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St. Phoebe Day Guide for Women Witnesses_2024
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Guide for Women Witnesses

St. Phoebe Day 2024
Discerning Deacons

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Goals of St. Phoebe Day        2

Questions for Consideration        3

Resources for Personal Testimony        4

Suggested Witness Outline        5

Individual Reflection Sheet - Crafting My Personal Story        7

Resources for Breaking Open the Word        9

Photo by Pilar TImpane

Goals of St. Phoebe Day

In September 2024, hundreds of Catholic faith communities around the world will celebrate the Feast of Deacon St. Phoebe. While each celebration will reflect the unique perspectives and needs of the community, all will be united around four common goals:

  1. Lift up Deacon St. Phoebe on or near the day she is commemorated, September 3
  2. Pray for global synod leaders and the universal church as topics related to women’s leadership and the diaconate continue to be discerned.
  3. Listen to and celebrate the voices and gifts of women ministers and leaders in our communities
  4. Offer our communities an opportunity to exercise diakonia, their baptismal call to bridge-building, humble service, especially to those on the margins of our communities, parishes, society, etc.

Celebrating the Voices and Gifts of Women Leaders

Just as St. Paul entrusted St. Phoebe to deliver and proclaim his Letter to the Romans, so, too, we are inviting women to bear public witness to their faith experiences in their communities on St. Phoebe Day. The structure of this sharing will vary from community to community, based on those communities’ existing customs and culture, the nature of the celebration they have planned for St. Phoebe Day, and the particular gifts and interests of the woman or women planning to speak in that community. (To give a few examples, some women may preach during an evening prayer service or offer a scripture reflection, according to the norms of their parish and diocese, within the context of a Mass, for example, after communion. Others may give a personal testimony, for example, after the announcements at the end of the Mass— “Our Church is discerning the ‘urgent’ global call to ‘rethink women’s participation’ and how to ‘more fully receive women’s gifts’ for the ‘life and mission of the church.’ Here is what that means to me…”—while others still may offer a little of each at a gathering outside of the Mass.)

Questions for Consideration

Photo by Pilar Timpane

Resources for Personal Testimony

If you have been invited to offer a personal testimony as a part of a St. Phoebe Day celebration—for example, during the announcements at Mass or as a part of a presentation—bearing witness to the importance of the Church’s synodal discernment about women’s co-responsibility, diakonia, and/or St. Phoebe, use the following resources to prepare your witness.

**Rhonda Miska is a preacher, writer, lay ecclesial minister, and spiritual director based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN area. She holds an MA in Pastoral Ministry from Boston College and is a graduate of Diocese of Richmond, VA Spiritual Direction Institute (2007). From 2016-2020, Rhonda was in formation with the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), during which time she studied at the Aquinas Institute and was part of a community of women who claim and practice the preaching charism. In 2021, she founded the Catholic Women's Preaching Circle, a space for women passionate about preaching to build peer community, practice practicing, and give and receive feedback. Rhonda has been active with Discerning Deacons since its earliest days.

