It is certainly very appropriate, and we might even say that it is a gift of Divine Providence, that we begin our work together in this “Synod on Synodality” by coming together in retreat on the day in which the Church recalls the life and witness of Saint Jerome. He was, we are told, a passionate and difficult man, someone who did not find it easy to tolerate what he saw as the shortcomings of others. At the same time, he was someone who could recognise the faults and failings in his own approach to people and who was tormented by the realisation that his fiery approach to others sometimes caused great offence and suffering. He would, perhaps, have been a difficult character to manage if he were a member of a Synod which calls us to deep and respectful listening to each other!

Among the many things for which he is remembered, however, perhaps his famous saying, that “ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ”, is the precious gift he offers us as we enter into all that lies ahead over the next three or four weeks. We cannot afford to be ignorant of Christ, or forgetful of him, as we seek to discern together just what it is that God is asking of the Church at this time.

In a sense we have the answer, or at least an inkling of the answer, in the reassurance Pope Francis offers us that God is calling us to be, together, a Synodal Church in Mission. The journey we have taken so far has led us to a deeper understanding of the meaning of synodality. Now, at this stage of the journey,  we are being asked to reflect not so much on what synodality is but rather on how we are to live it at every level of the life of the Church: as individual Christians, certainly, but always as people who are called together, in communities small and big, in order to be living signs and instruments - living sacraments - of communion with God and unity among all people. 

In the book of Genesis, when God created the first man, God saw that it was not good for the man to be alone, so God created the first woman and gave them to each other to enter into a relationship - to form a community. Our experience of the synodal journey has confirmed for us this profound truth - that in the creative design of God we are made for each other, that we are meant to depend on each other, and that it is in and through our relationships that we come to be the people God has created us to be.

The synodal journey has deepened our appreciation of the importance of our relationships with each other. Our engaging in the “Conversations in the Spirit” has opened our eyes to the possibilities which deep, respectful and unhurried attention to the other holds for us all. These are precious gifts for the whole Church.

As we come to understand more clearly how important our relationships with our sisters and brothers in the faith really are, we might recall the words Saint Paul addressed to the first Christian community at Philippi: you must have in the same mind that was in Christ Jesus. That mind, and we might add that heart, are revealed to us in every page of the gospels. As we see Jesus engaged in so many different relationships, and caught up in so many different encounters with people, we begin to get glimpses of what truly and deeply human encounters look like. We can think of the endless patience which Jesus demonstrates towards those, especially his closest disciples, who continually fail to understand him and who so often disappoint him, as today’s gospel story reminds us, and of how his patience prevents them from giving up. We can think of the extraordinary sensitivity Jesus shows towards those who seem to be weighed down by the burdens of their own sinfulness, and of how that sensitivity sets them free. We can think of Jesus’s compassion for those who are lost or confused or pushed to the margins, and of how that compassion restores their hope.

And as we reflect on the patterns of Jesus’s engagement with so many different people in so many different ways, it would be important for us to remember that the words he said to his disciples at the Last Supper are words he also says to us: I am the Way; I am the Truth; I am the Life. If you want to know how to be a welcoming and hospitable Church, learn from me, for I am the way. If you want to know how to be a poor and humble Church learn from me, for I am the way. If you want to know how to be a Church in mission, learn from me, for I am the way. If you want to know how to be a listening Church, learn from me, for I am the way.

As, in the days ahead, we grapple with the question of how to be a synodal Church in mission, we will need to keep our eyes on Christ. At times what we see will console us, at times it will confuse us, and at times it may even confront or frighten us. But in the end, to paraphrase a famous phrase of Pope Saint John XX111, the Church is Christ’s, not ours. It is him we follow, no-one else.

Let us continue, then, to pray that the Spirit of Christ will indeed guide us and be at home in our hearts; that in spite of our weakness and sinfulness the Spirit will enable us to promote not disorder but harmony; that in the Spirit of Christ we will find our unity and become together a living sacrament of communion with God and unity among all people.

And may Mary, the Mother of the Church, accompany us with her prayers for us all. 

Last year on retreat we mediated on how to listen to each other. How may we face our differences in hope, opening our hearts and minds to each other? Some barriers did fall and I hope that we began to see those with whom we disagree not as opponents but as fellow disciples, fellow seekers.

This year we have a new focus: ‘How to be a missionary synodal Church.’ But the foundation of all that we shall do is the same: patient, imaginative, intelligent, open-hearted listening. I even thought of repeating the same talks as at the last retreat, but you might notice! Herbert McCabe OP realised at the last moment that he was due to give a lecture to a distinguished theological society. He grabbed a lecture from his files, leapt on his motorbike and arrived just in time. When he opened his notes, he saw that he had given the same lecture to the same society a year before. ‘What did you do?’ I asked. ‘I left out the jokes. They are the only things anyone remembers.’ Your memories are surely better.

Profound listening is still the foundation of everything we shall do this year. It is, the Instrumentum laboris (IL) says, ‘the first act of the Church’ (60). The poet Amos Oz said of his grandfather: ‘He listened. He did not just politely pretend to listen, while impatiently waiting for her to finish what she was saying and shut up. He did not break into his partner’s sentence and finish it for her. He did not cut in to sum up what she was saying so as to move on to another subject. He did not let his interlocutress talk into thin air while he prepared in his head the reply that he would make when she finally finished. He did not pretend to be interested or entertained, he really was.’[1] Listening to God and to our brothers and sisters is the discipline of holiness.

This year we shall be reflecting on ‘the one mission of proclaiming the Risen Lord and his Gospel’ (IL Introduction) to a world that ‘dwells in darkness and the shadow of death.’ (Luke 1:79). To guide our meditations, we shall take four resurrection scenes from St John’s gospel: ‘Searching in the dark’, ‘The locked room’, ‘the stranger on the beach’ and ‘breakfast with the Lord.’ Each sheds some light on how to be a missionary synodal Church in our crucified world.

Our first scene begins in the night: ‘Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb’ (20:1). This is where we too are today. Our world is even more darkened by violence than a year ago. She comes looking for the body of her beloved Teacher. We too are gathered in this Synod to search for the Lord. In the West, God seems to have largely disappeared. We face not so much by atheism as a pervasive indifference. Scepticism poisons the hearts even of many believers. But all Christians everywhere are searchers for the Lord, like Mary Magdalene before dawn.

We too may even feel in the dark. Since the last Assembly, so many people, including participants in this Synod, have expressed their doubts as to whether anything is going to be achieved. Like Mary Magdalene, some say, ‘Why have they taken away our hope? We expected so much from the Synod, but perhaps there will be just more words.’

But although it is dark, the Lord is already present in the garden with Mary Magdalene and with us. Before his death Jesus said, ‘Unless a seed falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit’ (12:24). The seed had been sown in the rich soil of the garden by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, sown in a new tomb which no one had used. It is about to flower. The dawn is near. Like Mary Magdalene, we shall receive more than we search for if we too are open to encounter the Lord.

In the garden, we encounter three seekers, Mary Magdalene, the Beloved Disciple, and Simon Peter. Each one searches for the Lord in his or her own way; each has their own way of loving and each their own emptiness. Each of these seekers has their own role in the dawning of hope. There is no rivalry. Their mutual dependence embodies the heart of synodality. All of us can identify with at least one of them. Which one are you?

Tomas Halik has argued that the future of the Church depends on her ability to reach out to the seekers of our society. These are often the ‘nones’. I do not mean contemplative religious sisters, but the people who claim that they have no religious affiliation. They too often are searching for the meaning of their lives. Halik writes that Christians must thus be willing to be “seekers with those who seek and questioners with those who question.[2]

All of the accounts of the resurrection are filled with questions. Twice Mary Magdalene is asked why she is weeping. She asks where they have put the body. They all ask why the tomb is empty. In Mark’s account, the women ask, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us?’ (16:3). Luke’s accounts of the Resurrection are filled with questions: ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead?’ Jesus asks the disciples fleeing to Emmaus, ‘What are you talking about?’ Then all of the disciples: ‘Why are you frightened? Why do doubts arise in your hearts?’ (24.38). The Resurrection bursts into our lives not as bald statement of fact but in searching questions.

Profound questions do not seek information. They invite us to be alive in a new way, and to speak in a new language. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: ‘Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.’[3]

The Resurrection is not Jesus’ life beginning again after a brief irruption, but a new way of being alive in which death has been conquered. And so it bursts into our lives in the gospels first as urgent questions which will not let us go on living in the same way. Likewise, we come to this Synod with many questions, for example about the role of women in the Church. These are important questions. But they cannot be seen as just questions about whether something will be allowed or refused. That would be to remain the same sort of Church. The questions that we face should be more like those in the gospels, which invite us to live the Risen life together more profoundly.

And so we must dare to bring to this Synod the deepest questions in our hearts, disconcerting questions which invite us to new life. Like those three seekers in the garden, we must attend to each other’s questions if we are to find a renewed way to be Church. If we have no questions, or superficial questions, our faith is dead. A certain archbishop, not present with us today, said to a group of Dominican novices: ‘Make sure that all of you read the Summa of Aquinas. It contains fifty-six thousand answers to all those who criticize the Catholic Church’![4] Aquinas would have been horrified. As a child legend has it his first question was ‘What is God?’ and his holiness was to refuse any answer for, he said, we are joined to God as to the unknown.

If we listen to each other’s questions with respect and without fear, we shall find a new way to live in the Spirit. As I said last year, the motto of the Dominican Academy in Baghdad is: ‘Here no questions are forbidden.’ We are Mary Magdalene and the Beloved Disciple and Simon Peter, and it is only together that we shall find the Lord who is waiting for us.

Let’s look at each of seekers and see what they can teach us about reaching out to the seekers of our time. Mary Magdalene is drawn by a love that is tender. It is down to earth, physical, flesh and blood. She wishes to care for the body of her beloved Lord. She surely stands for all those whose lives are driven by compassion for the wounded of the world. Mother Teresa, who searched for the body of her Lord on the streets of Kolkata. St Damien of Molokai who gave his life to those suffering from leprosy in Hawaii.

Think also of those millions of people who do not know Christ and yet who are filled with compassion for the suffering. Like Mary Magdalene, they are searching for the bodies of the wounded. The world is filled with weeping. Four days into the last Assembly, Hamas committed those terrible atrocities that plunged the Middle East into war. People are weeping in Ukraine and, yes, in Russia too at the death and mutilation of hundreds of thousands of young people, as they weep too in Sudan and Myanmar. One of the study groups convoked by the Holy Father is called ‘Listening to the cry of the poor.’ It could be called ‘listening to the cry of those who weep.’ Mary Magdalene is their patron.

Then Mary hears her name: ‘Mary’; ‘’Rabbuni.’ It is fitting that she whose life is driven by compassionate, tender love, should have her emptiness filled with her name. She searched for a dead body, but she found more than she could have dreamt of, the love that is alive for ever. Our God always calls us by name. ‘But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine”.’ (Isaiah 43:1)

Her name signifies encounter, the presence of the Lord. The first thing that happens at baptism is the request for a name. ‘What is your name?’ or ‘What name do you give your child?’ The name is not just a label slapped on children to distinguish them from each other: That would make me Child no. 4. Our name is a sign that we are treasured by God in our uniqueness.

Pope Francis contrasted the way that the Roman Emperor saw the world, though a census counting numbers with our God: ‘Dear brother, dear sister, to God, who changed history in the course of a census, you are not a number, but a face.…Christ does not look at numbers, but at faces.’

And so our mission too is to name the God who looks for us in the dark. And to treasure each other’s name and faces too. We shall only mediate God’s presence if we are present to each other in this Synod. Gregory Boyle, SJ, works with young gang members in Los Angeles. The secret of his ministry is to know their names. Not just their official names or their nicknames, but the names that their mothers call them when they are not angry. When he calls young Lula by his name, ‘you would have thought that I had electrocuted him. His whole body spasms with delight to be known, to be called, to hear his name uttered out loud. For his entire trip through the crosswalk, Lula kept turning back and looking at me, smiling.’[5]

Tyrannical regimes erase names and faces. In Auschwitz Saint Maximilian Kolbe became prisoner 16,670. The President of Russia has always refused to name the man who bravely opposed him, Alexie Navalny. He was just ‘a certain person.’ Similarly, Nelson Mandela became the face of opposition to the apartheid regime. And so when he was imprisoned, it was prohibited to publish an image of his face. It was erased from the public memory. So, when after decades in prison, he was allowed to walk on the beach, no one knew him. His face had been robbed of its power.

This synod will be a moment of grace if we look at each other with compassion, and see people who are like us, searching. Not representatives of parties in the Church, that horrible conservative Cardinal, that frightening feminist! But fellow searchers, who are wounded yet joyful. I must confess that I am terrible at remembering names, partly it is because I am deaf. That is my excuse. Forgive me!

But Mary Magdalene’s tender love needs healing. Jesus commands her: ’Do not cling to me.’ Scholars have given some absurd explanations for this, the most implausible being that that Jesus’ wounds were still sore! He is saying she cannot take private possession of him. His presence to her is not hers to own. The Resurrection is the birth of his community. ‘The People of God is never simply the sum of the baptised; rather, it is the 'we' of the Church’ ( IL, 3). ‘But go to my brothers and say to them: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God”.’ This is the first time in John’s gospel that he calls the disciples ‘brothers’. Fratelli tutti! She must liberate her love from all exclusivity! Then she will be ready to preach the good news to the disciples: ‘I have seen the Lord.’ This is our challenge too. Not to cling to my English Jesus or my Dominican Jesus, but the Lord in whom we are all brothers and sisters, even the Jesuits! This synod will be fruitful if we learn to say ‘we.’ ‘My Father and your Father, my God and your God.’

Then there is the disciple whom the Lord loved. He too has his way of loving and his emptiness, the extinction of the light of his life. He lets old Peter, puffing and panting, go in first into the dark tomb but he sees the empty space between the angels and he believes. This is the love which gives sight. Ubi amor, ibi oculus (Richard of St Victor). Where there is love there is sight. He sees with the eyes of love and so sees love’s victory. His gospel is that of the eagle, whose eyes were believed to look straight into the light of the sun and not be blinded. His search is supremely theological.

I spent two weeks this year in the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. The brethren live in the shadow of death, forty minutes from Gaza. They remain there, studying the Word of God, teaching and praying. They remain as a sign that ‘the light shone in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.’ (John 1.5). Mary Magdalene’s emptiness is healed by the calling of a name – presence - and his by the light which shines in an empty tomb. So he embodies all those who seek to understand the meaning of our lives, the God-shaped void in our hearts, as Blaise Pascal said. Christian thinkers of course, but also everyone who struggles to find light in the darkness of our suffering: the poets and the artists and film makers who refuse to believe that darkness has the victory. For our preaching of the resurrection, we need them, open to their wisdom, as St Thomas Aquinas was to the pagan Aristotle. Aquinas wrote that all ‘truth no matter by whom it is said, is from the Holy Spirit’ (omne verum, a quocumque dicatur, est a Spiritu Sancto).[6]

Then there is Simon Peter. His emptiness is the heaviest of all, the burden of failure. He denied his friend. Surely he longs for those healing words which will be spoken at last on the beach.

So our pastoral mission too is to be with all those who are burdened by failure and sin and share the forgiveness we have received, our own discovery of the amazing grace of the one who ‘saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I am found, was blind but now I see.’ Our mission is to name the merciful one whom we too need, like Peter.

So in this first resurrection scene we see how the Lord responds to three forms of searching corresponding to three voids in our lives: tender love which searches for presence; the search for meaning and light and for forgiveness. Each searcher needs the other. Without Mary, they would not have come to the tomb. She declares that the Lord is present. Without the Beloved Disciple, they would not understood the emptiness of the tomb as Resurrection; without Peter, they would not have understood that Resurrection is the triumph of mercy

Each represents a group that felt in some way excluded at the last Assembly. Mary Magdalene also reminds us of how women are often excluded from formal positions of authority in the Church. How are we to find a way forward, which justice and our faith demand? Their search is ours. At the last Assembly many theologians also felt marginal. Some wondered why they had bothered to come. We cannot get anywhere without them. And the group that was most resistant to the Synodal path was the pastors, the parish priests who especially share Peter’s role as shepherds of mercy. The Church cannot become truly Synodal without them too.

When nearly everyone feels that they are the excluded ones, there should be no competition for victimhood! The search in the dark for the Lord needs all of these witnesses, as the Synod needs all of the ways in which we love and search for the Lord, as we need the seekers of our time, even if they do not share our faith.

How is this to overflow into mission? These words are attributed to Antoine de St Exupery. They are even better than what he actually wrote: ‘If you wish to construct a boat, do not gather your men and women to give them orders, or to explain each detail of what they must do or where to find everything…. If you want to construct a boat, give birth in the hearts of your men and women the desire for the sea!’[7] Give people a taste of the infinite, and they will find their own ways to make boats and set off into the vast ocean.

Each of these witnesses is touched by a love which is infinite. Mary Magdalene is touched by an infinite tenderness; the Beloved Disciples is moved by the search for boundless meaning; Peter, by the need for the mercy which is without limits, forgiving not seven times but seventy times seven times. If we open ourselves to each other’s infinite yearning, we shall launch the boat of mission. Only together shall we, in the words of Ephesians, ‘have the power to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge, so that you may be filled with the fullness of God.’ (3.18,19).

This afternoon we shall find the disciples once again in the dark, in the locked room.

[1] Amos OZ, A Tale of Love and Darkness, Vintage, London, 2005, p.110.

[2] Tomáš HALÍK, Patience with God, Doubleday, New York, 2009, p.9.

[3] Rainer Maria RILKE, Letters to a young Poet, Letter 4, July 16th 1903. Translated by N. D. Herter Norton, W.W. Norton and Company, 1934.

[4] Paul MURRAY OP, “Dominicans and the Key of Knowledge”, A Talk to Dominican Friars Studying in Rome - PUST, Angelicum, 19 February 2023.

[5] Ibid., p.47.

[6] ST, I II, q.109, a.1, ad 1.

[7] "To create a ship is not to weave sails, forge nails or read the stars, but to give a taste of the sea, which is one, and in the light of which nothing is contradictory but community in love.” (A. SAINT-EXUPÉRY, Citadelle, Gallimard, Paris, 1959, p. 687, trans. ours).

This morning we saw the disciples running around in the dark, searching for the Lord. The Beloved Disciple sees and believes. It is dawn. Now it is evening and we are back in the dark, and they are immobilised in the locked room.

The morning was dark at first because they had not yet found the Risen Lord. The evening is dark because they are not yet filled with the Holy Spirit, the living breath of the Risen Lord. Jesus has burst out of the empty tomb. They are still in the tomb of the locked room. Genesis says that in the beginning, ‘the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life[1]; and the man became a living being’ (2:7). Now Jesus gives them the breath of eternal life: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven; whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.’ They share in his Risen Life and so they are ready to be sent to preach.

This morning we saw that the mission of the Synodal Church calls us to be like Mary Magdalene, the Beloved Disciple, and Peter, those who search for the Risen Lord. So too we must be close to the searchers of our time. But we shall only become preachers of the Resurrection if we are alive in God. No one will believe a zombie. Remember Irenaeus, Gloria Dei, homo vivens; the glory of God is a human being fully alive. Like Lazarus, we hear the voice of the Lord summoning us out of our locked rooms: ‘Come out and live.’

Holiness is being alive in God. A cousin of Charles de Foucauld, who was much given to the pleasures of eating and drinking, describes a visit from Charles who returned to Paris for a short visit after years of living in the Sahara: ‘He entered the room and peace entered with him. The glow of his eyes and especially that very humble smile had taken over his whole person.…There was an incredible joy emanating from him.… I, upon seeing that my whole sum of satisfactions did not weigh more than a tiny fraction in comparison with the complete happiness of the ascetic, found rising within me a strange feeling not of envy but of respect.’[2]

It was said of St Teresa of Avila that ‘she was rapturously conscious of a life beyond self.’3[3] Or think of Carlo Acutis, a handsome Italian teenager who played video games. Millennials can see here one of their own generation who is truly alive. So the challenge for us is to help each other to breathe deeply the rejuvenating Holy Spirit! A bit of a challenge for me now in my eightieth year!

