The end of the Year of Grace was a time to take stock of what the Holy Spirit was saying to the Church and reflect on what the year had meant, Perth Year of Grace coordinator, Paddy Buckley, said last week.
The year’s conclusion on the Feast of Pentecost last Sunday was an opportunity to look at what its ‘fruits’ had been, to communities and individual believers, Ms Buckley said.
“Pentecost is not so much of familiarity as an openness to the future … an openness to the Spirit as we are led to the future, an openness to the challenges that we may have identified during the Year of Grace,” Ms Buckley told The Record.
“What do you believe the Spirit is calling the Church to be or to do? Have you come to know Jesus more?”
The national planning team for the Year of Grace has created an online survey “to identify, nurture and harvest the fruits of the Year of Grace”, which Ms Buckley is hoping Catholics in Perth will fill in.
The survey asks four qualitative questions:
What difference has the Year of Grace made in your life?; What do you believe the Holy Spirit is now calling our Church to be and do?;
What signs of hope and good news do you experience now in our Church and world?; as well, asking participants to share ‘a moment of grace’ they had experienced.
Ms Buckley said it was now time to focus on the Year of Faith which shared the same aims of “encountering Christ afresh in our lives through prayer, reflecting on the scriptures, celebrating liturgies, and repenting of our failures, and listening to the voice of the Spirit”.
Last year, Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney, Peter Comensoli, told The Record how Australia’s bishops had talked to then-Pope Benedict XVI of their plan to ordain a Year of Grace, only days before the Year of Faith was announced.
The Year of Faith, which began on October 11, 2012 and will continue to November 24, 2013, is also expected to see the release of a papal encyclical on faith, begun by Pope Benedict and completed by his successor Pope Francis.
The Year of Grace survey can be accessed at www.surveymonkey.com/s/yearofgrace.