One of our meetings each month is our ongoing
formation gathering. It has the four
components that make up that Secular Franciscan Gathering: prayer, formation, business, and fellowship.
Our other gathering seems to be set up a
bit differently. We still have prayer,
business, and fellowship but the formation part takes a slightly different form
because it includes a period of silence rather than a formal teaching.
The purpose of this silence is twofold.
First, it takes us deeply into the worship
of our Lord, which begins with the songs that we sing together beforehand. These help us to set aside the turmoil of our
busy lives so we can enter consciously into His presence and adore Him, in song
and then in silence.
Secondly, the silence enables us to listen to what He may have to say to
us. It may be a thought or an image that
occurs to us, or a scripture we are led to read.
After this time of silence we share our
thoughts if we think the Holy Spirit has put something on our hearts that He
wants us to share with the group.
As we share these thoughts, others
respond and we are often amazed at how our thoughts come together and build on
each other, taking us deeper into a meditation than any one of us could have developed
on our own. It is the Holy Spirit that leads
us to this point depending on our openness to Him. We can test the authenticity of the message
by the holiness and the fruits of what we share.
As we were discussing this at our last
council meeting, looking for ways we could go more deeply into the presence of
the Lord during this time, I began to think about just how this experience is ongoing formation. Our formation director is the Holy
Spirit. It is He that moves us to
worship and He that inspires our thoughts.
It is He that strings them together as we share, giving us a teaching of
His own design, custom made for what we need to hear at that moment.
There is little need to describe this to
most of us. We have experienced it many
times, but perhaps we need to think about each part of it again because it is easy
to get so much in the habit of doing something that we lose some of its
meaning.
Thinking about this has filled me with a
gratitude to the Holy Spirit that I don’t think I ever realized before. He draws us into the Heart of the presence of
the Trinity! Who could ever be worthy of this?
And as if this were not enough He sends us forth not just with a message
for ourselves but with a piece of a puzzle, meant to be set in just the right
place as we share, to join us together with a new wisdom that leads us on to
serve Him and worship Him as one.
- Carolyn Barth, OFS
Pax et bonum
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