The first task of leadership is to lead the flock out of the tiny sheepfolds into the fresh air of the Holy Spirit. Leadership opens the locked doors of stuffy rooms. The disciples are imprisoned by fear. So let us think of the fears that may prevent us from becoming alive in God, and so preachers of the gospel of abundant life.

We all know the fear of being hurt. Some of us come to this Assembly nervous that we shall not find recognition and acceptance. Our treasured hopes for the Church may be scorned. We may feel invisible. Do we dare to speak and risk rejection? If you are not used to this world of the Vatican, with its grandiose titles and strange clothes, it can be intimidating. We dare to take the risk of getting hurt, because the Risen Lord is wounded. He shows them his hands and his side. The Easter Preface goes further and proclaims, ‘He lives forever slain’ ‘sed semper vivit occisus.’ Remember those words of my brother Herbert McCabe: ‘If you love, you will be hurt and even killed. If you do not love, you are dead already.’ Becoming alive in God means being unafraid of wounds.

Our priory in Jerusalem is situated near the Damascus Gate. This is a tense place where the Old City opens onto the Arab quarter. A group of young Jews stood there, blindfolded, offering ‘free hugs’ to anyone who wanted one. Gratuitous love in the face of the gratuitous hate. They took the risk that instead of a hug they might receive a knife.

Alan Paton was a South African novelist who courageously campaigned against apartheid. One of his characters says: “When I shall ascend to heaven, which I certainly intend to do, the Big judge will say to me “Where are your wounds?” And if I say I haven’t any, he will say “Was there nothing to fight for?”‘[4]

In the Philippines, I met a woman who scarred by leprosy. For most of her life she lived in a leprosarium which was run by a branch of the Dominican Order, the brothers of St Martin. Many of them suffer from leprosy too. She was afraid to leave the place, even when she was cured. People would see her scars and be afraid, and so she remained trapped inside. And one day she dared to venture outside, and she discovered a new mission, to travel all over Asia, inviting people who suffered from leprosy to come out and live.

We can embrace the risk of being hurt because the Lord has given us his peace. The film Des dieux et des hommes tells the story of the Trappist monks who refused to flee Algeria when terrorist violence broke out in the 1990s. Frère Luc, the ancient doctor of the community, says ‘I’m not scared of death, I’m a free man’ (Je ne crains pas la mort, je suis un homme libre). In the Old Dominican rite of the Mass, the priest kissed the chalice of Christ’s shed blood before he offered the greeting of peace.

The first creation began with ‘Let there be light.’ The New Creation begins with ‘Let there be peace.’ These words cannot be unspoken. Mahatma Gandhi had a picture of Jesus in his room with the quotation from Ephesians, ‘He is our peace’ (2:14). Jesus is God’s Sabbath. In the early Church, ‘in pace’ was written on Christian tombs. We are baptised into Christ’s peace which nothing can destroy. We need be afraid of nothing.

In the late sixties, my Dominican community in Oxford was attacked by a crazy group. Not the Jesuits! At 2am, two small bombs blew out all the windows in the front of the priory. We were all woken and rushed down. The police came and the ambulances. The Prior alone, Fergus Kerr, was still fast asleep. The youngest novice was sent to his room. ‘Fergus, Fergus, wake up, there has been a bomb attack.’ ‘Anybody dead?’ ‘No’. ‘Anyone wounded?’ ‘No.’ ‘Go away and let me sleep. We will think about it in the morning.’ My first lesson in leadership.

The victory is won. When his executioners came for Dietrich Bonhoeffer, his last message was for his friend Bishop Bell of Chichester was: ‘Tell the bishop... our victory is certain.’ One of the brethren may have a sex change, the bursar may run away with the money, the Church may be blown up! But Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.

God’s peace does not mean that we feel at peace. My fellow novice Simon Tugwell, OP, wrote: ‘It is not a subjective sensation of peace that is required; if we are in Christ, we can be in peace (in pace) and therefore unflustered even when we feel no peace.’[5] Perhaps for many of us, the most profound challenge is to be at peace with ourselves. Do we dare to look at our own troubled and divided hearts, the bits of ourselves that we do not like? The temptation is to project on to others what we fear and dislike in ourselves. Tugwell again: ‘peace comes with an unflustered self-knowledge.… The way to peace is the acceptance of truth. Any bit of us that we refuse to accept will be our enemy, forcing us into defensive postures. And the discarded pieces of ourselves will rapidly find incarnation in those around us.’[6]

Our fierce love of the Church can also, paradoxically, make us narrow minded: the fear that it will be harmed by destructive reforms which undermine the traditions that we love. Or the fear that the Church will not become the wide-open home for which we long. It is deeply sad that often the Church is wounded by those who love the Church, but differently! St Ephraim said that the Catholic church is ‘the big church with the big lap.’[7] I met a German Lutheran theologian who taught at Oxford, and he said: ‘I am afraid that Catholics are becoming Protestant.’ Sometimes we forget the wideness of Catholicism, with its both/and. The truth we love is, as Bishop Robert Barron wrote, ‘as wide the universe and as specific as the person of Jesus.’[8]‘ Perfect love drives out fear. Let it drive out the fear of those whose visions of the Church are different. The Church is in the hands of the Lord and God has promised that the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.

During the Napoleonic era, a flustered Monsignor came anxiously to see the Secretary of State, Cardinal Consalvi, and said, ‘Your Eminence, the situation is very serious. Napoleon wishes to destroy the Church.’ To which the Cardinal replied, ‘Not even we have succeeded in doing that!’

Our very love of the Church, in utterly different ways, can us lock inside a narrow world, gazing at our ecclesiastical navels, watching others, ready to spot their deviations and denounce them. Pope Francis, before his election, said that the Lord would come knocking on the door and demanding to be let out of the sacristy! Of course, there are changes for which some of us long, but let that not lock us inside our little churchy world. We shall be boring! God is revealed on mountain tops with unbounded horizons and outside the camp.

Our liberation from these rooms needs not just courage, but God’s healing forgiveness. The Risen Lord says, ‘Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; whose sins you retain, they are retained.’

Sin locks us inside prisons of narcissism and party politics, like the eldest son who sulks and will not join in the party to welcome home his prodigal brother. Herbert McCabe again: ‘Our very nature calls us to something new and frightening…We are the kind of being that finds its fulfilment, its happiness and flourishing only in giving itself up, and getting beyond itself. We need to lose our selves in love; that is what we fear. We are summoned to venture into what is unknown, to abandon what is familiar and safe, and set out on a journey or quest. .And yet we do not like to take risks. We settle for the person that we have achieved or constructed because we are afraid of being made in the image of God. This failure to respond to the summons into life, this failure of faith, is called sin.’[9]

So this synod is not a place for negotiations about structural change, but for choosing life, for conversion and forgiveness. The Lord summons us out of the small places in which we have taken refuge and in which we have imprisoned others. The hymn composed by Frederick Faber, the nineteenth century Oratorian, proclaims:

‘There is a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea.’

Let us pray that Christ’s peace will melt the violence that dwells in our hearts and which crucified Our Lord. Dorothy Day asserted that ‘the big fight is against violence more than it is against atheism.’[10] She said: ‘Christians, when they are seeking to defend their faith by arms, by force and violence, are like those who said to Our Lord, “Come down from the Cross. If you are the Son of God, save yourself”.’[11]

So in this Synod, let us overcome all the violence in our hearts: violent thoughts and words. Our global culture cultivates a violent imagination. ‘By the age of 18, American teenagers will on average have witnessed on the media 200,000 acts of violence and 16,000 murders.’[12]Often these are glamorised or treated as humorous. Violence is normalised and even seems harmless as one zaps demonic enemies in video games. This seemingly innocent entertainment nurtures a violent imagination which has no guilt in destruction because in the cyber world, nothing is real.[13]

The Body of Christ is disfigured by poisonous websites, filled with cruel accusation, caricature, and hatred. Anyone who exercises any form of leadership in the Church will have experienced this. I was accused as Master of the Order of having given permission to a provincial to live with his mistress, a nun, in a railway carriage!

Our violent world deprives so many of even the breath of life. The sin of racism, for example, literally stops people from breathing. ‘I can’t breathe’ were the last words of an African American, Eric Garner, repeated eleven times and recorded on the phones of onlookers while he was choked to death by the police on Staten Island, New York, ten years ago. These words have become the rallying cry of African Americans, symbolic of their oppression. They were also the last words of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was murdered in his country’s consulate in Turkey on October 2nd, 2018.[14] Let us give each other breathing space, the oxygen of debate.

This indestructible peace does not mean that we live in perfect harmony. We are gathered in this Assembly because we do not. But no discord can destroy our peace in Christ, for we are one in him. Thomas Merton wrote in his Asian Journal, ‘We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.’[15]

But Thomas was out when Jesus appeared. Perhaps because he was unafraid? When Lazarus was ill, he declared that he was willing to go up to Jerusalem and die with Jesus (11:16). He is passionate about the truth: ‘I will never, ever, ever believe’[16] unless I put my fingers in his wounds. And when he sees the Lord he makes his passionate confession: ‘My Lord and my God.’ This passionate disciple also invites us out of the small room.

‘My Lord and my God’. This is literally a theological statement: a word about God. The theme of this Assembly is a synodal Church on mission. The heart of this mission is to teach our doctrines. When Mary Magdalene is called by name, she replies ‘Rabbuni’, Teacher. In the last words of St Matthew’s gospel, Jesus sends his disciples out to teach all the nations. How are we to share our Christian teachings with a world hungry for meaning?

In the poor suburbs of Paris, young Catholics are asking to be taught the doctrines of the Church so that they can talk to their Muslim friends about what the Church teaches. There was a gathering earlier this year: ‘Assume ta foi en banlieue’, ‘Embrace your faith in the suburbs.’[17]The young are hungry for the rich meat of the Church’s teaching. ‘My Lord and my God’. They will not be satisfied if we just offer them, ‘Jesus who was a nice guy and wants us to be kind to each other.’

Our society is afflicted by a profound prejudice against dogma. Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, summed this up in his Commencement speech at Stanford in 2005: ‘Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.’ He was, of course, merely repeating a stale dogma of our times and not thinking for himself.

G.K. Chesterton asserted: ‘There are only two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don’t know it… Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broadminded.’[18] Some dogmas of our time are indeed stuffy locked rooms without oxygen: relativism, all sorts of fundamentalism, materialistic, nationalistic, scientism, religious fundamentalism. They lock people in small fearful imaginations.

But the great teachings of our faith, our Creed in essence, unlock the doors of our hearts and minds. They push us beyond small answers, and propel us on the endless search for the one who is infinite love and the truth, who forever exceeds our grasp. When I was a young friar in the late sixties, and everything seemed to be falling apart, most of us remained in the Order because we glimpsed the radiant beauty of the Creed, the truth we do not possess but which possesses us. The young will be satisfied with nothing less.

How can we invite the people of our time to enter into the wide-open space of our faith? How, for example, can we touch their imagination with the glorious doctrine of the Trinity, the most down to earth and practical teaching there is? For this we need the help of theologians.

Theologians also do sometimes retreat into the locked room of academia for fear of conversation with the People of God. When I was studied in Paris as a young brother, I asked another Dominican what his doctorate was on. He replied,’ My young brother (He was just a year older than me), I will not try to explain. You would not understand.’ Twenty years later I returned on visitation as Master of the Order, I saw him and said nothing!

Of course, we need academic theologians – exegetes and philologists and historians – who keep us in what St Paul calls ‘the obedience of faith’ (Romans 1:5). Otherwise, we shall use the Scriptures for our own purposes and not God’s. But this tough discipline of study is ultimately at the service of conversation with our contemporaries, so as to accompany them on the journey into the infinite mystery of the divine love.

The day after the last Assembly, Pope Francis called for a theology which is in charitable conversation with people of other convictions. He quoted his words to the students of the Catholic University of Argentina: ‘Do not settle for a desk theology. Let your place of reflection be the frontiers.… Good theologians, like good pastors, also smell of the people and the street, and, by their reflection, pour oil and wine on the wounds of men and women.’[19] Good theology opens the doors of stuffy rooms. Like Thomas, it is passionate and unafraid. It embraces new ways of speaking, new languages. A Synodal Church on mission dares to teach boldly and humbly.

[1] Not here Ruah but neshama.

[2] Fergus FLEMING, The Sword and the Cross London 2003, p. 235f.

[3] George ELIOT, The Prelude to Middlemarch, first published in 1871.

[4] Alan PATON, Ah, But your Land is Beautiful, Vintage/Ebury, Londons, 2002, pp. 66-67.

[5] Simon TUGWELL OP, Reflections on the Beatitudes, Darton Longman and Todd, London 1980 p.114.

[6] Ibid., p. 112.

[7] Quoted in S. TUGWELL “Scholarship, sanctity and spirituality”, Communio 11/1 (1984), p. 53.

[8] Michael HEHER, The Lost Art of Walking on Water: Reimagining the Priesthood, Mahwah, Paulist Press, 2004 p.132.

[9] Herbert MCCABE, God Matters, Continuum, London - New York, 2005, p. 94-95.

[10] Dorothy DAY, The Duty of Delight, Marquette University, New York, 2008, p. 943.

[11] Ibid., p. 895.

[12] “Children, Violence and the Media”, A Report for Parents and Policy Makers Senate Committee on the Judiciary; Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Utah, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary Prepared by Majority Staff Senate Committee on the Judiciary September 14, 1999.

[13] Timothy RADCLIFFE OP, Alive in God: A Christian Imagination, Bloomsbury, Londres, p. 197.

[14] Cf. ibid., pp. 262-263.

[15] Naomi BURTON et al. (eds), The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, New Directions, New York, 1973, p.308

[16] Timothy L. FOX: “Jesus’ Resurrection Appearances,” 1 November 2019 :” www.modernreformation.org/resources/essays/jesus-resurrection-appearances

[17] Arnaud BEVILAQUA, ‘The Great Awakening of young Catholics on the outskirts of Paris’, La Croix International, March 22, 2024.

[18] G. K. CHESTERTON, “The Mercy of Mr. Arnold Bennett” Fancies vs. Fads, Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1923: http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/Fancies_Versis_Fads.txt.

[19] FRANCIS, Ad theologiam promovendam, November 1st 2023

A deep thanks to God for this beginning: the Gospel - at the heart of Lauds - repositions us, all of us. As Pope Francis told us a few weeks ago, at the Angelus: 'First: wonder, because Jesus' words surprise us. But Jesus always surprises us, always. Also today, in the lives of each one of us, Jesus keeps surprising us." (18-08-'24). All the more so if we expose ourselves to the Gospel by drawing it into the great light of the Eucharist. It has in itself the power to dispose us for the journey. Let us make room for the amazed listening that repositions us, disposes us for this new beginning of our journey together.

Echoing the vigorous memory of Saint Jerome, the rough and choleric man, with strong passions, who easily quarrelled in his closest relationships, but who was also a careful scrutiniser of sacred Scripture, to the point of being transformed by it - today the Gospel speaks: it tells us of the conclusion of a stage of Jesus' itinerary, towards the beginning of the decisive stage. [And we, we are entering a concluding stage (so to speak!) of the synodal journey]. A mysterious conclusion that opens up the horizon in a disconcerting way, while the previous stage seems to be closing in on a shadow of failure: in fact, while everyone was admiring him, Jesus had just announced for the second time the approach of the ‘handing over’ of the Son of Man into the hands of men. And here, right here, Jesus opens up the horizon, rudely bringing the disciples' awkward dialogismos out into the open and enlightening them in their foolishness, through the simple gesture of bringing close, and establishing a small child beside him. Re-founding of the apostolic college. Living symbol of the disciple, also offered to us. Here, today. The least made living symbol.

Jesus in commenting on this prophetic gesture indirectly offers us a new vision on mission - and thus on the synodal path. "Anyone who welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me". Mission originates from the passion, the invincible attraction, of God towards the least, the paidion. It is a constant of God's revelation in human history, from the first day of creation until Jesus. The 'sent' apostles (the mission) must always start afresh from here. The mission, without this way of 'being with him', is in vain.

But they, obtuse, though corrected by the Master, again reiterate their fundamentalist view that raises fences, that excludes the stranger. And in return Jesus, with meek tenacity, reveals that Abba desires everyone to be "with him" - and recognises everyone as "his". Starting with the small, the unimportant. And it is precisely from this stumbling block in the understanding between Jesus and his own that the "synodal" journey to Jerusalem begins. Here Christology and ecclesiology intertwine. Hence, the 2nd Session of the Synodal Assembly thus finds itself powerfully invited to set off: "... this [is the] question: how can the identity of the synodal People of God in mission take concrete form in the relationships, paths and places where the everyday life of the Church takes place?” (I.L. Introduction). Mission without this way of being 'with him' revealed in the paidion, is at best good volunteer work.

The loghismoi, the search for dialogue, the incommunicability between differences, the barriers between generations, between extremely different cultures: all the obstacles that we have measured well in these months of walking between one Assembly and the other, are here confronted with the measure of truth that - in the symbol - repositions us all: the small, indeed, the least. Jesus does not moralize here: he points out, in himself, the way and the pace.

How then, here, do we recognise ourselves as being called to the new stage of the synodal journey, to confrontations, to dialogues? How do we expose ourselves to the revealing, performing, transfiguring power of the Eucharist, and in it to the Gospel? The I.L. (I, 25; cf. also "Five parts..."), in the proposed fourth part, says that the synodal method also includes liturgical reference. I think not so much as a ritual procedure, but as an inspiring light.

We know what simplification of the world, the ridiculous discussions, power hierarchies, have produced: "... which of them was the greatest" (Lk 9:46) ...

How then to identify the 'smallest' in the epochal situation in which we live? The defenceless and trusting child, the lost young person, the prisoner in revolt, the migrant, the old man left alone, the unheard woman, the ... "who?"?

The art of dialogue re-founded here, in the synodal church, is decisive, an alternative to all the dialogues we more or less consciously carry in our hearts. An art that is born - we understand it from this Gospel - from a level of reality, which God assumes: from the pain of a perceived deafness. This patience of Jesus in making himself understood by those who - though chosen to be with him - remain deaf, is revealing: it says God. Who never gives up in his thirst for the human You. And he founds the art of dialogue. Martin Buber, in his writing on dialogue, offers a very incisive cassidian apophthegm in this regard: 'It is said that once upon a time a man enthusiastic about God, abandoning the realm of creation, wandered into the great void. There he wandered, until he came to the gates of God's secret. He knocked. From within he was asked: "What do you seek here?" He said: "I proclaimed thy praise to the ears of mortals, but they were deaf to my word. So I come to you, that you yourself may hear me and answer me".

"Turn back," was heard from within, "here is no ear for thee. I have drowned my hearing in mortal deafness'". And in this Gospel, Jesus' meekness in snaring the disciples' 'deaf' thoughts speaks to this live drowning. This art of dialogue can only be learnt at his school: exposing oneself, to the point of being handed over as 'little ones', to the other.

To the "disorienting" Gospel, the psalms now prayed give horizon and resonance. Two powerful psalms. Gregory the Great says (Homilies on Ezekiel, I.I, 15) that - when prophecy fails in his people - and it often does! - it is the voice of the psalms that prepares in the darkened heart the way for the spirit of prophecy and the grace of compunction, the way that leads to Jesus. Wonderful.

As Jerome writes - today we remember! - in his rediscovered commentary on the Psalms: "The psalter is like a great house, which indeed has only one key on the outside for the door - and this key is the Holy Spirit; but it also has keys of its own for the different rooms within. Each room has its own key. If one throws away the keys in bulk, when one later wants to open that room, one cannot do so. Unless he finds the key again." It often happens with respect to the psalter that we have this carelessness to throw away the keys and consider them indecipherable, useless for prayer. Today, a day of retreat, it might be grace to find the key to enter these two wonderful psalms: "Like the deer that yearns for running streams, so my soul is yearning for you, my God". It is the voice of the church, it is the voice of the countless little ones waiting to be evangelised, it is the voice of "my soul" (Ps 41:2) in search. Two splendid psalms have been given to us today to give shape to the Praises of God. Ps 41 gives voice to that secret, unnameable thirst we carry within us. That thirst that is the soul of freedom. Thirst that corresponds to the thirst for God.

