I last visited Rome almost 20 years ago, right after I graduated high school. I returned recently from October 12-19 as part of an initiative called CENTERS - Catholic Education Network to Encounter Rome and Synodality. I was privileged to be part of the collaborative planning team and led a cohort of students from Catholic Theological Union. We wanted to bring young adults to Rome during the Synod and facilitate as much encounter with the Holy Spirit as we could. We set up meals, prayers, and conversations in the spirits among our students and with many of the people involved in the Synod process, including delegates, facilitators and content experts. We wanted to make this ‘synod’ thing real. After months of planning, we made it! We arrived in Rome and, sure enough, we had a week full of expected and unexpected encounters.
Rome is…. Rome. It’s patriarchal. It’s ancient and cobbled and stony. It’s beautiful and institutional and formal. As a tourist years before, these things weren’t present in my mind. I was excited to climb to the top of the dome of St. Peter’s and post photos of myself at the Trevi fountain and Spanish steps to a cleverly titled Facebook photo album. I am not the same as I was the last time I went.
I have been shaped by faithful and bold women and worked intently and intentionally at my own education and formation. I have grappled with the beauty and ugliness of our church and know I haven’t scratched the surface. I have found my own voice and yet also know its shape and sound are still emerging. And I found myself potently aware of myself as a woman in this place. I didn’t realize my frequent question of ‘where is my place in this Church?’ would ring as loudly in my heart as it did that week.
Monday afternoon, I joined a mini-tour around the colonnade of St. Peter’s Square led by a team from Discerning Deacons. We heard the stories of women whose likenesses stood around us, looking down on all those who gather below. One of the DD team mentioned that this look into these women looking down on those in the square had helped her to ‘reclaim’ the space. Of the millions of things that stuck with me throughout that week, the word ‘reclaim’vis one that continues to resonate. It’s tempting to focus on my desires for women’s roles in the Church - and I do have particular desires that have been in me for a long time. But the process of synodality–and the very real encounters it is meant to highlight–requires that we look at what is in front of us. But what is in front of us, it also requires awareness and tending to what is happening within you. The questions within me are louder and deeper than I had 20 years ago, but I have also learned to listen to those questions, to notice where they are calling me, and to look more closely at the things that surround me.
We were invited into the Synod hall on our last evening in Rome to have a live streamed Q&A with members of synod leadership: Cardinal Mario Grech, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, Bishop Daniel Flores, and Sr. Leticia Salazar. After an hour of livestreamed questions, we shifted to off-the-record questions. The communications director and one of our faculty leaders made their way to where I was sitting and quietly let me know that they wanted someone to close us in prayer: “I think it should be you.” To use one of my favorite phrases, leading prayer in the Synod hall over Synod leadership was not on my bingo card. “Sure…” I didn’t really have a whole lot else in me to say. Sometimes when tiny offers come your way, you just say ‘yes.’ I would use the blessing I had prepared for our students who had been chosen to ask questions during the Q&A. Now, this blessing would be shared more widely. I took a deep breath before walking to the front and offered my own prayer to the Holy Spirit. I looked at the words I had typed into my phone hours before, words that were expressed out of a desire to empower and console our students.I reminded myself that everyone needs to be empowered and consoled, including and perhaps most especially those Synod leaders and others who have spent these last days in the Synod Hall.
I’ve offered blessings and prayers in a lot of spaces. While deeply moving, the act of praying in the Synod hall in many ways felt ordinary and unremarkable. The voice that I have nurtured over the years did not fail me. Reclaiming a moment in time and a corner in this space was not as simple as standing on what was holy ground, in a space committed to the synodal listening and the work of the Holy Spirit, in a city within a city that has been the purview of ordained men for centuries - I knew this was in its own way extraordinary... I can hope that maybe this is a memory not just for me, but for other women who needed to see themselves in that space.
Before we headed into the synod hall that last evening, a simple “Do you need help?” led to several of the women there making sure the questions we’d collected from our group would make it on to the shared art we’d been building together all week. A collaborative, prayerful piece of art, splayed out on the cobblestones as we crouched on our hands and knees to offer up the questions and prayers of our community. A quick offer of help became its own sort of prayer. Countless prayers have been offered up from those stones and ours would join them. The work of our hands and our hearts claimed their own little corner of the square.
Listening - deep listening - is at the heart of synodality. It is challenging work, but transformation never comes easily - that’s what makes it transformation. Rome has been transformed for me and my week there gave me the space to reclaim my relationship with parts of our church I have been struggling with. It has become a place where I can better see and hold the multitudes around me. I can cherish the people who make me angry and those who give me hope. I can honor my ugly prayers, my silent prayers, and my prayers that fill my soul with joy. I can be in awe at imposing architecture and the simplicity of loving hospitality. I may still be unsure of where I stand amid a very messy Church, but I think that just maybe I have learned to claim a little space as I move along with it.
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