Suggested Witness Outline

  1. Story of Now: Headline News
  1. We are in Synod! The Global Synod on Communion, Participation, and Mission  is underway. Millions of people worldwide have participated in listening sessions in a collective effort to discern the will of the Holy Spirit for the Church in the new millennium. This October, Church leaders will gather for the second part of a two-part gathering of bishops—which, for the first time in history, has included women and other laypersons as voting members.
  2. In the listening phase of the synod, there was global consensus about the urgent to “rethink women’s participation in the Church” (cf. DCS #60-65), which has since been reaffirmed in last October’s gathering (cf. Oct. 2023 Synthesis Report #9) and in the subsequent interim phase of synodal listening between the two October gatherings (cf. IL 2024 #13-18).
  3. Women have always served and led within the Church, and today we celebrate one such leader from the early church, St. Phoebe. Recognized by St. Paul as diakonos, or deacon, Phoebe was one of many women who served as deacons throughout the first millennium of our church’s history. Today we are part of a global movement to restore her memory. We ask for St Phoebe’s intercession as our church discerns how best to honor women’s baptismal dignity and embrace their call to co-responsibility and shared authority in the church.
  1. Story of Self: The Heart of Your Witness
  1. What breaks your heart about your experience as a woman in the Church?
  2. What fills your cup about your experience as a woman in the Church?
  3. What do you hope will come out of the discernment about women in the Church in the synodal process?
  4. What difference would your hope make in serving the mission of the Gospel for you, your people, the people on the peripheries in your community?
  1. Story of Us: Invitation to Walk and Discern Together
  1. Your invitation to the community with instructions for prayer, learning more, and bearing witness. (This should be 1-2 sentences. In addition the example below, you can find more ideas for this in the St Phoebe Day Toolkit and Liturgy Guide & Planning Checklist.
  2. For example:
  1. The Church is in the midst of a discernment about how to foster co-responsibility for the Gospel mission among all the baptized, with a particular concern for the ways women’s gifts and contributions have not always been honored or welcomed. We get to be a part of this important discernment by reflecting together locally and praying for the synod of bishops as they gather in October.
  2. I’m honored to offer my testimony into this discernment while our global church and our faith community are reflecting together. And I know there are so many here with us today who have valuable insight, prayers, hopes or concerns to be shared as we deliberate together how to best welcome women’s gifts and co-responsibility in the Church.
  3. Today, I want to invite each of you to join the global church in this discernment, first by joining your heart in prayer. We have prayer cards to share, and I want to invite you to join me on October 3, when I’ll be participating virtually in a Global St. Phoebe Prayer, live streamed from Rome during the synod, and sharing the witness of our community’s celebration of St. Phoebe here today.
  4. If you are interested in learning more about St. Phoebe and about the Church’s discernment about women’s participation, I will be at the table in the back after Mass with a sign-up sheet to stay connected. And: it’s okay if you don’t share my perspective. At the heart of synodality is encountering one another across our differences and trusting that it is in that encounter that the Holy Spirit reveals God’s will for the Church.

Photo by Brendan Hall

Individual Reflection Sheet - Crafting My Personal Story

WHAT TO INCLUDE

REFLECTION PROMPTS

Note: These are here to help you get started.  You do not need to include answers to all of these questions in your personal story. What people, experiences or stories come to mind as you ponder these questions?

WHY DO WE START WITH A PERSONAL STORY? - NOTES FOR YOUR TESTIMONY

 

DO

DON’T

*Prepare your 2- 3 minute version of your personal story.

* Prepare in advance.

* Include challenge, pain, or lament—and also stories of hope, encouragement, and your desire to act

* Know that the world has spoken up about this need, the church has heard it, and there is a reason to hope things can change. Help your community to imagine and to hope what could be so that we can continue to journey together in that direction. There is an openness that we haven’t had in the recent past; let’s make the most of it.  

* If you can include a story to encapsulate any of your main ideas—especially a personal story—that is usually the most powerful.

*This is not the moment to give your 10-30 minute version.

* Don’t avoid pain/lament/challenge.
           AND
* Don’t get stuck in pain/lament/challenge….

*We want to move towards statements of hope and faith and imagination for our church especially in this time where our church is openly listening and deliberating “rethinking women’s participation”.

Resources for Breaking Open the Word

(HOMILY HELPS FORTHCOMING)

**Rhonda Miska is a preacher, writer, lay ecclesial minister, and spiritual director based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN area. She holds an MA in Pastoral Ministry from Boston College and is a graduate of Diocese of Richmond, VA Spiritual Direction Institute (2007). From 2016-2020, Rhonda was in formation with the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), during which time she studied at the Aquinas Institute and was part of a community of women who claim and practice the preaching charism. In 2021, she founded the Catholic Women's Preaching Circle, a space for women passionate about preaching to build peer community, practice practicing, and give and receive feedback. Rhonda has been active with Discerning Deacons since its earliest days.