The cultures to which we belong are hesitant to expose themselves to this thirst, to integrate it into their symbolic systems, they struggle: so much so that they are tainted by the logics of business, power, market, fitness. Or by evasive logics. Which pursue dreams of freedom as self-determination: but the psalm we have just heard reawakens the thirst for the Living God. He, the Living One, thirsts for this thirst, as the ancient monk attests: 'God thirsts for those who thirst for him'. And Teresa of Calcutta humbly reminded us of this. To expose oneself at length to its light, to dwell in the Gospel 'as in the flesh of Christ' (Ignatius of A.): this is retreat. How to welcome close to oneself, in oneself, the child.

On Psalm 41, Abba Poemen, a monk in the Egyptian desert, said: "It is written: 'As the deer longs for the fountains of water, so my soul longs for you, O God'. As the deer in the desert devour many reptiles and, when the poison burns them, they yearn to come to the waters where they find relief from the burning of the ingested poisons, so the monks who live in the desert are burnt by the bitterness of the passions and therefore yearn for the Sabbath and Sunday to come for the synaxis, to draw from the fountains of waters, that is, from the body and blood of the Lord who purifies from the bitterness of the evil one'" (Apophytes, Alf., 30).

Poemen applies the spiritual movement of Psalm 41 to the reality of the desert, we could - having found the key - pray the psalm by disposing ourselves to the Synodal Assembly as the place where the Spirit quenches our thirst in the desire to conform our church to the arduous mission that the Lord, in this desert of today, entrusts to it. Like a little child. A yearning memory and an anxious hope are breathed in the psalm: let us allow ourselves to be penetrated by its questions ("When?", "Where is he?", "Why?"), to compose memory and hope in a superior harmony. From the abyss (v. 8) of a today that we can hardly read - yet we are called to interpret it as the today of the mission -, to the abyss of Mercy.

The memory of a past - albeit beautiful, but now archived - must be transformed into humble hope. The spring - as John of the Cross discovered in his 'night' - is gushing forth and always offered. In the Eucharist, which also quenches our thirst today. Here we find the reasons for hope.

***

"The heavens proclaim" sings the second psalm: it is language not words whose sound is heard. A silent proclamation, requiring new senses. A proclamation that awaits ears, eyes, hands, nose, mouth, to be tasted. To grasp the unspeakable. Even of our human, ecclesial affairs of today: throughout the earth, to the ends of the earth, we are in search of new proclamations that open up the horizon of hope.

Pope Francis sketches out some avenues on which to try to trace the proclamation that defeats solitude and muteness: "In this universe, shaped by open and intercommunicating systems, we can discern countless forms of relationship and participation. This leads us to think of the whole as open to God’s transcendence, within which it develops. Faith allows us to interpret the meaning and the mysterious beauty of what is unfolding. We are free to apply our intelligence towards things evolving positively” (Laudato si', 79). " If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs” (Laudato si', 11). This also concerns the way of approaching the synodal dialogue. (...) We can say that “alongside revelation properly so-called, contained in sacred Scripture, there is a divine manifestation in the blaze of the sun and the fall of night” (L.S., 85). By paying attention to this manifestation, human beings learn to recognise themselves in relation to other creatures: "I express myself in expressing the world; in my effort to decipher the sacredness of the world, I explore my own" (L.S., 85). "As the Catechism teaches: “God wills the interdependence of creatures. The sun and the moon, the cedar and the little flower, the eagle and the sparrow: the spectacle of their countless diversities and inequalities tells us that no creature is self-sufficient. Creatures exist only in dependence on each other, to complete each other, in the service of each other” (L.S, 86).

"Without language, without words, without their voice being heard".

But the moment the Bible witnesses the proclamation of the stars and recognises them as the language of God, that non-verbal language also becomes the word of humanity narrating the non-word of God.

So when we read his most astonishing word - 'the Word became flesh' - in that word we must also include the non-words of the sun, the stars, the cosmos, ... our dialogues open to the coming of the Spirit - all the words of the earth and all the 'words' of heaven.

The stars are not God, but His creatures - the heavens proclaim the glory of God. - They do not carry a message of their own, but signify Others, also 'words' spoken, to direct the thirst that dwells in us and drives us - in dialogue - towards the Source.

The spring that brims and ripples oh I know
in the dark of night.

(John of the Cross)

Waters that flow forever and a day through a lost country
oh I know the way
in dark of night.

Its-origin no knowing, for there's none.
But well l know, from here all sources run
in dark of night.

No other thing has such delight to give.
Here earth and the wide heavens drink to live
in dark of night.

Though some would wade, the wave's unforded still.
Nowhere a bottom, measure as you
will in dark of night.

A stream so clear, and never clouded? Never.
The wellspring of all splendor whatsoever
in dark of night.

Bounty of waters flooding from this well
invigorates all earth, high heaven, and hell
in dark of night.

A current the first fountain gave birth to
Is also great and what it would, can do
In dark of night.

Two merging currents of the living spring–
from these a third, no less astonishing
in dark of night.

O fountain surging to submerge again
deep in the living bread that's life to men
in dark of night.

Song of the waters calling: come and drink.
Come, all you creatures, to the shadowy brink
in dark of night.

This spring of living water I desire,
here in the bread of life I see entire
in dark of night.

The title of this Instrumentum laboris is significant: How to be a missionary, Synodal, Church. The themes underlying the document are summed up in those two words: to be missionary and Synodal.

This is a welcome document which has clarity of purpose, firmness of foundations, refreshing perspectives and concrete pathways for development.

Its purpose is clear: to rekindle hope, to spark renewal in discipleship, to restore a missionary outreach in the Church on the basis of our common baptism and to do so through working and walking together. As is noted (para 3), the People of God are never simply the sum of the baptised. It is the 'we' of the Church, with its variety of gifts and responsibilities, reaching across history, always accompanied by Mary, Mother of the Church.

Firm theological foundations are offered, exploring and refreshing an understanding of baptism, of ordained ministry and recognising the richness of the Church as communion: communion of all the faithful; communion of the Churches; communion of the bishops; all gathered in the sign and source of unity: the Bishop of Rome.

The theme of 'How to be a missionary Synodal Church' is explored imaginatively in three dimensions: relations, pathways and places. 'Relations' presents ways in which gifts, charisms, roles, ministries can be understood and refreshed. 'Pathways' concentrates on formation in listening, for mission, for discernment and for decision-making. 'Places' recognises distinctiveness of place and plurality of cultures (our way of doing things), contemporary aspects such as urbanisation and mobility as well as the digital world. It explores ways of fashioning structures and communications which reach across these places and indeed embraces others whether in shared Christian faith or in different expressions of hope and belief.

In welcoming this Instrumentum laboris, I invite all who are wanting to understand the work of this forthcoming and continuing Synod of Bishops, and all that will flow from it, to read this document carefully and joyfully. It will repay careful consideration and, in its detail, indicate how this process in the Church is maturing and deepening.

The School for Synodality has created a resource to support parish engagement with the Synthesis Report from the October 2023 Synod Assembly, breaking down the report into more manageable chunks with suggested questions for parish communities to reflect upon.

Throughout the process Cardinal Grech has emphasized the importance of fostering a continuous dialogue between the local Church and the synodal process throughout its many phases. The Synod secretariat has consistently encouraged parishes and dioceses to actively participate in each stage of the ongoing synodal journey.

In support of this effort, the School for Synodality, dedicated to promoting synodal practices at the grassroots level, has developed a resource aimed at facilitating parish engagement with the Synthesis Report of the October 2023 Synod Assembly held in Rome.

Crafted to reflect the extensive discussions held during the Rome Assembly, the Synthesis Report serves as an accurate representation of the synodal dialogue. However, unlike other documents, it may require a little more guidance for effective engagement at the local Church level.

To assist parishes in this endeavour, the School for Synodality has designed a structured process spanning three evenings. Parishes can select three themes from the document that are most pertinent to their pastoral ministry and use the provided questions to guide communal discernment during these sessions.

The resource can be found on the School for Synodality resource page here: www.schoolforsynodality.org.uk/resources

Women and the laity, diaconate, ministry and magisterium, peace and the climate, the poor and migrants, ecumenism and identity, new languages and renewed structures, old and new missions (including the 'digital' mission), listening to all and probing everything more deeply, even the most 'controversial' issues. In the Synthesis Report approved and published today by the 16th General Assembly of the Synod on Synodality, there is a renewed look at the world and the Church and their demands. After four weeks of work, which began on 4 October in the Paul VI Hall, the General Assembly concluded its first session today in the Vatican.

The document of some forty pages is the result of the work of the assembly that took place "while wars both old and new have raged in the world, with dramatic consequences that are impacting upon countless victims." The report continues, "The cry of the poor resounded among us, of those forced to migrate and of those suffering violence and the devastating consequences of climate change. We heard their cry not only through the media, but also through the voices of many present, who were personally involved in these tragic events whether through their families or their people" (Foreword).

To this challenge and many others, the universal Church has tried to offer a response in the Small Circles and in the interventions. Everything came together in the Synthesis Report, which is divided into a preface and three parts, and which traces the path for the work to be done in the second session in 2024.

Listening to all, beginning with victims of abuse
As in the Letter to the People of God, the synod assembly reaffirms an "openness to listening and accompanying all, including those who have suffered abuse and hurt in the Church", which "addressing the structural conditions that abetted such abuse, remains before us, and requires concrete gestures of penitence".

The face of a synodal Church
Synodality is a first step. It is a term that the participants in the Synod themselves admit is "a term unfamiliar to many members of the People of God, causing some people confusion and concern" (1 f), including fears of a departure from tradition, a debasement of the hierarchical nature of the Church (1 g), a loss of power or, on the contrary, immobility and a lack of courage for change. "Synodal" and "synodality" are instead terms that "speak of a mode of being Church that integrates communion, mission, and participation". So they indicate a way of living the Church, valuing differences and developing the active involvement of all. This begins with deacons, priests, and bishops: "A synodal Church cannot do without their voices" (1 n), we read. "We need an understanding of the reasons for resistance to synodality by some of them".

Mission
The document continues explaining that synodality goes hand in hand with mission. Hence, it is necessary that "Christian communities are to enter into solidarity with those of other religions, convictions and cultures, thus avoiding, on the one hand, the risk of self-referentiality and self-preservation, and on the other hand the risk of loss of identity" (2 e). In this new "pastoral style", it would seem important to many to make "liturgical language more accessible to the faithful and more embodied in the diversity of cultures" (3 l).

The poor at the centre
Ample space in the Report is devoted to the poor, who ask the Church for "love", understood as "respect, acceptance, and recognition" (4 a). "For the Church, the option for the poor and those at the margins is a theological category before being a cultural, sociological, political or philosophical category" (4 b), the document reiterates, identifying the poor not only as those who are materially impoverished, but also migrants; indigenous peoples; victims of violence and abuse (especially women), or racism and trafficking; people with addictions; minorities; abandoned elderly people; and exploited workers (4 c). Among "the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, on whose behalf constant advocacy is needed, [are] the unborn and their mothers", the document continues. "The Assembly hears the cry of the 'new poor', produced by wars and terrorism that plague many countries on several continents, and the assembly condemns the corrupt political and economic systems that cause such strife".

The most vulnerable of the vulnerable, for whom constant advocacy is needed, are the children in the womb and their mothers," reads the text of the Assembly, which says it is "aware of the cry of the 'new poor' produced by wars and terrorism also caused by 'corrupt political and economic systems'.

Commitment of believers in the field of politics and for the common good
In this sense, the Church is urged to be committed both to the "public denunciation of the injustices" perpetrated by individuals, governments, and companies; and to active engagement in politics, associations, trade unions, popular movements (4f and 4g). At the same time, the consolidated action of the Church in the fields of education, health, and social assistance, "without any discrimination or the exclusion of anyone", must not be neglected (4 k).

Migrants
There is also a focus on migrants and refugees, "many of whom bear the wounds of uprooting, war and violence". They "often become a source of renewal and enrichment for the communities that welcome them and an opportunity to establish direct links with geographically distant churches" (5 d). Faced with increasingly hostile attitudes towards them, the General Assembly says, "We are called to practice an open welcome, to accompany them in the construction of a new life and to build a true intercultural communion among peoples". Fundamental in this sense is "respect for the liturgical traditions and religious practices of migrants" as well as respect for their own language. For example, a word like "mission", in contexts where "the proclamation of the Gospel was associated with colonization, even genocide", is laden with "painful historical memories" and "hinders communion today" (5 e). "Evangelising in these contexts requires acknowledging mistakes made, learning a new sensitivity to these issues", the document states.

Combating racism and xenophobia
Equal commitment and care is required of the Church "to engage decisively in education, in the culture of dialogue and encounter, combating racism and xenophobia, especially through pastoral formation" (5 p). It is also urgent to identify "systems within the Church that create or maintain racial injustice" (5 q).

Eastern Churches
Remaining on the subject of migration, the Report looks to Eastern Europe and the recent conflicts that have caused the flow of numerous faithful from the Catholic East into territories with a Latin majority. It is necessary, the Assembly says, "for the local Latin-rite Churches, in the name of synodality, to help the Eastern faithful who have emigrated to preserve their identity and cultivate their specific heritage, without undergoing processes of assimilation is the request of the Fathers" (6c).

On the road to Christian unity
With regard to ecumenism, the Report speaks of a "spiritual renewal" that requires "processes of repentance and healing of the memory" (7c). It goes on to quote Pope Francis' expression about an "ecumenism of the blood"; that is "Christians of different affiliations who give their lives for faith in Jesus Christ" (7d), and it mentions the proposal for an ecumenical martyrology (7o). The Report also reiterates that "collaboration among all Christians" is a resource "for healing the culture of hatred, division and war that pits groups, peoples and nations against each other". It does not forget the issue of so-called mixed marriages, which are realities in which "it is possible to evangelize each other" (7 f).

Laity and families (Part II)
"Laymen and laywomen, those in consecrated life, and ordained ministers have equal dignity" (8b): this conviction is forcefully reiterated in the Synthesis Report, which recalls how the lay faithful are "increasingly present and active in service within Christian communities" (8e). Educators in the faith, theologians, formators, spiritual animators, and catechists, active in safeguarding and administration: their contributions are "indispensable to the mission of the Church" (8 e). The different charisms must therefore be "called forth, recognized and fully appreciated" (8 f), and not be ignored, underutilized, or "clericalised" (8 f).

Women in the life and mission of the Church
There is, then, a call for a strong commitment on the part of the Church to accompany and understand women in all aspects of their lives, including pastoral and sacramental ones. Women, it says, "cry out for justice in societies still marked by sexual violence, economic inequality and the tendency to treat them as objects" (9 c), adding "Pastoral accompaniment and vigorous advocacy for women should go hand in hand".

Clericalism
Many women present at the Synod "expressed deep gratitude for the work of priests and bishops", but "also spoke of a Church that wounds" (9 f). "Clericalism, a chauvinist mentality, and inappropriate expressions of authority continue to scar the face of the Church and damage its communion". A "profound spiritual conversion is needed as the foundation for any effective structural change"; and the General Assembly noted that "we desire to promote a Church in which men and women dialogue together… without subordination, exclusion, and competition" (9h).

Opening the diaconate to women?
Various opinions on opening the diaconate to women were acknowledged (9 j): for some, it is "unacceptable because they consider it a discontinuity with Tradition"; for others, it would restore a practice of the early Church; still others see it as "an appropriate and necessary response to the signs of the times … that would find an echo in the hearts of many who seek new energy and vitality in the Church". Then there are those who are concerned that opening the diaconate to women would involve "a worrying anthropological confusion, which, if granted, would marry the Church to the spirit of the age". Fathers and mothers of the Synod ask to continue "Theological and pastoral research on the access of women to the diaconate", making use of the results of the commissions specially set up by the Pope, as well as the theological, historical and exegetical research already carried out: "If possible", they say, "the results of this research should be presented at the next Session of the Assembly" (9 n).

Discrimination and abuse
In the meantime, the urgency of ensuring "that women can participate in decision-making processes and assume roles of responsibility in pastoral care and ministry" is reiterated, noting that canon law should be adapted accordingly (9m). Cases of employment discrimination and unfair remuneration must also be addressed, including those in the Church where consecrated women are often considered "cheap labour" (9 o). Similarly, women's access to theological education and training programmes must be expanded (9 p), including promoting the use of inclusive language in liturgical texts and Church documents (9 q).

Consecrated Life
Looking at the richness and variety of the different forms of consecrated life, the Report warns against the "persistence of an authoritarian style, which makes no room for dialogue". The Report notes, too, that "cases of abuse of various kinds experienced by those in religious life and members of lay associations, especially of women, signal a problem in the exercise of authority and demand decisive and appropriate interventions" (10 d).

Abuses
On the question of abuse, which "places many bishops in the difficult situation of having to reconcile the role of father with that of judge" (12 i), the Report supports the exploration of the "appropriateness of assigning the judicial task to another body, to be specified canonically" (12 i).

Formation (Part III)
A "synodal approach" is then requested for formation, with the recommendation that work be undertaken "on relationship and sexual education, to accompany young people as they mature in their personal and sexual identities and to support the maturation of those called to celibacy and consecrated chastity" (14 g). The Report emphasizes the importance of deepening "the dialogue between the human sciences" (14 h) so as to enable "careful consideration of matters that are controversial within the Church" (15 b) - that is, among other issues, matters "such as those relating to matters of identity and sexuality, the end of life, complicated marital situations, and ethical issues related to artificial intelligence". Issues such as these are controversial precisely "because they pose new questions" in society and in the Church (15 g). "It is important to take the time required for this reflection and to invest our best energies in it, without giving in to simplistic judgments that hurt individuals and the Body of the Church", the Report says, while recalling that "Church teaching already provides a sense of direction on many of these matters, but this teaching evidently still requires translation into pastoral practice".

Deacons and formation
The Assembly then expresses gratitude to ordained ministers, who are "called to live their service to the People of God in a disposition of proximity to people, welcoming and listening to all, while cultivating a deep personal spirituality and a life of prayer" (11b). The Report warns against clericalism, a "distortion of the priestly vocation" that "needs to be challenged from the earliest stages of formation" by ensuring "close contact" with the people and those in need (11 c). The request is also expressed, along these lines, that seminaries or other courses of formation of candidates for the ministry be linked to the daily life of communities (11 e), in order"to avoid the risks of formalism and ideology that lead to authoritarian attitudes, and impede genuine vocational growth".

Celibacy
Mention was made of the theme of celibacy, which received different evaluations during the assembly." Its value is appreciated by all as richly prophetic and a profound witness to Christ"; the Report says, while noting that some ask "whether its appropriateness, theologically, for priestly ministry should necessarily translate into a disciplinary obligation in the Latin Church, above all in ecclesial and cultural contexts that make it more difficult. This discussion is not new but requires further consideration".

Bishops
There is ample reflection on the figure and role of the bishop, who is called to be "an example of synodality" (12 c) by exercising "co-responsibility", understood as the involvement of other actors within the diocese and the clergy, so as to lighten the burden of "administrative and legal commitments" which can hinder his mission (12 e). Coupled with this, the bishop does not always find the human and spiritual support he needs, while "a certain sense of loneliness is not uncommon" (12 e).

Listening
With the same concern, the Report renews the invitation to hear and accompany "people who feel marginalized or excluded from the Church because of their marriage status, identity or sexuality". "There was a deep sense of love, mercy and compassion felt in the Assembly for those who are or feel hurt or neglected by the Church, who want a place to call 'home' where they can feel safe, be heard and respected, without fear of feeling judged", the document says, while insisting that "Christians must always show respect for the dignity of every person" (16 h).

