“HEARTFELT…SPIRIT-FILLED…” We use these words to describe our wishes for someone.  “Hearfelt” means deeply felt or earnest. Spirit-filled can be understood as being empowered or alive.

As we mark the Golden Jubilee of our Diocese, we ask God  to give us  “a new heart and a new spirit”  which He  promised through the prophet Ezekiel : I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you (Ez 36:26).  This is a  promise of spiritual regeneration and inner transformation.

In Hebrew, the heart is not just the place where we feel emotions. It  is the center of our interior life, the place of thinking and willing.  This reminds us of Antoine de Saint-Exupery of the “Little Prince” who explained that  “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”  Thus, the change of heart  of  a sinful man will cause him to turn to the Good Shepherd and desires to please the LORD.  Reflecting on this work of God in the human heart, the apostle Paul wrote: “Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor 5:17). 

It is the Holy Spirit who renews the heart to cause the individual to follow the Lord. The “new spirit”  is God’s  Spirit”, the Spirit of Yahweh (Ez 37:14; 39:29; Jl 2:28-29). This Spirit is he who animates us, giving us life and vitality. Only the Holy Spirit can empower us to fulfill the word of God. The Spirit of the Lord within us causes us to walk in His statutes and observe His ordinances.  Nicodemus  once asked, “How can a man be born again when he is old?” Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”  As we yield to the Holy Spirit, He enables us to walk in the statutes of God and carefully observe His ordinances.

But the year 2023, during which we shall celebrate the  50^th year of our Diocese of Pagadian, is also the year of the Synod of Bishops in Rome.  Providentially, the  Synod  is showing us how we shall proceed in our journey as local church after fifty years— what “a new heart and new spirit” means to us.  

The upcoming Synod will reflect on the  theme “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission.”  Focusing on Synodality, the Holy Father Francis invites us to return to our being a Synodal Church in this  millennium.  The word “synodality” comes from the two Greek words “syn” (same) and “hodos”(road).   We, as Church,  are all in the same journey.  This synodality is first and foremost a spiritual process:  of listening, discernment, and  participation.   Listening is its method; discerning is its aim;  participation is its path. 

The Vade Mecum for the Synod points out that the hope of the Synodal Process is to “bring about a new springtime for listening, discernment, dialogue, and decision-making, so that the whole People of God can better journey together with one another and the entire human family, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”  The heart of the synodal experience is listening to God through listening to one another, inspired and guided by the Word of God, the Tradition, and the Magisterium. We listen to each other in order to better hear the voice of Holy Spirit speaking in our world today.

The Lord, in His grace, promises to give us a new heart.  Our  cold, hard, impenetrable heart of the unregenerate man and woman, with its self-centered passion and unyielding opinions, is to be renewed and replaced with a clean heart of flesh, in which the Holy Spirit of God Himself  dwells. A heart full of love and compassion means a heart full of interest in others because if we wish to understand another, we must look into their hearts.  This implies a softening, an opening, a listening, so that something new can enter therein, helping us to get to the “heart of things.” Our new heart will yearn for the Lord and his ways, with the power of the Holy Spirit giving us a desire to please God which may be  foreign to us in our hardened state— a new will, filled with new purposes and resolutions; where new affections are placed, and new desires are formed; and where there are new delights and joys, as well as new sorrows and troubles; the same which the New Testament calles the “new man” and the new creature ( Ep. 4:24; 2 Cor 5:17).

Full of the Holy Spirit, in the midst of the wondrous, momentous things that were happening around her, Mary — in her heart — stepped away from the noise and commotion to the silent core of her own being.  May this Blessed Mother, intercede for us her children and be our model in our HEARFELT and SPIRIT-FILLED  journey together after 50 years!