Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

212Therefore, with their impaired intellectual understanding, the God who ispresent in this sacramental moment becomes one who is imagined, experiencedand sensed more so than understood.With this in mind Francis speaks of absorbing the meaning of thesacraments through a sense of symbolic knowing. 561 Fowler also contends that, ata more foundational level than our conceptual sense, most of our knowing isshaped by images, symbols and rituals, and that this sense of knowing has adetermining effect on faith formation. 562 It is this sense of knowing that engagesthe person of faith at a greater level of mystery and ambiguity than can bediscerned in more rational sacramental forms.And so God, perhaps more readily than in the wider faith community, isaccepted as beyond understanding, a mystery, by these people with whom I haveshared the Communion host.How might such experiences of worship inform my daily pastoralvisitations? How much am I prepared to let the pastoral encounter be shaped innon-cerebral forms according to the wants and needs of the one I am with?How much am I prepared to let the pastoral encounter remain ambiguousor incomprehensible to my pastoral reckoning?Am I prepared to allow the pastoral encounter to be as imbued with assacramental a spirit or form as may be perceived as being what the other personwants, and which speaks to their spirit at their point of need, material or spiritual?Am I prepared to look like ‘Johnny out of step’ in order to be what theother person requires?Am I prepared to fully let go of my preconceived pastoral outcomes?How might the grace of the formal sacramental moment take shape in thedaily pastoral visitation?In different ways, all these questions challenge me to risk letting go ofmore rationally-formulated assumptions and to allow mystery and grace to dictatethe pastoral agenda. They invite me to take the risk of both being, and appearingto be, different, perhaps foolish, within the context of my fellow professionals,561 Francis, M. "Celebrating the Sacraments with Those with Developmental Disabilities:Sacramental/ Liturgical Reflections." In Developmental Disabilities and Sacramental Access:New Paradigms for Sacramental Encounters, edited by E Foley, 73-93. (Collegeville: TheLiturgical Press, 1994).562 Fowler, James. Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest forMeaning. (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers, 1981).