Polygamy
In light of the experiences reported in the Synod hall by some members of the Synod from Africa, SECAM (Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar) is encouraged to promote "a theological and pastoral discernment" on the topic of polygamy and the accompaniment of people in polygamous unions who are coming to faith" (16 q)

Digital culture
Finally, the Synthesis Report speaks of the digital environment: "It is up to us to reach today's culture in all spaces where people seek meaning and love, including the spaces they enter through their cell phones and tablets" (17 c), bearing in mind that the internet "can also cause harm and injury, such as through intimidation, disinformation, sexual exploitation, and addiction". The Report adds, "There is an urgent need to consider how the Christian community can support families in ensuring that the online space is not only safe but also spiritually life-giving" (17 f).

Dear sisters, dear brothers,

As the proceedings of the first session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops draw to a close, we want to thank God with all of you for the beautiful and enriching experience we have lived. We lived this blessed time in profound communion with all of you. We were supported by your prayers, bearing with you your expectations, your questions, as well as your fears. As Pope Francis requested two years ago, a long process of listening and discernment was initiated, open to all the People of God, no one being excluded, to "journey together" under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, missionary disciples engaged in the following of Jesus Christ.

The session in which we have been gathered in Rome since 30 September is an important phase of this process. In many ways it has been an unprecedented experience. For the first time, at Pope Francis' invitation, men and women have been invited, in virtue of their baptism, to sit at the same table to take part, not only in the discussions, but also in the voting process of this Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. Together, in the complementarity of our vocations, our charisms and our ministries, we have listened intensely to the Word of God and the experience of others. Using the conversation in the Spirit method, we have humbly shared the wealth and poverty of our communities from every continent, seeking to discern what the Holy Spirit wants to say to the Church today. We have thus also experienced the importance of fostering mutual exchanges between the Latin tradition and the traditions of Eastern Christianity. The participation of fraternal delegates from other Churches and Ecclesial Communities deeply enriched our discussions.

Our assembly took place in the context of a world in crisis, whose wounds and scandalous inequalities resonated painfully in our hearts, infusing our work with a particular gravity, especially since some of us come from countries where war rages. We prayed for the victims of deadly violence, without forgetting all those who have been forced by misery and corruption to take the dangerous road of migration. We assured our solidarity and commitment alongside the women and men all over the world who are working to build justice and peace.

At the invitation of the Holy Father, we made significant room for silence to foster mutual listening and a desire for communion in the Spirit among us. During the opening ecumenical vigil, we experienced how the thirst for unity increases in the silent contemplation of the crucified Christ. In fact, the cross is the only cathedra of the One who, having given himself for the salvation of the world, entrusted His disciples to His Father, so that "they may all be one" (John 17:21). Firmly united in the hope brought by His Resurrection, we entrusted to Him our common home where the cries of the earth and the poor are becoming increasingly urgent: "Laudate Deum!" ("Praise God!"), as Pope Francis reminded us at the beginning of our work.

Day by day, we felt the pressing call to pastoral and missionary conversion. For the Church's vocation is to proclaim the Gospel not by focusing on itself, but by placing itself at the service of the infinite love with which God loved the world (cf. John 3:16). When homeless people near St. Peter's Square were asked about their expectations regarding the Church on the occasion of this synod, they replied: "Love!". This love must always remain the ardent heart of the Church, a Trinitarian and Eucharistic love, as the Pope recalled on October 15, midway through our assembly, invoking the message of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus. It is "trust" that gives us the audacity and inner freedom that we experienced, not hesitating to freely and humbly express our convergences, differences, desires and questions.

And now? We hope that the months leading to the second session in October 2024 will allow everyone to concretely participate in the dynamism of missionary communion indicated by the word "synod". This is not about ideology, but about an experience rooted in the apostolic tradition. As the Pope reminded us at the beginning of this process, "communion and mission can risk remaining somewhat abstract, unless we cultivate an ecclesial praxis that expresses the concreteness of synodality (...) encouraging real involvement on the part of each and all" (October 9, 2021). There are multiple challenges and numerous questions: the synthesis report of the first session will specify the points of agreement we have reached, highlight the open questions, and indicate how our work will proceed.

To progress in its discernment, the Church absolutely needs to listen to everyone, starting with the poorest. This requires a path of conversion on its part, which is also a path of praise: "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children" (Luke 10:21)! It means listening to those who have been denied the right to speak in society or who feel excluded, even by the Church; listening to people who are victims of racism in all its forms - in particular in some regions to indigenous peoples whose cultures have been scorned. Above all, the Church of our time has the duty to listen, in a spirit of conversion, to those who have been victims of abuse committed by members of the ecclesial body, and to commit herself concretely and structurally to ensuring that this does not happen again.

The Church also needs to listen to the laity, women and men, all called to holiness by virtue of their baptismal vocation: to the testimony of catechists, who in many situations are the first proclaimers of the Gospel; to the simplicity and vivacity of children, the enthusiasm of youth, to their questions, and their pleas; to the dreams, the wisdom and the memory of elderly people. The Church needs to listen to families, to their educational concerns, to the Christian witness they offer in today's world. She needs to welcome the voice of those who want to be involved in lay ministries and to participate in discernment and decision-making structures.

To progress further in synodal discernment, the Church particularly needs to gather even more the words and experience of the ordained ministers: priests, the primary collaborators of the bishops, whose sacramental ministry is indispensable for the life of the whole body; deacons, who, through their ministry, signify the care of the entire Church for the most vulnerable. She also needs to let herself be questioned by the prophetic voice of consecrated life, the watchful sentinel of the Spirit's call. She also needs to be attentive to all those who do not share her faith but are seeking the truth, and in whom the Spirit, who "offers everyone the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery" (Gaudium et Spes 22), is also present and operative.

"The world in which we live, and which we are called to love and serve, even with its contradictions, demands that the Church strengthen cooperation in all areas of her mission. It is precisely this path of synodality which God expects of the Church of the third millennium" (Pope Francis, October 17, 2015). We do not need to be afraid to respond to this call. Mary, Mother of the Church, the first on the journey, accompanies our pilgrimage. In joy and in sorrow, she shows us her Son and invites us to trust. And He, Jesus, is our only hope!

Vatican City, October 25, 2023

In a few days' time, we shall go home for eleven months. This will apparently be a time of empty waiting. But it will probably be the most fertile time of the whole Synod, the time of germination. As Jesus said: 'The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, yet he does not know how'.

We have listened to hundreds of thousands of words during these last three weeks. Sometimes we have thought: 'Too many words!' Most of these words have been positive, words of hope and aspiration. These are words sown in the soil of the Church. They will be at work in our lives, in our imagination and our subconscious, during these eleven months. When the moment is right, they will bear fruit.

The Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:

In spite of all the farmer's work and worry,
He can't reach down to where the seed is slowly
'Transmuted into summer'. The earth bestows.[1]

Although nothing may appear to be happening, we can be confident that if our words are loving they will bud, flower in the lives of people who we do not know. As St Therese of Lisieux said, quoted recently by the Holy Father: "C'est la confiance et rien que la confiance qui doit nous conduire à l'Amour". "It is confidence and nothing but confidence that must lead us to Love"[2].

These eleven months will be like a pregnancy. Abraham and Sarah are promised they will have descendants more numerous than the sand on the seashore. But nothing appears to happen. Sarah laughs when she hears this promise the third or fourth time, as she listens hidden in the tent to the strangers in Genesis 18. Probably a bitter-sweet laugh. She has heard it all before, and she remains barren. But in a year's time she will bear a child of laughter.

So we, my sisters, and my brothers, we are pregnant with new life. If you will forgive me, this reminds me of the first time I ever tried to make a speech in Spanish, in Latin America. A bishop got confused - which is very rare. He thought I was an Irish Franciscan instead of an English Dominican. I explained, he blushed, and I said, 'El obispo esta embarrazado'. I meant to say 'the bishop is embarrassed'. Unfortunately, it meant: 'The bishop is pregnant.'

This is a time of active waiting. Let me repeat the words of Simone Weil I quoted during the retreat. 'We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them…This way of waiting, looking is, in the first place, attentive. The soul empties itself of its own contents in order to receive the human being it is looking at, just as he or she is, in all their truth.'[3]

This is profoundly countercultural. The global culture of our time is often polarised, aggressive, dismissive of other people's views. The cry is: On whose side are you? When we go home, people will ask, 'Did you fight for our side? Did you oppose those unenlightened other people?' We shall need be profoundly prayerful to resist the temptation to succumb to a party-political way of thinking. That would be to fall back into the sterile, barren language of much of our conflictual society. It is not the synodal way. The synodal process is organic and ecological rather than competitive. It is more like planting a tree than winning a battle. Sometimes battles are unavoidable. Think of Saint Athanasius. But as such will be hard for many to understand what we are doing, sometimes including ourselves!

But if we keep our minds and our hearts open to the people whom we have met here, vulnerable to their hopes and fears, their words will germinate in our lives, and ours in theirs. And there will an abundant harvest, a fuller truth, the Church will be renewed.

Humanity's first vocation in Paradise was to be gardeners. Adam tended creation, speaking God's creative words, naming the animals. We shall have some gardening to do in these eleven months, my brothers and sisters to nurture the tender plant that is the Synod. Will we speak fertile, hope-filled words, or words that are destructive and cynical? Will our words nurture the crop or be poisonous? Will we be the gardeners of the future or trapped in old sterile conflicts? We each choose.

St Paul said to the Ephesians: 'Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear' (4.9).

So: 'Participation, government and authority: What processes, structures and institutions are needed in a missionary synodal Church?'

Luke, whose feast we celebrate today, tells us in Acts 15 about the so-called Council of Jerusalem called to face the first great crisis of the Church after Pentecost. The Church is profoundly fractured. First, between the Jerusalem Church and Paul, with his gospel of freedom from the law; Within the Jerusalem Church the convert Pharisees are divided from the rest, and the apostles led by Peter are probably divided from the 'elders' who looked to James, the brother of the Lord. So the Church faced a crisis of identity which exceeds anything we can imagine today.

Pope Francis said at Lisbon this summer, 'a life without crisis is an aseptic life… a life without crisis is like stagnant water, it's not good for anything, it doesn't taste of anything.[1]' We mature through crises, from the crisis of our birth to the crisis of death. If we embrace crises in hope, we shall flourish. If we try to avoid them, we never grow up. My American brethren gave me a T shirt which said, 'Have a good crisis!'

We read that: 'the apostles and the elders gathered together to consider this matter' (Acts 15.6) The Church is always being gathered, as we are today in Synod. In the Third Eucharistic prayer, we say, 'You never cease to gather a people to yourself so that from the rising of the sun to its setting a perfect sacrifice may be offered to your name.' The Greek word for the Church, ekklesia, means 'gathering'. Are we willing to be gathered together, not just physically, but our hearts and minds too? Gazing at Jerusalem before his death, Jesus said, 'How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wing, but you were not willing.' (Luke 13.24). Are we willing to be drawn beyond mutual incomprehension and suspicion? Or shall we be like the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son who stands on the edge, refusing to be gathered into the joy of his brother's return?

The disciples gathered in Jerusalem so as to be sent out to Antioch and the whole world. We are gathered in the Eucharist so as to be sent out. This is the breathing of the Holy Spirit in our lungs, gathering us in and sending us out, oxygenating the life blood of the Church. We are gathered in to discover peace with each other and sent out to proclaim it to our poor world, crucified by ever more violence, in Ukraine, the Holy Land, Myanmar, Sudan, and so many other places. How can we be a sign of peace if we are divided among ourselves?

The Council of Jerusalem gathered 'in the name of Jesus', as we are too. In the Synod we pray every day: 'We stand before you, Holy Spirit, as we gather in your name.' To be gathered in the name of the Lord means in the sure confidence that God's grace is powerfully at work within us. Peter said to the lame man by the Temple gate: 'I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, [rise and] walk." (Acts 3.6). Often people have told me: 'This Synod will not change anything.' Some with hope and some with fear. That is a lack of faith in the name of the Lord, 'the name which is above every name' (Philippians 2.9). An ancient hymn begins 'I bind unto myself today, the strong name of the Trinity.' If we are gathered in the strong name of the Trinity, the Church will be renewed, though maybe in ways that are not immediately obvious. This is not optimism but our Apostolic faith.

My first great teacher was a Sri Lankan Dominican, Cornelius Ernst. He wrote of the power of God's grace to make new. I quote: 'It is dawn, discovery, spring, new birth, coming to the light, awakening, transcendence, liberation, ecstasy, bridal consent, gift, forgiveness, reconciliation, revolution, faith, hope, love…. it is the power to transform and renew all things: "Behold I make all things new" (Apoc. 21.5)[2]' The Church is always new, like God, the Ancient of Days and the new born child.

The disciples gather because they saw that God was already doing something new. God had gone before them. They had to catch up with the Holy Spirit. Peter proclaims that 'God, who knows the human heart, testified to [the Gentiles] by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us,' (Acts 15. 8).

This was surely hardest for St James, the brother of the Lord, to accept. His identity was founded a blood relationship with the Lord. It is marvellous that he is the one who proclaims this new identity. 'It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.' What courage and faith it must have taken to say 'us', an identity which gathers in all of the divided Church. He still calls Peter by his old family name, 'Symeon.' He is awakening only slowly to this new identity, a Church of Jews and Gentiles. It took time as it does for us.

During the civil war in Burundi, I toured the country with two of my brothers, a Hutu and a Tutsi. At night the three of us celebrated the Eucharist together. One Englishman and two Africans, a Hutu and a Tutsi: A new sense of 'we'. We received in it the Eucharist before we grasped it in our minds and hearts.

Today our God is already bringing into existence a Church which is no longer primarily Western: a Church which is Eastern Catholic, and Asian and African and Latin American. It is a Church in which already women are assuming responsibility and are renewing our theology and spirituality. Already young people all over the world, as we saw at Lisbon, are taking us in new directions, into the Digital Continent. In the Preface for Holy Men and Women, we thank God because 'you renew the Church in every age by raising up men and women outstanding in holiness'. They are already among us. We rightly ask: What shall we do? An even more fundamental question is: What is God doing? Do we accept God's gracious newness? Can you believe it, some Dominicans even opposed St Ignatius of Loyala! Nostra culpa.

Fascinatingly, James can only understand the new as a rebuilding of the old. He quotes Amos: 'After this I will return, and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen; from its ruins I will rebuild it, and I will set it up, so that all other peoples may seek the Lord- even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called.' The new is always an unexpected renewal of the old. This is why any opposition between tradition and progress is utterly alien to Catholicism.

Now we shall consider what new processes, institutions and structures are needed. These will not be solutions to management problems but fuller expressions of who we are. The history of the Church is of endless institutional creativity. After Christianity became a recognised religion of the Roman Empire, new forms of Christian life emerged in the desert fathers and mothers, to counterbalance the new dangers of wealth. In the thirteenth century, new Universities emerged to sustain a new vision of what it is to be human. During the Industrial Revolution, hundreds of news forms of religious life sprang into being, to express who we are as brothers and sisters of the new urban poor.

What institutions do we need to express who we are as men and women of peace in an age of violence, inhabitants of the Digital Continent? Every baptised person is a prophet. How do we recognise and embrace the role of prophecy in the Church today[3]? What about the prophetic voice of women, still often seen as 'guests in their own house'[4]?

Finally, the Council of Jerusalem lifted unnecessary burdens from the Gentiles. 'For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things'(verse 28). They are freed from an identity given by the old Law.

How shall we lift burdens from the weary shoulders of our brothers and sisters today who often feel ill at ease in the Church? It will not be through anything as dramatic as abolishing the Law. Nor will it be through such a fundamental shift in our identity as the admission of the Gentiles.

But we are called to embrace a deeper sense of who we are as the improbable friends of the Lord, whose scandalous friendship reaches across every boundary. Many of us wept when we heard of that young woman who committed suicide because she was bisexual and did not feel welcomed. I hope it changed us. The Holy Father reminded us that all are welcomed: todos, todos, todos.

A man was lost in Ireland. He asked a farmer, 'How do I get to Dublin?' The farmer replied, 'If I wanted to go to Dublin, I would not start here.' But wherever people are, that is where the journey home starts, the home of the Church and the home of the Kingdom.

1.- Foreword

"What are these conversations you are making among yourselves on the way?" (Lk 24:17). Reaching the two disciples conversing with each other, Jesus, starting with the question ("what are these conversations?") and the consequent pause over the Scriptures, and the breaking of the bread, turns their walk into a "U". Our discourses are now at a decisive point, a certain conversion has taken place, we have to account for it. The Word of God, heard and combined with the events around us, presses in and gives us light. The Church, the believing conscience of each member, is shaken today. While wars rage around us, we have enjoyed the spiritual conversation, listened to so many octants, so many imperatives, attempts to read reality, complex, disturbing, ...: what can we say? It is, again, time to lift our gaze to the inspiring light of the Gospel. The Gospel does not produce solutions but reveals the dynamism, always surprising, of the Spirit, which gives fulfilment.

Well, from the place where I had the grace to be, on the margins of the Synod and in prayer, with Father Timothy we were drawn to this Gospel. The two little parables in c. 4 of Mark, the identity card of the Kingdom, are one of the sacred places of the revelation of Jesus' own, and of how Jesus sees his church as the servant of the Kingdom - light is shed on the synod's journey as well.

2.- The question is intriguing

"To what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we make use of?": Jesus begins with a double question. As if to engage his interlocutor - today, the question bounces around this holy assembly - in his quest to propose to God's people, and beyond, a summary of the journey.

Jesus has already told so many parables, "the beauty of his revelation is that he spoke to us of God and man together, one in the other. This is why "Jesus' revelation is parabolic, and such must be Christian existence" (B. Maggioni). For this reason, Jesus here draws the hearers into his narrative art. And the question concerns us profoundly today. The kingdom of God must always be announced "in a parable", that is, at a point of conjunction between its presence and our experience, otherwise its transcendent mystery sounds foreign. A point of conjunction symbolically indicative, not conclusive.

So how can we say today the mystery of the Kingdom, of the surprising and dramatic growth, narrating these days of the synodal journey, with words of flesh?

3. - As a sown seed, fallen into the earth

The point of the parable is the contrast. Tremendous seed - great hospitable plant. It gives us an insight into how Jesus sees his own history, and that of the church; and what his style is. The image of the seed is dear to him, he takes it up again and again: even and precisely at the final hour, before the Greeks who ask to see: "If the grain of wheat that falls into the earth does not die, it remains alone; if it dies, it bears much fruit (...) where I am, there will my disciple be also" (Jn 12:24). There the image will have all its paschal light. It is a light: the secret of the grain that is cast, delivered, mixed with the earth until it dies, becomes a hospitable plant. We are called to grasp the inspiring scope of the image. It is a mystery of generation, of gratuitous covenant. The great challenge of God, lover of humans.

Jesus, as the Son fully surrendered to the will of the Father, fully trusting in the power of the One who sent him into the world, elaborates here his own kenosis in the earth, paradoxically discerns the signs of what might appear to be a failure, and offers his church the insight to discern the signs of the Kingdom.

In this way, he prevents the paradox of the Kingdom from being diluted into a mystifying understanding - which so seduces the disciples, always - before the cross offers the final and decisive interpretative sign. It is in Jesus' ultimate delivery, in the Eucharist celebrated in the middle of the night, that the Church, clinging to that "blessed arbor", grows and branches out. And it protrudes in new branches, with each sudden flock of birds seeking shade, seeking a nest for new generations.

And so, we are provoked to weave our parabolic narrative, to mature Gospel response to the challenges, the poverty, the disorientation of today.

4. - Grasping the revelatory and performing power of the parable

It takes a lot of silence, and true humility, to grasp the dynamis of the Word in oneself and in the church and make room for it. The surprising sense of the small as the bearer of the future marks the style of Jesus. It says the tastes of God. The Kingdom of God comes like this. Jesus sees himself in the lowest and naked and despicable seed, inapparent, abject, without beauty, alone (until it dies), inert in appearance, rotting - through the handing over to the earth - it comes alive in an unpredictable, unstoppable, hospitable dynamism. And in the dynamism of the handing over to the earth, it gives rise to the Kingdom. And it becomes a shelter so that in its shadow all the birds of the air may find rest and a place to nest.

Contrast and continuity between the humility of the starting point (the seed) and the greatness of the finishing point (the tree) also mark the experience of faith: this must surprise us again today. We have perceived it, in the many speeches in the hall. And from the Gospel we receive the thread of meaning.

