him with a contrast in ecumenism. There is sometimes a tension or disconnect in Christian unity efforts between the things happening on the local level and the talks and conversations happening on the institutional and theological levels. For example, people on local levels see Protestants allowing intercommunion and enjoying the shared services and interaction between denominations within the services. Then they wonder why Catholics can't have it. Well, the Catholic Church teaches that intercommunion/Eucharistic sharing is something to be reserved until full communion is reached among Christians; for now, only those is full communion with the Catholic Church can share communion, and Catholics ought not to receive the Eucharist with those outside of it.

I asked him about the relationship between top-down and bottom-up ecumenism. In the UK, there are many Local Ecumenical Partnerships that combine several Protestant traditions into one parish, and some of those are in covenant with Catholic parishes (like Cornerstone, which I visited-- that is a covenant between Catholics and the four Protestant denominations). He understands well the need for both approaches and talked about ways that these two arenas are in contact, thank God.

1. One of the Catholic-Anglican bodies that meets twice a year spends part of one of those meetings visiting some kind of partnership or coop that exists between their traditions. Mgr. Faley is not a huge supporter of LEPs and such, but he spoke highly of the way that seeing visible unity strikes the members of this joint body. Making time to visit the people there are serving by having these talks seems to have a definite impact on the higher-ups, and he said it helps to ground them in their conversation. It helps to de-abstract the work and remind them of the actual reality within the things they talk about.

2. He explained to me an element of the puzzle that JP2 and BXVI have played up. It referred to as "receptive ecumenism". Catholics are encouraged to ask Christians of other traditions, "What do you see in our Church that resembles unity and communion? What do you think is lacking in our Church that would build greater communion?" It helps to identify the exchange of gifts that should occur between the riches of traditions. [Faley was huge on the lines between denominations not becoming blurred because he finds there to be great riches in each tradition, even if he doesn't agree with every bit of it. He would hate for watered-down Christianity to be how we all unite.] In Durham, they are practicing this in a kind of different way between the institutionals/leaders and the rest of the people. In the kind of dialogue they are fostering, it turns the top-down/bottom-up approaches into a horizontal exchange. It takes the connection and levels it out. The leaders remain leaders but engage the issues and their grassroots people at the level of mutual conversation.

It's hard to try and distill all that I soaked in during those 75 minutes with Faley, but that's an effort at hinting toward the things he described. Once I process it into my research journal, it will make more sense (I hope). And I'm sure his remarks will play a part in my final paper, as he was a wonderful source to interview.