The parable thus gives us the language to interpret the itinerary of this month of sowing. Today - in a culture of striving for supremacy, profit and followers, or evasion - the patient sowing of this synod is, in itself, like a profoundly subversive and revolutionary act. In the logic of the smallest of seeds sinking into the ground. Thus, the synod seems to me to find itself called to dare a synthesis-as-sowing, to open up a path towards reform - new form -, which life requires.

It is a matter of seizing - among the many words heard - "the smallest", full of the future, and daring to imagine how to deliver it to the earth that will make it mature and become a hospitable place: "With what parable shall we tell?"

"How shall it come to pass?" wondered Mary of Nazareth (Lk. 1:33, 37). And she, overshadowed by the Spirit, learns this art from her own womb, and sings her impossible parable in the Magnificat. And she teaches us how even a little one, the little girl from Galilee, can harmonize with the power of the Spirit and read history. To propose bold visions. To pose prophetic gestures. Without protections of the powerful and the rich.

It is from the Spirit, the art of grasping and narrating unprecedented similarities between the Kingdom of God and the simplest, most minimal, fragile and vital, realities of the earth, similarities that open up the future.

And here, what similarities do we trace, in the conversations of these blessed days, and how do we tell them? The daily history of churches is full of parables, which await narration with our gaze fixed on the eyes of Jesus. In each church story we are called to recognize the Christological form of smallness and the Christological form of transformation fully revealed in the cross, "high arbor." Hospitable greatness matured through descent into the earth, free, loving surrender.

In contrast, the stories being told today draw thread of meaning from the clichés of a homogenized culture, or from melancholy miracle fictions, or conversely from disconsolate Godot reruns.

Much silence and true humility are needed.

The formation of the conscience of the baptized

God is transforming the world, healing wounds and forgiving and overcoming our failures, visibly placing himself -- as "the least of these" -- alongside the processes of the world and within those processes. The question is to see it, and to create, and nurture, concrete narratives of it. "In the earth": place of non-appearance, darkness of roots, place of promising gestation. Humanity tempted by the post-human. There is a Kingdom service that requires discerning, trusting patience. And shrewd care.

The parable forcefully calls us to take seriously that "least one" who is man (Ps. 8), who harbors a transcendent generative force. Root work must mature from the formation of consciousness. The smallest is - in Jesus - every baptized person, who, however, is called to enter into synergy with the surprising dynamism of the sown seed. Which means decisively disassociating pastoral work from any statistical, efficientistic, procedural perspective erected as a system. Focusing on the formation of the conscience of the baptized. In a world saturated with hybris, tempted by the post-human.

I pray that this Synod will receive the art of new narratives, the radical humility of those who learn to recognize the likeness of the Kingdom in the truest, most vital dynamisms of the human, of the primary bonds, of the life that pulses mysteriously in all the worlds and spheres of human existence, in an admirable hidden harmony. With such patience. The ability to peer into the night.

Wishing you good final work: in the telling of new parables that give to think, grow, hope, walk - together.

“And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.” Luke 24:8

“Co-responsibility in Mission: towards a shared awareness of the meaning and content. How can we better share gifts and tasks in the service of the Gospel. How can the Church of our time better fulfil its mission through greater recognition and promotion of the baptismal dignity of women? It is not a question of promotion and recognition in the worldly sense, of rights and desires, but of the well-being of the Church. In fidelity to the Origin, who is Jesus, His style, His words, His silences, His choices.”

The Gospel is inspiring: in these days of the Synod too, beginning first and foremost with the Eucharist. Celebrating in faith is the generative womb of every reform in the Church. And so, today’s reading (inseparable from tomorrow’s), at a critical point in Jesus’ communication with the crowd, in the midst of the conflict of interpretations, introduces - interwoven with Jesus’ words - (“as Jesus said these things, ...”), the cry of a woman. The cry of a woman from the crowd who is touched by Jesus’ revelation is disruptive and inspired - because she does not know, perhaps using a popular saying, that she is proclaiming the “beatitude of the womb.” It corresponds admirably to the blessing proclaimed at the beginning of the Gospel by another woman, also in response to the sign picked up from the womb (Lk 1:45: “Blessed is the fruit of your womb...!”), “Blessed is the womb...!” she says. The anonymous woman in the crowd senses that in that man, the Rabbi of Nazareth who makes the one who was possessed by a mute demon speak, that the generation of all life is at stake. She intuits the original mystery of generation that is revealed in him. She perceives, she cries out, but she does not know what to say, and so implicitly invokes what prompted her intuition.

And, picking up on her visceral intuition, Jesus develops it by transforming it and decoding its irruption, thus resolving the conflict of interpretations that were besieging him. He develops what is only a cry, questioning astonishment: in the humanity of Jesus, God speaks, and that human person generated from the womb is involved in his mystery.

“It is not flesh or blood” (cf. Mt 16:17; cf. Lk 8:21), he had already told Simon – to another cry of faith. Without refuting the woman of the people, he corrects her, deriving the truth and thus silencing the insinuation of his adversaries: to him, beatitude is found in listening, welcoming, and creativity. To listen, to understand, to give flesh to the Word: the Word that was generated in the beginning.

Thus, the lightning-quick dialogue between Jesus and the anonymous woman in the crowd is full of symbolic, inspiring power. And, from there, from this humble prophetic voice – welcomed and deconstructed, or rather re-expressed – Jesus can resume his painful journey to Jerusalem, amidst insidious suspicions and the wonder of the little ones.

It is somewhat similar to what happened at Cana, with the cry of the mother which Jesus questions and transforms: “They have no wine” (or with the Samaritan woman, or with the Canaanite woman, or with Mary of Magdala).

This Gospel, from its luminous margins, powerfully evangelises the questioning gathering of this Synod on the theme of mission and how to recognise different expressions of ministries. That anonymous woman’s cry, in its humility, exorcises verbalism and proceduralism. It raises fruitful questions and clears the way: “Those who hears the Word and keep it.”

And light, in a convergent sense, seems to me to come if we compare this Gospel reading with the account of that critical passage of the apostolic church (Acts 16) in which, in the disorientation of the missionaries’ plans, traversed by the irruption of the Spirit, the Gospel enters Europe. And it opens the mission to unprecedented fruitfulness, thanks to the humble, generative contribution of women. Are they merely extras? No, simply “grasped by the Word,” they open unseen spaces to the Gospel.

The Council of Jerusalem had just taken place (Acts 15), the ways of the Gospel began to radiate beyond the land of Israel, not without encountering obstacles on the path. Immediately, following the first missionary journey, bitter disagreements arose between Paul and Barnabas, though they were close friends. A controversial discernment over the presence of young Mark led to a parting of their ways (Acts 15:36-40). We must imagine a process of struggling to understand. Difference - even to the point of conflict – however necessary and fruitful in the Church, nevertheless differs from quarrelsome and poisoned contention, because it never demonises the opponent, but makes room for him. Having separated paths, Paul and his co-workers [1] later face unforeseen obstacles or rather, as the book of Acts expresses it, “the Holy Spirit forbade them to proclaim the word in Asia” (Acts 16:6). Pope Francis reminded us in the opening homily of this Synodal Assembly, “So many missionary plans that end up in what appear to be blind alleys are in reality the crisis that opens new visions of Church.”

At Troas, a port, the point of departure to reach Europe, Paul has a vision: a Macedonian who pleads with him, saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” The pagan’s cry hijacks and converts Paul's plans. This is not the first time this change of itinerary is caused by a Breath from above. The dream, the passivity and restlessness of the dream, of the startling vision, opens totally new vistas. It leads to conflicts, it opens horizons. Thus begins the second missionary journey - starting from disorienting premises.

And so, the Church arrives in Europe, and it does so in a surprising, new form: starting from the margins, from the banks of the river, just outside a wealthy Roman city. “Women had gathered there for prayer.” Strangely, Paul was welcomed by a liturgy outside the ritual, among women, in the open air. The apostle did not start here, as was his custom, in the synagogue (one probably did not exist in Philippi, a Roman colony). He inserted himself into a “non ritual” female liturgy, breaking into it with the word of the Gospel.

As on Easter morning, so too this beginning/threshold is without men. The apostle is preceded, and welcomed, by the unusual koinonia of women praying, under the open sky. Here Paul approaches, with his passion for the Gospel.

Thus began the course of the Gospel in Europe. In Philippi, mission emerged from a well-defined territory, and found new spaces. New languages inaugurated by women, whom Paul does not disdain, whom he rather gathered as a kairos: he preached to them, entered into dialogue. Lydia, humble worshipper of God and a seller of purple cloth, would become the first believer in the land of Europe.

Lydia is identified by her essence as a “hearer” of the Word, in dialogical, free and creative docility. she keeps the Word by seeking recognition from the apostle, offering hospitality: “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come”: a splendid inclusiveness of gifts that generates the Church. The apostle’s power of discernment before the simple openness of a heart opens new vistas for mission.

And so, Lydia offers her home to the apostles, “prevailing on” them to accept (16:15). On this threshold, the Church in Europe is born, through a gesture that emerges as a way of putting into practice the faith (“if you have judged me to be a believer”), and offers the space of her domus (“come to my house and stay”).

Lydia's house is thus redefined by the irruption of the Gospel. As Jesus had done and commanded: whatever city you enter, find a home (cf. Mt 10:11). Space constructed by bondsrather than walls. The basic ecclesial space, the “domus” that today powerfully begs to be rediscovered and articulated in new languages, according to its original wisdom.

The birth of a church in Europe evokes the original story. It recalls the novelty – how much is this grasped and understood today? – inaugurated by Jesus with those women who followed him, supporting his ministry out of their means (it is Luke again who tells us this: Lk 8:1-3): all the way to the cross, to the open tomb, and to the garden. On the third day...

The movement originated by the Gospel, and the soul of every true synodal journey, generates new, generative relationships. And the contribution of women, who are extremely diverse among themselves, (the woman of the people, the businesswoman of Cyrene...), unceasingly fuels the spiritual dynamism of reform, when the pattern becomes inadequate to the mystery it conveys. Vatican II inaugurated a reform movement that has been interrupted.

In the light of the Beginnings, Jesus’ style – that seems to comprehend that women are dynamic elements of mission, like a presence that in critical, disruptive, unsettling passages - senses the movement of life, weaves new, improbable relationships, patiently brings and dissolves conflicts. It is not a question of rights but of gifts received.

For mission, therefore, there are different diakonias. In each case, an “outgoing” synodal Church, in the beginning as today, immediately encounters the presence of women, various and diverse women, not to be homologated - to be discerned (“if you have judged me to be...”), certainly, and to be integrated based on the particularity of each one. This is the evidence of the Word. The element inscribed in generative roots, as a constitutive trait of evangelical newness, disregarded for centuries. Jesus was innovative, he created a daring and revelatory style, in his way of relating to women, but this peculiarity finds provocative validation in the current climate. Today we find ourselves in the concrete situation of realising that this relates to us – it relates to the Church that seeks reform.

To go forth and proclaim the coming of the Kingdom, Jesus says “the home” is indispensable in his discourses on the mission (Lk 10:5-8; Mt 10:11-14). It is understood as a place of reliable, nurturing bonds. A place of prayer, on the margins.

Thus, when the Council in outlining the missionary Church states, “...the contemplative life belongs to the fullness of the Church's presence” (Ad Gentes, 18), does this not echo this same trait, does it not outline unprecedented ministries?

Let us ask ourselves where this constitutive trait in Gospel novelty related to Jesus’ style has ended up today, given the first proclamation of the resurrection to the apostles was entrusted to a woman. And the first Christian community, with the company of the Apostles has Mary, his Mother, at its center.

This question begs to be asked: how does Jesus’ style – certainly in a radically changed cultural, anthropological, and social context – connote mission, in a global culture that seems to be losing its contours, roots, and differences? In particular, how does it ferment, with the generative power of inclusive relationships, and its places, its language of celebration, and of the outbound Church?

The beginning of the evangelising mission in Europe offers food for thought.

And to those whose hearts are sensitive to his visitation, the Spirit unveils ways and languages to give him flesh.

[1] Here, among other things, the Acts narrative (16:10) begins to be offered in the first-person plural, to the “we,” with which Luke enters on tiptoe as the lead narrator (already in Acts 11:27). This change of narrative point of view, with which Luke enters Europe alongside the Apostle, gives greater emphasis on the "synodal" character of the second missionary journey – “never without the other.”

The Instrumentum laboris places the theme of Co-responsibility in the mission at the center of discernment (B.2). It refers to the exchange between the churches considering communion (IL 35) and mission (IL 22, 41). It inspires a question prior to the five questions: How to share gifts and tasks in the service of the Gospel? This theological reflection contemplates the intrinsic union between synodality and mission (1); the co-responsibility of the baptized (2); the exchange in the service of the Gospel (3).

1. The synodal Church is missionary. The missionary Church is synodal.

1. The Episcopalis Communio Constitution highlights the evangelizing purpose of the Synod.

   "Today, in a historical moment where the Church is embarking on 'a new evangelizing stage' [EG 1], which asks it to establish itself in 'a permanent state of mission' in all regions of the earth [EG 25], the Synod of Bishops, like any other ecclesiastical institution, is increasingly called to be a 'suitable channel for the evangelization of today's world rather than for self-preservation' [EG 27]."[1]

2. The Church, like the Trinity and the Eucharist, is a mystery of missionary communion. The Synod dedicated to young people developed the integrating expression missionary synodality[2]. It creatively embraced the document from the International Theological Commission on synodality, which asserts:

"In the Church, synodality is lived in service to the mission. 'The pilgrim Church is missionary by its very nature' (Ecclesia peregrinans natura sua missionaria est) (AG 2), 'it exists to evangelize' (EN 14). The entire People of God is the subject of the Gospel announcement. In it, every baptized person is called to be a protagonist of the mission because we are all missionary disciples" (SIN 53).[3]

The text cites the conciliar decree Ad gentes: "The pilgrim Church is missionary by nature" (AG 2) and Paul VI's exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi: "the Church exists to evangelize" (EN 14).

3. When opening this synodal process, the Bishop of Rome condensed the main lines of the Council.[4] The Preparatory Document for this Assembly identifies the synodal Church and the outgoing Church (DP 15). The Praedicate Evangelium Constitution points out the link between synodality and mission (PE 4)[5]. The Document for the Continental Stage states that synodality leads to missionary renewal.[6] The text of the Ecclesial Assembly of Latin America and the Caribbean says: "The Church on the way, pilgrim towards the full Kingdom, is missionary because it is synodal and is synodal because it is missionary".[7] The Instrumentum laborisstates: "The mission constitutes the dynamic horizon from which to think of the synodal Church, to which it gives a push towards 'ecstasy', which consists of going out of oneself" (IL 51).

4. The Second Vatican Council developed the expression natura missionaria to say that the mission is essential.[8] It arises "from the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit, according to God the Father's design" (AG 2). A dynamic ecclesiology asserts not only that the Church has a mission, but that the mission of the Triune God has a Church.[9] The pilgrim Church is historical - eschatological. We are on the way, we are missionary synodals, we go together announcing the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. Synodality is missionary, mission is synodal. The phrase "missionary synodal Church" (IL 54) reinforces the ecclesial nature and the dynamics of the sending: "Go and make all peoples my disciples" (Mt 28,19).

2. The co-responsability of all the baptized in mission

1. Jesus promised the apostles, "But you will receive power when the holy Spirit comes upon you,g and you will be my witnesses… to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8). The Spirit is the primary agent of evangelization (EN 75). The meeting held in Jerusalem is a model of synodal life in service of the mission (cf. Acts 15:1-35). The discernment carried out under the guidance of the Spirit confirmed the universal vocation of the People that God forms in and from the nations of the earth (Acts 15:14).

2. The Spirit distributes "individually to each person as he wishes" (1 Cor 12:11). "To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit" (1 Cor 12:7). The baptized, both men and women, are called to share gifts and tasks in each local church – diocese or eparchy –, in groupings of particular churches at the regional, national, and continental level, and in the entire Church.

3. Following Vatican II and Pope Paul VI, Pope Francis teaches that the entire People of God proclaim the Gospel (EG 111-134; cf. AG 35, EN 59).[10] What belongs to the entire People of God pertains to everyone in the People of God. The movement goes from "us" to "I": the Church is the communal subject of the mission, and within it, each one is called to evangelize. Every Christian can say, "woe to me if I do not preach it [the Gospel]!" (1 Cor 9:16) and "I am a mission" (EG 273). We are a mission, "we are always missionary disciples" (EG 119-121), and that's why today we reflect on the mission (B.2.1).

4. Baptism and faith establish the universal vocation to holiness and mission. Every Christian is called to the fullness of love and to proclaim the Gospel. Intensifying co-responsibility should help us see how lay charisms enrich Christian communities and improve the lives of the poor; how to recreate bonds of mutuality, reciprocity, and complementarity between men and women; how to recognize and promote the dignity of women in the Church (B.2.2-3).

5. Discussion will center on the exchange between individuals, communities, institutions, and movements in the local church; and on the difficulties of articulating the laity, consecrated life, and ordained ministry in a ministerial Church (B.2.2). There are various types of ministries and ministers rooted in Baptism. Stable ones: mothers and fathers; spontaneous ones: popular prayers; recognized ones: Caritas volunteers or liturgical singers; instituted ones: lay catechists. There are new ones: my father was a listening minister in his parish. The ordained ministries in a missionary key will also be analyzed (B.2.4; B.2.5). We can all advance in pastoral conversion.

3. The exchange of gifts and tasks in service to the Gospel

1. When addressing catholicity, the Lumen Gentium Constitution refers to cultural riches and ecclesiastical diversities. In this context, it considers the exchange between the churches. "Between all the parts of the Church there remains a bond of close communion (vincula intimae communionis) whereby they share spiritual riches, apostolic workers and temporal resources. For the members of the people of God are called to share these goods in common (ad communicandum enim bona), and of each of the Churches the words of the Apostle hold good: ‘According to the gift that each has received, administer it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God’.(123)" (LG 13c).

2. Grace causes the evangelized to become an evangelizer and the disciple to become a missionary. Ancient churches transmit faith and form new churches that, when growing, give from their poverty and become sister churches. Many immigrants become spontaneous missionaries and help invigorate the faith. They bring not only their poverty, needs, and sins but also their riches, values, virtues, and especially their faith, which can offer a valuable evangelizing contribution.

3. The communion of goods belongs to the lifestyle reflected in the summaries of Acts: "They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life (koinonía), to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers... All who believed were together and had all things in common they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s need..." (Acts 2:42-47). The Council calls things that are shared dona et bona. Lumen gentium 13 mentions three groups of goods: spiritual riches (divitias espirituales), apostolic workers (operarios apostolicos), and material resources (temporalia subsidia). All together form God's multiform grace.

4. Among spiritual riches are God's self-communication, the Body of Christ, the life of the Spirit, the Word, grace, and the Church. These goods establish the communio sanctorum. This Creed formula has two interconnected meanings: communion among holy people (sancti) and in holy things (sancta)[11]. The Eucharist is communion and participation. "Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf" (1 Cor 10:17). Spiritual riches include the treasures of the People of God: revelation, charity, holiness, wisdom, liturgy, spirituality, culture, art, the kerygma, theology, etc.

5. The apostolic worker is the evangelized evangelizer. The first good they share is their person because love is self-giving. St. Paul says: "So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us" (1 Thess 2:8). Talents are gifts to mature for others (Mt 23:14-30). Time is the life we give as workers of the first or last hour (Mt 20:1-16).

6. " The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common" (Acts 4:32). If we share spiritual gifts, how can we not communicate material goods? “If they have decided to make some contribution for the poor among the holy ones in Jerusalem, they decided to do it, and in fact they are indebted to them, for if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to serve them in material blessings." (Rom 15:26-27). At the Aparecida Conference, the directors of Adveniat and Misereor, who help our churches greatly, thanked us for the vitality of faith and love for the poor.

7. How to share gifts and tasks? "Give freely what you have received freely" (Mt 10:8). The mission serves the gift of encountering Christ through overflow, testimony, proclamation, and attraction.

God's love is much more (pollô mallon) than sin: "For if by that one person’s transgression the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one person Jesus Christ overflow for the many" (Rom 5:15). Paul modified the verb "to abound" (perisseuo), added the prefix "super" (hyper), creating the verb "to superabound". "Where sin increased, grace superabounded" (Rom 5:17). The logic of "much more" generates hope.[12]

With that hope, I desire that, by the action of the Spirit, wherever communion abounds, synodality may superabound and wherever synodality abounds, mission may superabound.

The disciples see the glory of the Lord and the witness of Moses and Elijah. Now they dare to come down the mountain and walk to Jerusalem. In today's gospel (Luke 9. 51 - 56) we see them on the way. They encounter the Samaritans who oppose them because they are going to Jerusalem.

The immediate reaction of the disciples is the call down fire from heaven and destroy them. Well, they have just seen Elijah and this is what he did to the prophets of Ba'al! But the Lord rebukes them.

They still have not understood the journey on which the Lord is leading them.

During the next three weeks, we may be tempted to call down fire from heaven on those with whom we disagree! Our society is filled with burning rage. the Lord summons us to banish such destructive urges from our meeting.

This pervasive rage springs from fear, but we need not be afraid. The Lord has promised the Holy Spirit who will guide us into all truth. On the night before he died, Jesus said, 'I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.' (John 16. 12 - 13).

Whatever conflicts we have on the way, we are sure of this: the Spirit of truth is leading us into all truth. But this will not be easy. Jesus warns the disciples: 'I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.' Peter at Caesarea Philippi could not bear to hear that Jesus must suffer and die. On this last evening before the death of Jesus, Peter could not bear the truth that he would deny Jesus. Being led into the truth means hearing things that are unpalatable.

What are the truths we today find it hard to face? It has been deeply painful to face the extent of sexual abuse and corruption in the Church. It has seemed like a nightmare from which one hopes to awake. But if we dare to face this shameful truth, the truth will set us free. Jesus promises that 'you will have pain, but your pain will turn to joy' (v.20), as in the labour pains of a woman giving birth. These days of the Synod will sometimes be painful, but if we let ourselves be guided by the Spirit, these will be the birth pangs of a reborn Church.

This is our witness to a society that also flees from the truth. The poet T. S. Eliot said, 'Human Kind cannot bear very much reality[1]'. We are careering towards an ecological catastrophe but our political leaders mostly pretend that nothing is happening. Our world is crucified by poverty and violence, but the wealthy countries do not want to see the millions of our brothers and sisters who suffer and look for a home.

Western society is afraid to face the truth that we are vulnerable mortal beings, flesh and blood men and women. We flee the truth of our bodily existence, pretending that we can just self-identify as we wish, as if we were just minds. Cancellation culture means that people with whom we disagree must be silenced, no-platformed, just as the disciples wished to call down fire on the Samaritans who did not welcome Jesus. What are the painful truths which our brothers and sisters from the continents fear to face? It is not for me to say.

If we dare to be truthful about who we are, mortal vulnerable human beings, and brothers and sisters in a Church that has always been heroic and corrupt, we shall speak with authority to a world that still hungers for truth even when it fears it is unattainable. This requires courage, which for Aquinas was fortitudo mentiis, the strength of mind to see things as they are, to live in the real world. The poet Maya Angelou said: 'Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practise any other virtue consistently[2].'

When St Oscar Romero returned home to El Salvador, an immigration official said, 'There goes the truth.' He was truthful in the face of death. Sitting on a bench, he asked a friend, if he was afraid to die. The friend said he was not. Romero replied, 'But I am. I am afraid to die.' It was this truthfulness which made his martyrdom so beautiful. Ever since he had looked at the mutilated body of his Jesuit friend Rutilio, he had known what awaited him. When he was martyred, his body was found to be covered with sweat. It seems that he had seen the man about to kill him, and he did not run away.

On that last night, Jesus warned his disciples that if they belong to him, the true vine, they shall be pruned that they may bear more fruit. In this synod, we may feel we are being pruned! It is so that we may bear more fruit. This may mean that we are pruned of illusions and prejudices that we have about each other, pruned of our fears and narrow ideologies. Pruned of our pride.

One of my young brethren encouraged me to speak personally at this point, though I hesitate to do so. A couple of years ago I had a massive operation for cancer of the jaw. It took seventeen hours. I was in hospital for five weeks, unable to eat or drink. Often confused as to where I was and who I was. I was stripped of dignity and completely dependent on other people for even the most basic needs. It was a terrible pruning. It was also a blessing. In this moment of helplessness, I could make no claims to importance, no achievements. I was just another ill person in a bed in the ward with nothing to give. I could not even pray. Then my eyes were opened a bit more to the utter gratuitous, unmerited love of the Lord. I could do nothing to deserve it and it was marvellous that I did not have to do so.

The Spirit is in each of us, leading us together into all of the truth. I was ordained by the great Bishop Butler, the only person in the Second Vatican Council who spoke perfect Ciceronian Latin! He loved to say 'Let us not fear that truth can endanger truth[3]'. If what another says is indeed true, it cannot threaten the truth that I treasure. I must open my heart and mind to the spaciousness of the divine truth. If I believe that what the other says is not true, I must of course say so, with due humility. German has the lovely word zwischenraum. If I understand it, it means that the fullness of the truth is in the space between us as we talk. God's mystery is always revealed in empty spaces, from the empty space between the wings of the cherubim on the ark of the covenant, to the empty tomb.

The clash of apparently incompatible truths can be painful and angry. Think of St Paul's account of his conflict with St. Peter in Antioch as told in the Letter to the Galatians: 'When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face!' (2.11). But they gave each other the right hand of fellowship, and the Holy See looks to both as founders! They were united in death as martyrs.

We must seek ways to speak the truth so that the other person can hear it without feeling demolished. Think of when Peter met Jesus on the beach, in John chapter 21. On the last evening before Jesus' death, Peter had boasted that he loved the Lord more than all the others. But shortly afterwards he denied the Lord three times, the most shameful moment in his life. On the beach, Jesus does not hammer him with failure. He asks gently, perhaps with a smile, three times: 'Do you love me more than these others? With infinite gentleness, he helps Peter three times to undo his threefold denial. He challenges him to face the truth with all of the tenderness of love. Can we challenge each other with such gentle truthfulness?

The American poet Emily Dickinson gives good advice:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant - Success in Circuit lies

Forgive me for quoting poetry. It can be so hard to translate. Her point is that sometimes the truth is told most powerfully when it does so indirectly, so that the other can hear. If you tell someone that they are a patriarchal dinosaur, they probably will not be helped! Of course, it will still be painful sometimes. But Pope Francis said: 'Speak the truth even if it is uncomfortable[4].'

This will require of us all a certain loss of control. Jesus says to Peter, 'Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go. He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.' (John 21.18)

If the Synod has the dynamics of prayer more than of a parliament, it will ask of us all a sort of letting go on control, even a sort of dying. Letting God be God. In Evangelii Gaudium, the Holy Father wrote: 'There is no greater freedom than that of allowing oneself to be guided by the Holy Spirit, renouncing every attempt to plan and control everything to the last detail and instead letting him enlighten, guide and direct us, leading us wherever he wills.' (280). Letting go of control is not doing nothing! Because the Church has been so much a structure of control, sometimes strong interventions are needed to let the Holy Spirit take us here we had never thought of going.

We have a profound instinct to hang on to control, which is why the Synod is feared by many. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came powerfully upon the disciples who were sent to the ends of the earth. But instead, the apostles settled down in Jerusalem and did not want to leave. It took persecution to ease them out of the nest and send them away from Jerusalem! Tough love! Above my office in Santa Sabina, every year kestrels build their nest. The time came when their parents kicked the young birds out of their nest, so that they had to fly or perish. Sitting at my desk, I could see them struggling to stay in the air! The Holy Spirit sometimes kicks us out of the nest and bids us fly! We flap in panic, but fly we will!

In Gethsemane, Jesus surrenders control over his life and entrusts it to the Father. Not as I will! When I was a young friar, a French Dominican, who had been a worker priest, stayed in the community. He was going to India to serve the poorest of the poor, and came to Oxford to learn Bengali. I asked him what he intended to do: 'What is your plan?' He replied: 'How can I know until the poor tell me?'

As a young Provincial, I visited a Dominican monastery that was nearing the end. Only four ancient nuns were left. I was accompanied by the previous Provincial, Peter. When we said to the nuns that the future of the monastery seemed very uncertain, one of them said: 'But Timothy, our dear Lord would not let our monastery die, would he?' Peter immediately replied, 'Sister, he let his son die.' So we can let things die not in despair but in hope, to give a space for the new.

St Dominic tried to hand over control of the Order to the brethren because each of them had received the Holy Spirit. So being led by the Holy Spirit means being liberated from the culture of control. In our society leadership is all about keeping one's hands on the leavers of power. Pope St John XXIII joked that he said to God each night: 'The Pope must go to sleep now, and so you, God, must look after the Church for a few hours.' As he understood so well, leadership is sometimes about letting go of control.

The Instrumentum Laboris calls us to make 'the preferential option for the young.' (e.g. B.2.1.). Every year we remember that God came to us as a child, new-born. Confidence in the young is an intrinsic part of Christian leadership. The young are not here to take the places of us old people but to do what we cannot imagine. When St Dominic sent out his young novices out to preach, some monks warned him that he would lose them. Dominic replied, 'I know for certain that my young men will go out and come back, will be sent out and will return; but your young men will be kept locked up and will still go out.[5]'

Being led by the Spirit into all truth means letting go of the present, trusting that the Spirit will beget new institutions, new forms of Christian living, new ministries. Throughout the last two millennia, the Holy Spirit has been at work in creating new ways of being Church, from the desert fathers and mothers to the orders of friars in the thirteenth century, even the Jesuits during the Counter-Reformation! The new ecclesial movements in the last century. We must let the Holy Spirit work creatively in our midst with new ways of being Church that now we cannot imagine but perhaps the young can! Listen to him, said the voice on the mountain. That includes listening to the young in whom the Lord lives and speaks (Matthew 11.28).

Being led into the truth is not, as we have seen, just a matter of rational argument. We are not just brains. We open who we are, our vulnerable humanity, to each other. St Thomas Aquinas loved a saying of Aristotle, that 'Anima est quodammodo omnia': 'The soul is, in a way, everything'. We know deeply by opening our being to what is other. We let ourselves be touched and changed by encounter with each other. The fulness of truth into which the Holy Spirit is leading us is not dispassionate knowledge which inspects from a distance. It is more than propositional knowledge. It is inseparable from transformative love (IL A.1 27). The Dominican way is that through knowing we come to love. The Franciscan way is to say that through loving, we come to know. Both are right.

The mystery into which we are being led is of a love that is totally without rivalry. All that the Father has is given to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Even equality. To share in the divine life is to be liberated from all rivalry and competition. It is this same divine love, freed from all rivalry, with which we should love each other during this Synod. St John wrote, 'Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.' (1 John 4.20)

The journey into the fullness of truth is inseparable from learning to love. Profound change will come about only if the search to understand the Lord's will is entwined in the double helix of learning to love those whom we find difficult. This will be hard to communicate to people who are not here. Have all these people really come all this way, at great expense, just to love each other? Practical decisions are of course unavoidable and necessary. But they must spring from the personal and communal transformation of who we are, otherwise they are mere administration.

Imagine the joy of being liberated from all competition with each other so that the more voice the laity have does not mean that the bishops have left, or the more that women are granted authority does not mean that the men have less, or the more recognition that our African brothers and sisters receive does not diminish the authority of the Church in Asia or the West.

This asks of each of us a profound humility as we wait confidently for the gifts of God. Simone Weil was a French Jewish mystic who died in 1943, who on his journey to the truth came to say 'I believe in God, the Trinity, Redemption, the Eucharist, and the teachings of the Gospel'[6]. She wrote that 'we do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them…This way of looking is, in the first place, attentive. The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive the human being it is looking at, just as he or she is, in all their truth.[7]'

If we let ourselves be guided by the Spirit of truth, we shall doubtless argue. It will sometimes be painful. There will be truths we would rather not face. But we shall be led a little deeper into the mystery of divine love and we shall know such joy that people will be envious of us for being here, and will long to attend the next session of the Synod!

There can be no fruitful conversation between us unless we recognize that each of us speaks with authority. We all are baptized into Christ: priest, prophet, and king. The International Theological Commission on the sensus fidei quotes St John: 'You have been anointed by the Holy One, and all of you have knowledge', 'the anointing that you received from [Christ] abides in you, and so you do not need anyone to teach you', 'his anointing teaches you about all things' (1Jn 2:20, 27).

Many lay people have been astonished during the preparation of this Synod to find that they are listened to for the first time. They had doubted their own authority and asked, 'Can I really offer something?' (B.2.53). But it is not just the laity who lack authority. The whole Church is afflicted by a crisis of authority. An Asian archbishop complained that he had no authority. He said: 'The priests are all independent barons, who take no notice of me.' Many priests too say they lost all authority. The sexual abuse crisis has discredited us.

Our whole world is suffering a crisis of authority. All institutions have lost authority. Politicians, the law, the press have all felt authority draining away. Authority always seems to belong to other people: either dictators who are coming into power in many places, or the new media, or celebrities and influencers. The world hungers for voices that will speak with authority about the meaning of our lives. Dangerous voices threaten to fill the vacuum. It is a world powered not by authority but by contracts - even in the family, the university, and the Church.

So how may the Church recover authority and speak to our world which hungers for voices that ring true? Luke tells us that when Jesus taught, 'they were astounded at his teaching, because he spoke with authority.' (Luke 4.32). He commands the demons and they obey. Even the wind and sea obey him. He even has the authority to summon his dead friend to life: 'Lazarus, come out.' (John 11.43). Almost the final words of Matthew's gospel: 'All authority in heaven and on earth is given to me.'

But halfway through the synoptic gospels, at Caesarea Philippi, there is a massive crisis of authority, which makes our contemporary crisis look like nothing! He tells his closest friends that he must go to Jerusalem where he will suffer, die, and rise again. They do not accept his word. So Jesus takes them up the mountain and is transfigured in their sight.

His authority is revealed through the prism of his glory, and the witness of Moses and Elijah. It is an authority which touches their ears and their eyes, their hearts, and their minds. Their imagination! Now at last they listen to him!

Peter is filled with joy: It is good for us to be here. As Teilhard de Chardin famously said, 'Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God'. This is the joy which Sr Maria Ignazia talked about this morning, Mary's joy. Without joy, none of us has any authority at all. No one believes a miserable Christian! In the Transfiguration, this joy flows from three sources: beauty, goodness, and truth. We could mention other forms of authority. In the Instrumentum Laboris, the authority of the poor is stressed. There is the authority of the tradition and of the hierarchy with its ministry of unity.

What I would suggest this morning is that authority is multiple and mutually enhancing. There need be no competition, as if the laity can only have more authority if the bishops have less, or so-called conservatives compete for authority with progressives. We might be tempted to call down fire on those we see as opposed to us, like the disciples in today's gospel (Luke 9. 51 - 56). But in the Trinity, there is no rivalry. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit do not compete for power, just as there is no competition between our four gospels.

We shall speak with authority to our lost world if in this Synod we transcend competitive ways of existing. Then the world will recognise the voice of the shepherd who summons them to life. Let us look at this scene on the mountain and see the interaction of different forms of authority.

Beauty

First, there is beauty or glory. The two are virtually synonymous in Hebrew. Bishop Robert Barron said somewhere - and forgive me, Bishop Bob, if I am misquoting you - that beauty can reach people who reject other forms of authority. A moral vision can be perceived as moralistic: 'How dare you tell me how to live my life?' The authority of doctrine may be rejected as oppressive. 'How dare you tell me what to think?' But beauty has an authority which touches our intimate freedom.

Beauty opens our imagination to the transcendent, the homeland for which we long. The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins calls God 'beauty's self and beauty's giver'.[1] Aquinas says that it reveals the final end of our lives, like the target at which the archer aims[2].

No wonder that Peter does not know what to say. Beauty carries us beyond words. It has been claimed that every adolescent has some experience of transcendent beauty. If they do not have guides, as the disciples had Moses and Elijah, the moment passes. When I was a 16-year-old boy at a Benedictine school, I had such a moment in the great Abbey Church, and I had wise monks to help me understand.

But not all beauty speaks of God. Nazi leaders loved classical music. On the feast day of the Transfiguration, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in a hideous parody of the divine light. Beauty can deceive and seduce. Jesus said: 'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.' (Matthew 23. 27).

But the divine beauty on the mountain will shine outside the holy city when the glory of the Lord will be revealed on the cross. God's beauty is disclosed most radiantly in what seems most ugly. One must go to the places of suffering to glimpse the beauty of God.

Etty Hillesum, the Jewish mystic drawn to Christianity found it even in a Nazi concentration camp: 'I want to be there in the thick of what people call "horror" and still be able to say, "Life is beautiful".'[3] Every renewal of the Church has gone with an aesthetic revival: Orthodox iconography, Gregorian chant, Counter-Reformation baroque (not my favourite!). The Reformation was in part a clash of aesthetic visions. What aesthetic renewal do we need today to open a glimpse of transcendence, especially in places of desolation and suffering? How can we disclose the beauty of the cross?

When the Dominicans who first arrived in Guatemala in the sixteenth century, beauty opened the way for them to share the gospel with the indigenous people. They refused the protection of the Spanish conquistadors. The friars taught the local indigenous merchants Christian songs, to be sung as they travelled in the mountains selling their goods. This opened the way for the brethren who could then ascend safely into the region still known as Vera Paz, True Peace. But eventually the soldiers came and killed not just the indigenous people but our brethren who tried to protect them.

What songs can enter the new continent of the young? Who are our musicians and poets? So beauty opens the imagination to the ineffable end of the journey. But we may be tempted like Peter to stay there. Other sorts of imaginative engagement are necessary to bring us down the mountain for the first synod on the way to Jerusalem. The disciples are offered two interpreters of what they see, Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets. Or of Goodness and Truth.

Goodness

Moses led Israel out of slavery into freedom. The Israelites did not wish to go. They hungered for the safety of Egypt. They feared the freedom of the desert, just as the disciples feared to make the journey to Jerusalem. In The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, the Grand Inquisitor asserts that 'nothing has ever been more insufferable for humanity and society than freedom ... In the end, they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us; "Better that you enslave us, but feed us."''

The saints have the authority of courage. They dare us to take to the road. They invite us to come with them on the risky adventure of holiness. St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was born into an observant Jewish family, but became an atheist when she was a teenager. But when by chance she picked up St Teresa's of Avila's autobiography, she read it all night. She said, "When I had finished the book, I said to myself: This is the truth.' This led her to death in Auschwitz. That is the authority of holiness. It invites us to let control of our lives and let God be God.

The most popular book of the twentieth century was The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. It is a deeply Catholic novel. He claimed it was the romance of the Eucharist. The martyrs were the earliest authorities in the Church, because boldly they gave everything. G. K. Chesterton said, 'Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die'[4] Are we afraid to present the dangerous challenge of our faith? Herbert McCabe OP said, 'If you love, you will be hurt, perhaps killed. If you do not love, you are dead already.' Young people are not attracted to our faith if we domesticate it.

'Perfect love casts out fear.' (1 John 4.18). Brother Michael Anthony Perry OFM, former Minister General of the Franciscans, said: 'In baptism, we have renounced the right to have fear.[5]' I would say we have renounced the right to be enslaved by fear. The courageous know fear. We shall only have authority in our fearful world if we are seen to risk everything. When our European brothers and sisters went to preach the gospel in Asia four hundred years ago, half of them died before they arrived, of disease, shipwreck, piracy. Would we have their mad courage?

Henri Burin de Roziers (1930-2017) was a French Dominican lawyer based in the Brazilian Amazon. He took to court the great landowners who often enslave the poor, forcing them to work on their vast estates, and killing them if they tried to escape. Henri received innumerable death threats. He was offered police protection, but he knew that they would most likely be the ones to kill him. When I stayed with him, he offered me his room for the night. The next day he told me that he could not sleep in case they came for him and accidentally got me!

So the authority of beauty speaks of the end of the journey, the homeland we have never seen. The authority of holiness speaks of the journey to be made if we are to arrive. It is the authority of those who give their lives away. The Irish poet Pádraig Pearse proclaimed: 'I have squandered the splendid years which the Lord God gave to my youth - in attempting impossible things, deeming them alone worth the toil. Lord, if I had the years, I would squander them again over. I fling them from me.'[6]

Truth

Then there is Elijah. The prophets are the truth tellers. He saw through the fantasies of the prophets of Ba'al and heard the still small voice of silence on the mountain. Veritas, Truth, the motto of the Dominican Order. It drew me to the Dominicans even before I met one, which was perhaps providential!

Our world has fallen out of love with the Truth: Fake news, wild assertions on the internet, mad conspiracy theories. Yet buried in humanity is an ineradicable instinct for the truth, and when it is spoken, it has some last vestiges of authority. The Instrumentum Laboris is unafraid to be truthful about the challenges we must address. It speaks openly about the hopes and sorrows, the anger, and the joy of the People of God. How can we draw people to the One who is the Truth if we are not truthful about ourselves?

Let me mention just two ways in which this prophetic tradition of truth-telling is needed. First of all, in speaking truthfully of the joys and sufferings of the world. In Hispaniola, Bartolome de Las Casas, had been leading a life of mediocrity, when he read the sermon preached by Antonio de Montesinos OP in the Advent of 1511, confronting the conquistadors with their enslavement of the indigenous people, "Tell me, by what right or by what interpretation of justice do you keep these Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude? By what authority have you waged such detestable wars against people who were once living so quietly and peacefully in their own land?". Las Casas read this, knew it was true, and repented. So in this Synod, we shall listen to people who will speak truthfully about 'the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time' (Gaudium et Spes 1).

For truth, we also need disciplined scholarship which resists our temptation to use the Word of God and the teachings of the Church for our own purposes. 'God must be right because he agrees with me!'. Biblical scholars, for example, bring us back to the original texts in their foreignness, their otherness. When I was in hospital, a nurse said to me that he wished that he knew Latin so that he could read the Bible in the original language. I said nothing! True scholars oppose any simplistic attempt to enlist the scriptures or tradition for our personal campaigns. God's Word belongs to God. Listen to him. We do not own the truth. The truth owns us.

All love opens us to the truth of the other. We discover how they remain, in a sense, unknowable. We cannot take possession of them and use them for our purposes. We love them in their otherness, in their uncontrollable freedom.

So on the mountain of the Transfiguration, we see different forms of authority are invoked to lead the disciples beyond that great crisis of authority of Caesarea Philippi. All of these and others are necessary. Without truth, beauty can be vacuous. As someone said, 'Beauty is to truth, as deliciousness is to food.' Without goodness, beauty can deceive. Goodness without truth collapses into sentimentality. Truth without goodness leads to the Inquisition. St John Henry Newman spoke beautifully of the multiple forms of authority, of governance, reason, and experience.

We all have authority, but differently. Newman wrote that if the authority of government becomes absolute, it will be tyrannical. If reason becomes the sole authority, we fall into arid rationalism. If religious experience is the only authority, then superstition will win. A synod is like an orchestra, with different instruments having their own music. This is why the Jesuit tradition of discernment is so fruitful. Truth is not arrived at by majority vote, any more than an orchestra or a football team led by voting!

The authority of leadership surely is ensuring that the conversation of the Church is fruitful, that no one voice dominates and drowns out others. It discerns the hidden harmony. Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, wrote. 'In turbulent times, there is an almost overwhelming temptation for religious leaders to be confrontational. Not only must truth be proclaimed but falsehood must be denounced. Choices must be set out as stark divisions. Not to condemn is to condone.' But, he asserts, 'a prophet hears not one imperative but two: guidance and compassion, a love of truth and an abiding solidarity with those for whom that truth has become eclipsed. To preserve tradition and at the same time defend those others condemn is the difficult, necessary task of religious leadership in an unreligious age[7]'.

All power comes from our Triune God, the one in whom all is shared. The Italian theologian Leonardo Paris asserts, 'The Father shares his power. With everyone. And he configures all power as shared .... It is no longer possible to quote Paul - "There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28) - and appeal to synodality without recognizing that this means finding concrete historical forms so that each one is recognized as having the power that the Father has willed to entrust to him or her.[8]'

If the Church becomes truly a community of mutual empowerment, we shall speak with the authority of the Lord. Becoming such a Church will be painful and beautiful. This is what we shall look at in the last conference.

We are called to walk on the synodal way in friendship. Otherwise, we shall get nowhere. Friendship, with God and each other, is rooted in the joy of being together but we need words. At Caesarea Philippi, conversation broke down. Jesus had called Peter 'Satan', enemy. On the mountain, he still does not know what to say but they begin to listen to him and so the conversation can begin again as they journey to Jerusalem.

On the way, the disciples quarrel, misunderstand Jesus, and eventually desert him. Silence returns. But the Risen Lord appears and gives them words of healing to speak to each other. We too need healing words that leap cross the boundaries that divide us: the ideological boundaries of left and right; the cultural boundaries that divide one Continent from another, the tensions that sometimes divide men and women. Shared words are the lifeblood of our Church. We need to find them for the sake of our world in which violence is fuelled by humanity's inability to listen. Conversation leads to conversion.

How should conversations begin? In Genesis after the Fall, there is a terrible silence. The silent communion of Eden has become the silence of shame. Adam and Eve hide. How can God reach across that chasm? God waits patiently until they have clothed themselves to hide their embarrassment. Now they are ready for the first conversation in the Bible. The silence is broken with a simple question: 'Where are you?' It is not a request for information. It is an invitation to step out into the light and stand visibly before the face of God.

Perhaps this is the first question with which we should break the silences that separate us. Not: 'Why do you hold these ridiculous views on liturgy?' Or 'Why are you a heretic or a patriarchal dinosaur?' or 'Why are you deaf to me?' But 'Where are you?' 'What are you worried about?' This is who I am. God invites Adam and Eve to come out of hiding and be seen. If we too step out into the light and let ourselves be seen as we are, we shall find words for each other. In the preparation for this Synod, often it has been the clergy who have been most reluctant to step out into the light and share their worries and doubts. Maybe we are afraid of being seen to be naked. How can we encourage each other not to fear nakedness?

After the Resurrection, the silence of the tomb is again broken with questions. In John's gospel, 'Why are you weeping?' In Luke, 'Why do you look for the living among the dead?' When the disciples flee to Emmaus, they are filled with anger and disappointment. The women claim to have seen the Lord, but they were only women. As today sometimes, women did not seem to count! The disciples are running away from the community of the Church, like so many people today. Jesus does not block their way or condemn them. He asks 'What are you talking about?' What are the hopes and disappointments that stir in your hearts? The disciples are speaking angrily. The Greek means literally, 'What are these words that you are hurling at each other?' So Jesus invites them to share their anger. They had hoped that Jesus would be the one to redeem Israel, but they were wrong. He failed. So, he walks with them and opens himself to their anger and fear.

Our world is filled with anger. We speak of the politics of anger. A recent book is called American Rage. This anger infects our Church too. A justified anger at the sexual abuse of children. Anger at the position of women in the Church. Anger at those awful conservatives or horrible liberals. Do we, like Jesus, dare to ask each other: 'What are you talking about? Why are you angry?' Do we dare to hear the reply? Sometimes I become fed up with listening to all this anger. I cannot bear to hear any more. But listen I must, as Jesus does, walking to Emmaus.

Many people hope that in this Synod their voice will be heard. They feel ignored and voiceless. They are right. But we will only have a voice if we first listen. God calls to people by name. Abraham, Abraham; Moses, Samuel. They reply with the beautiful Hebrew word Hinneni, 'Here I am'. The foundation of our existence is that God addresses each of us by name, and we hear. Not the Cartesian 'I think therefore I am' but I hear therefore I am. We are here to listen to the Lord, and to each other. As they say, we have two ears but only one mouth! Only after listening comes speech.

We listen not just to what people are saying but what they are trying to say. We listen for the unspoken words, the words for which they search. There is a Sicilian saying: "La miglior parola è quella che non si dice'[1] 'The best word is the one that is not spoken'. We listen for how they are right, for their grain of truth, even if what they say is wrong. We listen with hope and not contempt. We had one rule on the General Council of the Dominican Order. What the brethren said was never nonsense. It may be misinformed, illogical, indeed wrong. But somewhere in their mistaken words is a truth I need to hear. We are mendicants after the truth. The earliest brethren said of St Dominic that 'he understood everything in the humility of his intelligence'[2].

Perhaps Religious Orders have something to teach the Church about the art of conversation. St Benedict teaches us to seek consensus; St Dominic to love debate, St Catherine of Siena to delight in conversation, and St Ignatius of Loyola, the art of discernment. St Philip Neri, the role of laughter.

If we really listen, our ready-made answers will evaporate. We will be silenced and lost for words, as Zechariah was before he burst into song. If I do not know how to respond to my sister or brother's pain or puzzlement, I must turn to the Lord and ask for words. Then the conversation can begin.

Conversation needs an imaginative leap into the experience of the other person. To see with their eyes, and hear with their ears. We need to get inside their skin. From what experiences do their words spring? What pain or hope do they carry? What journey are they on?

There was a heated debate on preaching in a Dominican General Chapter over the nature of preaching, always a hot topic for Dominicans! The document proposed to the Chapter understood preaching as in dialogical: we proclaim our faith by entering into conversation. But some capitulars strongly disagreed, arguing this verged on relativism. They said 'We must dare to preach the truth boldly'. Slowly it became evident that the quarrelling brethren were speaking out of vastly different experiences.

The document had been written by a brother based in Pakistan, where Christianity necessarily finds itself in constant dialogue with Islam. In Asia, there is no preaching without dialogue. The brethren who reacted strongly against the document were mainly from the former Soviet Union. For them, the idea of dialogue with those who had imprisoned them made no sense. To get beyond the disagreement, rational argument was necessary but not enough. You had to imagine why the other person held his or her view. What experience led them to this view? What wounds do they bear? What is their joy?

This demanded listening with all of one's imagination. Love is always the triumph of the imagination, as hatred is a failure of the imagination. Hatred is abstract. Love is particular. In Graham Greene's novel The Power and the Glory, the hero, a poor weak priest, says: 'When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.'

We need to leap across the boundaries not just of left and right, or cultural boundaries, but generational boundaries too. I have the privilege of living with young Dominicans whose journey of faith is different from mine. Many religious and priests of my generation grew up in strongly Catholic families. The faith deeply penetrated our everyday lives. The adventure of the Second Vatican Council was in reaching out to the secular world. French priests went to work in factories. We took off the habit and immersed ourselves in the world. One angry sister, seeing me wearing my habit, exploded: 'Why are you still wearing that old thing?'

Today many young people - especially in the West but increasingly everywhere - grow up in a secular world, agnostic or even atheistic. Their adventure is the discovery of the gospel, the Church and the tradition. They joyfully put on the habit. Our journeys are contrary but not contradictory. Like Jesus, I must walk with them, and learn what excites their hearts. 'What are you talking about?' What films do you watch? What music do you love? Then we shall be given words for each other.

I must imagine how they see me! Who am I in their gaze? Once I was cycling around Saigon with a crowd of young Vietnamese Dominican students. This was long before tourists became common. We went around the corner and there were a group of western tourists. They looked so big and fat and a strange ugly colour. What odd people. Then I realised that was what I looked like too!

As the disciples walk to Emmaus, they listen to this stranger who calls them fools and contradicts them. He is angry too! But they begin to delight in his words. Their hearts burn within them. During the Synod can we learn the ecstatic pleasure of disagreement leading to insight? Hugo Rahner, Karl's younger brother (and much easier to understand!) wrote a book on homo ludens, playful humanity[3]. Let us learn to speak to each other playfully! As Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well do in John 4.

In today's first reading, we hear that in the fullness of time, 'The city shall be filled with boys and girls playing in its streets.' (Zechariah 8.5) The gospel invites us all to become children: 'Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.' (Matthew 18.3). We prepare for the Kingdom by becoming playful, childlike but not childish. Sometimes we in the Church are afflicted by a dull, joyless seriousness. No wonder people are bored!

On the night of the new millennium, while I was waiting in Cote d'Ivoire to catch a flight to Angola, I sat in the dark with our Dominican students, sharing a beer and talking easily about what was dearest to us. We delighted in the pleasure of being different, of having different imaginations. The delight in difference! I feared I would miss the plane, but it was three days late! Difference is fertile, generative. Each of us is the fruit of the wonderful difference between men and women. If we flee from difference, we shall be barren and childless, in our homes and our Church. Again, we thank all the parents in this Synod! Families can teach the Church a lot about how to cope with difference. Parents learn how to reach out to children who make incomprehensible choices and yet know they still have a home.

If we can discover the pleasure of imagining why our sisters and brothers hold we views we find odd, then a new springtime will begin in the Church. The Holy Spirit will give us the gift of speaking other languages.

Notice that Jesus does not attempt to control the conversation. He asks what they are talking about; he goes where they go, not where he wishes to go; he accepts their hospitality. A real conversation cannot be controlled. One surrenders oneself to its direction. We cannot anticipate where it will take us, to Emmaus or Jerusalem. Where will this Synod lead the Church? If we knew in advance, there would be no point in having it! Let us be surprised!

True conversation is therefore risky. If we open ourselves to others in free conversation we shall be changed. Each profound friendship brings into existence a dimension of my life and identity that has never existed before. I become someone I have never quite been before. I grew up in a wonderful conservative Catholic family. When I became a Dominican I became friends with people of a different background, utterly different politics, which my family found disturbing! Who then was I when I went home to stay with my family? How did I reconcile the person who I was with them and the person that I was becoming with the Dominicans?

Every year I get to know newly joined Dominicans with different convictions and different ways of seeing the world. If I open myself to them in friendship, who will I become? Even at my advanced age, my identity must remain open. In Madeleine Thien's novel about Chinese immigrants in the USA, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, one of the characters says, 'Don't ever try to be only a single thing, an unbroken human being. If so many people love you, can you honestly be one thing?[4]' If we open ourselves to multiple friendships, we shall not have a neat, tightly defined identity. If we open ourselves to each other in this Synod, we shall all be changed. It will be a little death and resurrection.

A Filipino Dominican Novice Master had a notice on his door: "Forgive me. I am a work in progress.' Coherence lies ahead, in the Kingdom. Then the wolf and the lamb within each of us shall be at peace with each other. If we have closed, fixed identities written in stone now, we shall never know the adventure of new friendships which will unfold new dimensions of who we are. We shall not be open to the spacious friendship of the Lord.

When they reach Emmaus, the flight from Jerusalem stops. Jesus looks as if he wishes to go further but, with glorious irony they invite the Lord of the Sabbath to rest with them. 'Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is nearly over.' (Luke 24:29). Jesus accepts their hospitality as the three strangers in Genesis 18 accepted the hospitality of Abraham. God is our guest. We too must have the humility to be guests. The German submission said that we must leave 'the comfortable position of those who give hospitality to allow ourselves to be welcomed into the existence of those who are our companions on the journey of humanity'.

Marie-Dominique Chenu OP, the grandfather of the Second Vatican Council, went out most evenings, even when he was eighty. He went out to listen to trade union leaders, academics, artists, families, and accept their hospitality. In the evening we would meet for a beer and he would ask, 'What did you learn today? At whose table did you sit? What gifts did you receive?' The Church in every Continent has gifts for the universal Church. To take just one example, my brethren in Latin America taught me to open my ears to the words of the poor, especially our beloved brother Gustavo Gutiérrez. Shall we hear them in our debates this month? What shall we learn from our brothers and sisters in Asia and Africa?

'When he was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognised him and he vanished from their sight.' (Luke 24:29). Their eyes were opened. The previous time that we heard that phrase was when Adam and Eve took the fruit from the Tree of Life, and their eyes were open and they knew that they were naked. This is why some ancient commentators saw the disciples as Cleopas and his wife, a married couple, a new Adam and Eve. Now they eat the bread of life.

One last small thought: When Jesus vanishes from their sight they say, 'Did not our hearts burn within us, while he talked to us on the road.' (Luke 24:32) It is as if it is only afterwards that they become aware of the joy they had as they walked with the Lord. St John Henry Newman said that it is only as we look backwards at our lives that we become aware of how God was always with us. I pray that this will be our experience too.

During this Synod, we shall be like these disciples. Sometimes we shall not be aware of the Lord's grace working in us and may even think that it is all a waste of time. But I pray God that afterwards, looking backwards, we shall become aware that God was with us all the time, and that our hearts burnt within us.

On the night before he died, Jesus prayed to his Father: 'May them be one as we are one.' (John 17.11). But from the beginning, in almost every document of the New Testament, we see the disciples divided, quarrelling, excommunicating each other.

We are gathered in this Synod because we too are divided and hope and pray for unity of heart and mind. This should be our precious witness in a world which is torn apart by conflict and inequality. The Body of Christ should embody that peace which Jesus promised and for which the world longs.

Yesterday I looked at two sources of division: Our conflicting hopes and different visions of the Church as home. But there is no need for these tensions to tear us apart; We are bearers of a hope beyond hope, and the spacious home of the Kingdom in which the Lord tells us there are 'many dwelling places' (John 14.1).

Of course not every hope or opinion is legitimate. But orthodoxy is spacious and heresy is narrow. The Lord leads his sheep out of the small enclosure of the sheepfold into the wide-open pastures of our faith. At Easter, he will lead them out of the small locked room into the unbounded vastness of God, 'God's plenty[1]'.

So let us listen to him together. But how? A German bishop was concerned by 'the biting tone' during their synodal discussions. He said they had been 'more like a rhetorical exchange of verbal blows" than an orderly debate.'[2] Of course, orderly rational debates are necessary. As a Dominican, I could never deny the importance of reason! But more is needed if we are to reach beyond our differences. The sheep trust the voice of the Lord because it is that of a friend. This Synod will be fruitful if it leads us into a deeper friendship with the Lord and with each other.

On the night before he died, Jesus addressed the disciples who were about to betray, deny, and desert him, saying: 'I call you friends.' (John 15.15). We are embraced by the healing friendship of God which unlocks the doors of the prisons we create for ourselves. "The invisible God speaks to men and women as friends" (Vatican II, Dei Verbum, 2). He opened the way into the eternal friendship of the Trinity. This friendship was offered to his disciples, to tax collectors and prostitutes, to lawyers and foreigners. It was the first taste of the Kingdom.

Both the Old Testament and classical Greece and Rome considered such friendships impossible. Friendship was only between the good. Friendship with the wicked was considered impossible. As Psalm 26 says, 'I hate the company of evildoers and will not sit with the wicked' (v23). The bad do not have friendships since they only collaborate for evil deeds. But our God was always inclined to shocking friendships. He loved Jacob the trickster; and David, the murderer and adulterer; and Solomon the idolater.

Also, friendship was only possible between equals. But grace lifts us up into the divine friendship. Aquinas says solus Deus deificat, 'only God can make us godlike.'[i] Today is the Feast of the Guardian Angels, who are signs of the unique friendship that God has for each of us. The Holy Father said on the Feast of the Guardian Angels, 'No one journeys alone and no one should think that they are alone[3]'. As we journey, we are each embraced by the divine friendship.

Preaching the gospel is never just communicating information. It is an act of friendship. A hundred years ago, Vincent McNabb OP said, 'Love those to whom you preach. If you do not, do not preach. Preach to yourself.' St Dominic was said to have been loved by all since he loved all. St Catherine of Siena was surrounded by a circle of friends: men and women, lay and religious. They were known as the Caterinati, the Catherine people. St Martin de Porres is often shown with a cat, a dog, and a mouse eating from the same dish. A good image of religious life!

There were no easy friendships between men and women in the Old Testament. The Kingdom broke in with Jesus surrounded by his friends, men and women. Even today, many people doubt the possibility of any innocent friendship between men and women. Men fear accusation; women fear male violence; the young fear abuse. We should embody the spacious friendship of God.

So we preach the gospel by friendships that reach across boundaries. God reached across the division between Creator and creature. What impossible friendships can we make? When Blessed Pierre Claverie was ordained the bishop of Oran in Algeria in 1981, he said to his Muslim friends, 'I owe to you also what I am today. With you in learning Arabic, I learned above all to speak and understand the language of the heart, the language of brotherly friendship, where races and religions commune with each other... For I believe that this friendship comes from God and leads to God.[4]' Notice, friendship made him who he was!

It was for this friendship that he was murdered by terrorists, along with a young Muslim friend, Mohamed Bouckichi. After his beatification, a play about their friendship was performed, Pierre et Mohamed. Mohamed's mother watched the play about the death of her son, and kissed the actor who played him.

The good news the young await to hear from us is that God reaches out to them in friendship. Here is the friendships they desire and for which they search on Instagram and TikTok. When I was a teenager, I was befriended by Catholic priests. With them, I discovered the joy of faith. Alas, the sexual abuse crisis rendered such friendships suspect. More than a sexual sin, it is a sin against friendship. The deepest circle in Dante's Inferno was reserved for those who betray friendship.

So the foundation of all that we shall do in this Synod should be the friendships we create. It does not look much. It will not make headlines in the media. 'They came all the way to Rome to make friendships! What a waste!' But it is by friendship that we shall make the transition from 'I' to 'We' (IL A. 1. 25). Without it, we shall achieve nothing. When the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, met St John Paul II, he was disappointed that no progress towards unity seemed to have been achieved. But the Pope told him to be confident. 'Affective collegiality precedes effective collegiality.'

The Instrumentum Laboris refers to the loneliness of many priests, and 'their need for care, friendship and support.' (B. 2.4., b). The heart of the priest's vocation is the art of friendship. This is the eternal, equal friendship of our Triune God. Then all the poison of clericalism will melt away. The vocation of parenthood can be lonely too and needs sustaining friendships.

Friendship is a creative task. In English we say that we fall in love but we make friends. Jesus asks the lawyer after the parable of the Good Samaritan, 'Which of these three people made himself the neighbour of the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?' (Luke 10.36). He tells the disciples that they must make friends by the use of unrighteous mammon (Luke 16.9). In the Synod, we have the creative task of making improbable friendships, especially with people with whom we disagree. If you think that I am talking nonsense, come and befriend me!

This might sound awful! Imagine me bearing down on you with the grim determination to make you a friend. You will want to run away! But the foundation of friendship is just being with one another. It is the enjoyment of another's presence. Jesus invites the inner circle, Peter, James, and John, to be with him on the mountain, as they will be with him in the garden of Gethsemane. After the Ascension, they look for another to replace Judas, someone who has been with the Lord and with them. Peter said he should be 'one of those who accompanied us throughout the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among, beginning from the baptism of John until the day he was taken up from us.' (Acts 1.21) Heaven will be just being with the Lord. Four times during the Eucharist we hear the words, 'The Lord be with you.' That is the divine friendship. Sister Wendy Becket described prayer as 'being unprotected in the presence of the Lord'. Nothing needs to be said.

In his book on Spiritual friendship, St Aelred of Rivaulx, the 12th century Cistercian Abbot, wrote "Here we are, you and I, and I hope that Christ makes a third with us. No one can interrupt us now... So come now, dearest friend, reveal your heart and speak your mind.' Will we dare to speak our minds?

In Dominican General Chapters, of course, we debate and take decisions. But we also pray and eat together, go for walks, have a drink, and recreate. We give each other the most precious gift, our time. We build a common life. Then improbable friendships spring up. Ideally, we should have done that during these three weeks of the Synod instead of going our separate ways at the end of the day. Let us hope that this will be possible at the next session of this Synod.

God's creative love gives us space. Herbert McCabe OP wrote: 'The power of God is pre-eminently the power to let things be. "Let there be light" - the creative power is just the power that, because it results in things being what they are, in persons being who they are, cannot interfere with creatures. Obviously creating does not make any difference to things, it lets them be themselves. Creation is simply and solely letting things be, and our love is a faint image of that.[5]'

Often no words are needed. A young Algerian woman called Yasmina left a card near the place of Pierre Claverie's martyrdom. She wrote on it, 'This evening, Father, I have no words. But I have tears and hope.[6]'

If we are with each other in this way, we shall see each other as if for the first time! When Jesus dined with the Pharisee Simon, a woman, possibly the local prostitute, came in and, weeping, she washed his feet with her tears. Simon is shocked. Doesn't Jesus see who she is? But Jesus replies, 'Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.' (Luke 7.44).

Israel had longed to see the face of God. For centuries she had sung, 'Let your face shine on us and we shall be saved.' (Psalm 80). But it was impossible to see God and live. Israel longed for what was unbearable, the sight of the face of God. In Jesus, this face was revealed. The shepherds could look on him as a sleeping baby in the manger and live. God's face became visible, but it was God who died, the eyes closed shut on a cross.

In the Second Eucharistic Prayer, we pray the dead may be welcomed into the light of God's face. The Incarnation is God's visibility. An ancient theologian, possibly St Augustine, imagines a dialogue with the Good Thief who died with Jesus. He says: 'I made no special study of Scripture. I was a full-time robber. But, at a certain moment in my pain and isolation, I found Jesus looking at me and, in his look, I understood everything.[7]'

In these times between the first and second coming of Christ, we must be that face for each other. We see those who are invisible and smile on those who feel ashamed. An American Dominican, Brian Pierce, visited an exhibition of photos of street kids in Lima, Peru. Under the photo of one young kid was the caption, 'Saben que existo pero no me ven.' They know that I exist but they do not see me. They know that I exist as a problem, a nuisance, a statistic, but they do not see me!

In South Africa, a common greeting is 'SAWABONA', 'I see you'. Millions of people feel invisible. No one looks at them with recognition. Often people are tempted to commit violence just so that people at least to see them! Look, I am here! It feels better to be seen as an enemy than not to be seen at all.

Thomas Merton joined religious life because he wanted to escape the wickedness of the world. But a few years of Cistercian life opened his eyes to the beauty and goodness of people. One day in the street, the scales fell from his eyes. He wrote in his diary, 'Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their being, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more greed.[8]'

Our world hungers for friendship, but it is subverted by destructive trends: The rise of populism, in which people are bound together by simplistic narratives, facile slogans, the blindness of the mob. And there is an acute individualism, which means that all I have is my story. Terry Eagleton wrote 'Journeys are no longer communal but self-tailored, more like hitchhiking than a coach tour. They are no longer mass products but for the most part embarked on alone. The world has ceased to be story-shaped, which means that you can make your life up as you go along.'[9] But 'my story' is our story, the gospel story which can be told in wonderfully different ways.

One last brief point.. C. S. Lewis said that lovers look at each other but friends look in the same direction. They may disagree with each other, but at least they share some of the same questions. I quote: '"Do you care about the same truth?" The [one] who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance can be our Friend. He need not agree with us about the answer.[10]'

The bravest thing we can do in this Synod is to be truthful about our doubts and questions with each other, the questions to which we have no clear answers. Then we shall draw near as fellow searchers, beggars for the truth. In Graham Greene's Don Quixote, a Spanish Catholic priest and a Communist Mayor make a holiday together. One day they dare to share their doubts. The priest says, 'it is odd how sharing a sense of doubt can bring men together perhaps even more than sharing a faith. The believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference; the doubter fights only with himself.[11]'

Pope Francis said in his dialogue with Rabbi Skorka: 'The great leaders of the people of God were people who left room for doubt…He who wants to be a leader of the people of God has to give God his space; therefore, to shrink, to recede into oneself with doubt, the interior experiences of darkness, of not knowing what to do; all of that ultimately is very purifying. The bad leader is the one who is self-assured, and stubborn. One of the characteristics of a bad leader is to be excessively normative because of his self-assurance.[12]' (On Heaven and Earth, 52)

If there is no shared concern for the truth, then what basis is there for friendship? Friendship is difficult in our society in part because society has either lost confidence in the truth, or else clings to narrow fundamentalist truths which cannot be discussed. Solzhenitsyn said 'one word of truth outweighs the whole world.[13]' One of my brethren travelling on a bus overheard two women in the seats in front of him. One was complaining about the sufferings she had to endure. The other one said: "My dear, you have to be philosophical about it." "What does 'philosophical' mean?" "It means you don't think about it."

Friendship flourishes when we dare to share our doubts and seek the truth together. What is the point of talking to people who already know everything or who agree completely? But how are we to do so? That is the topic of the next conference.

We come to this Synod with conflicting hopes. But this need not be an insuperable obstacle. We are united in the hope of the Eucharist, a hope which embraces and transcends all that we long for.

But there is another source of tension. Our understandings of the Church as our home sometimes clash. Every living creature needs a home if it is to flourish. Fish need water and birds need nests. Without a home, we cannot live. Different cultures have different conceptions of home. The Instrumentum Laboris tells us that 'Asia offered the image of the person who takes off his or her shoes to cross the threshold as a sign of the humility with which we prepare to meet God and our neighbour. Oceania proposed the image of the boat and Africa suggested the image of the Church as the family of God, capable of offering belonging and welcome to all its members in all their variety.' (B 1.2). But all of these images show that we need somewhere in which we are both accepted and challenged. At home we are affirmed as we are and invited to be more. Home is where we are known, loved and safe but challenged to embark on the adventure of faith.

We need to renew the Church as our common home if we are to speak to a world which is suffering from a crisis of homelessness. We are consuming our little planetary home. There are more than 350 million migrants on the move, fleeing war and violence. Thousands die crossing seas to try to find a home. None of us can be entirely at home unless they are. Even in wealthy countries, millions sleep on the street. Young people are often unable to afford a home. Everywhere there is a terrible spiritual homelessness. Acute individualism, the breakdown of the family, ever deeper inequalities mean that we are afflicted with a tsunami of loneliness. Suicides are rising because without a home, physical and spiritual, one cannot live. To love is to come home to someone.

So what does this scene of the Transfiguration teach us about our home, both in the Church and in our dispossessed world? Jesus invites his innermost circle of friends to come apart with him and enjoy this intimate moment. They too will be with him in the Garden of Gethsemane. This is the inner circle of those with whom Jesus is most at home. On the mountain he grants them a vision of his glory. Peter wants to cling to this moment. ' "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."'. He has arrived and wants this intimate moment to endure.

But they hear the voice of the Father. 'Listen to him!' They must come down the mountain and walk to Jerusalem, not knowing what awaits them. They will be dispersed and sent to the ends of the earth to be witnesses to our ultimate home, the Kingdom. So here we see two understandings of home: the inner circle at home with Jesus on the mountain and the summons to our ultimate home, the Kingdom in which all will belong.

Similar different understandings of the Church as home tear us apart today. For some it is defined by its ancient traditions and devotions, its inherited structures and language, the Church we have grown up with and love. It gives us a clear Christian identity. For others, the present Church does not seem to be a safe home. It is experienced as exclusive, marginalizing many people, women: the divorced and remarried. For some it is too Western, too Eurocentric. The IL mentions also gay people and people in polygamous marriages. They long for a renewed Church in which they will feel fully at home, recognized, affirmed and safe.

For some the idea of a universal welcome, in which everyone is accepted regardless of who they are, is felt as destructive of the Church's identity. As in a nineteenth-century English song, 'If everybody is somebody then nobody is anybody.[1]' They believe that identity demands boundaries. But for others, it is the very heart of the Church's identity to be open. Pope Francis said, 'The Church is called on to be the house of the Father, with doors always wide open ... where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems and to move towards those who feel the need to take up again their path of faith.'[2]

This tension has always been at the heart of our faith, since Abraham left Ur. The Old Testament holds two things in perpetual tension: the idea of election, God's chosen people, the people with whom God dwells. This is an identity which is cherished. But also universalism, openness to all the nations, an identity which is yet to be discovered.

Christian identity is both known and unknown, given and to be sought. St. John says, 'Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.' (1 John 3. 1 - 2). We know who we are and yet we do not know who we shall be.

For some of us, the Christian identity is above all given, the Church we know and love. For others Christian identity is always provisional, lying ahead as we journey towards the Kingdom in which all walls will fall. Both are necessary! If we stress only our identity is given - This is what it means to be Catholic - we risk becoming a sect. If we just stress the adventure towards an identity yet to be discovered, we risk becoming a vague Jesus movement. But the Church is a sign and sacrament of the unity of all humanity in Christ (LG. 1) in being both. We dwell on the mountain and taste the glory now. But we walk to Jerusalem, that first synod of the Church.

How are we to live this necessary tension? All theology springs from tension, which bends the bow to shoot the arrow. This tension is at the heart of St. John's gospel. God makes his home in us: 'Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.' (14.23) But Jesus also promises us our home in God: ' In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? (John 14.2).

When we think of the Church as home, some of us primarily think of God as coming home to us, and others of us coming to home in God. Both are true. We must enlarge the tent of our sympathy to those who think differently. We treasure the inner circle on the mountain, but we come down and walk to Jerusalem, wanderers and homeless. 'Listen to him'.

So, first, God makes his home with us. The Word is made flesh in a first-century Palestinian Jew, raised in the customs and traditions of his people. The Word becomes flesh in each of our cultures. In Italian paintings of the Annunciation, we see lovely homes of marble, with windows open onto olive trees and gardens of roses and lilies. Dutch and Flemish painters show Mary with a warm oven, well wrapped to keep out the cold. Whatever is your home, God comes to dwell in it. For thirty silent years, God dwelt in Nazareth: an unimportant backwater. Nathaniel exclaimed in disgust, 'Can anything good come out of Nazareth' (John 1.46). Philip just replies, 'Come and see.'

All of our homes are Nazareth, where God dwells. St Charles de Foucauld said: 'Let Nazareth be your model, in all its simplicity and breadth…The life of Nazareth can be lived anywhere. Live it where is it most useful for your neighbour.[3]' Wherever we are and whatever we have done, God comes to stay: 'Behold I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you and eat with you, and you with me' (Rev. 3.20).

So we treasure the places where we have met Emmanuel. 'God with us'. We love the liturgies in which we have glimpsed the divine beauty, the churches of our childhood, the popular devotions. I love the great Benedictine Abbey of my school where I first sensed the doors of heaven open. Each of us has our own Mt Tabor, on which we have glimpsed the glory. We need them. So when liturgies are changed or churches demolished, people experience great pain, as if their home in the Church is being destroyed. Like Peter, we wish to stay.

Every local Church is a home for God. Our mother Mary appeared in England in Walsingham, the great medieval shrine, in Lourdes, in Guadalupe in Mexico, in Czestochowa in Poland, in La Vang in Vietnam and Donglu in China. There is no Marian competition. In England, we say, 'The good news is that God loves you. The bad news is that he loves everyone else as well.' St Augustine said: God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.[4]' . In the Basilica of Notre Dame d'Afrique in Algiers, there is inscribed: 'Priez pour nous et pour les Musulmans' 'Pray for us and for the Muslims".

Often priests find the Synodal path most difficult to embrace. We clergy tend these places of worship and celebrate its liturgies. Priests need a strong sense of identity, an esprit de corps. But who shall we be in this Church which is liberated from clericalism? How can the clergy embrace an identity which is not clerical? This is a great challenge for a renewed Church. Let us embrace it without fear, a new fraternal understanding of ministerial priesthood! Perhaps we can discover how this loss of identity is actually an inherent part of our priestly identity. It is a vocation to be drawn beyond all identities, because 'who we are is yet to be revealed' (1 John 3.2).

God makes his home now in places that the world despises. Our Dominican brother Frei Betto describes how God came to be at home in a prison in Brazil. Some Dominicans were imprisoned for their opposition to the dictatorship (1964-1985). Betto wrote, 'On Christmas day, the Feast of God's homecoming, the joy is overwhelming. Christmas night in prison... Now the whole prison is singing, as if our song alone, happy and free, must sound throughout the world. The women are singing over in their section, and we applaud... Everyone here knows that it's Christmas, that someone is being reborn. And with our song, we testify that we too have been reborn to fight for a world without tears, hatred or oppression. It's quite something to see these young faces pressed against the bars and singing their love. Unforgettable. It's not a sight for our judges, or the public prosecutor, or the police who arrested us. They would find the beauty of this night intolerable. Torturers fear a smile, even a weak one."

So we glimpse the beauty of the Lord in our own Mt Tabor, where, like Peter, we want to pitch our tents. Good! But 'Listen to Him!' We enjoy that moment and then come down the mountain and walk to Jerusalem. We must become in a sense homeless. 'Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.' (Luke 9.58). They walk to Jerusalem, the holy city where God's name dwells. But there Jesus dies outside the walls for the sake of all who live outside the walls, as God revealed himself to his people in the wilderness outside the camp. James Alison wrote: 'God is among us as one cast out[5]'. 'Therefore, Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his blood. Let us therefore then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured.' (Hebrews 12.12f).

Archbishop Carlos Aspiroz da Costa wrote to the Dominican Family when he was Master: ''Outside the camp' among all those 'others' relegated to a place outside the camp, is where we meet God. Itinerancy demands going outside the institution, outside culturally conditioned perceptions and beliefs, because it is 'outside the camp' that we meet a God who cannot be controlled. It is 'outside the camp' that we meet the Other who is different and discover who we are and what we are to do.[6]' It is in going outside that we reach for a home in which 'there is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave nor free, there is no longer male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus' (Galatians 3.26).

In the 1980s, reflecting on the Church's response to Aids, I visited a London hospital. The consultant told me that there was a young man asking for a priest called Timothy. By God's providence, I managed to anoint him shortly before he died. He asked to be buried in Westminster Cathedral, the centre of Catholicism in England. He was surrounded by the ordinary people who came to that weekday Mass, as well as by people with Aids, nurses, doctors and gay friends. The one who had been on the periphery, because of his illness, because of his sexual orientation and most of all because he was now dead, was at the centre. He was surrounded by those for whom the Church was home and those who would normally never enter a church.

Our lives are is nourished by beloved traditions and devotions. If they are lost, we grieve. But also we must remember all those who do not yet feel at home in the Church: women who feel that they are unrecognised in a patriarchy of old white men like me! People who feel that the Church is too Western, too Latin, too colonial. We must journey towards a Church in which they are no longer at the margin but in the centre.

When Thomas Merton became a Catholic he discovered 'God, that centre Who is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere, finding me.' Renewing the Church, then, is like making bread. One gathers edges of the dough into the centre, and spreads the centre into the margins, filling it all with oxygen. One makes the loaf by overthrowing the distinction between edges and the centre, making God's loaf, whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, finding us.

One last very short word. Time and again during the preparation for this Synod, the question was asked: 'But how can we be at home in the Church with the horrible scandal of sexual abuse?' For many, this has been the last straw. They have packed their bags and gone. I put this question to a meeting of Catholic head teachers in Australia, where the Church has been horribly disfigured by this scandal. How did they remain? How could they still be at home?

One of them quoted Carlo Carretto (1910 - 1988), a little brother of Charles de Foucauld. What Carretto said sums up the ambiguity of the Church, my home but not yet my home, revealing and concealing God.

'How much I must criticize you, my church, and yet how much I love you! You have made me suffer more than anyone, and yet I owe more to you than to anyone. I should like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence. You have given me much scandal, and yet you alone have made me understand your holiness. … Countless times, I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face-and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your sure arms! No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you. Then too - where would I go? To build another church? But I could not build one without the same defects, for they are my defects. '

At the end of Matthew's gospel, Jesus says: 'Behold I am with you until the end of time.' If the Lord stays, how could we go? God has made himself at home in us with all our scandalous limitations for ever. God remains in our Church, even with all the corruption and abuse. We must therefore remain. But God is with us to lead us out into the wider open spaces of the Kingdom. We need the Church, our present home for all its weaknesses, but also to breathe the Spirit-filled oxygen of our future home without boundaries.

When the Holy Father asked me to give this retreat, I felt enormously honoured but nervous. I am deeply aware of my personal limitations. I am old - white- a Westerner- and a man! I don't know which is worse! All of these aspects of my identity limit my understanding. So I ask for your forgiveness for the inadequacy of my words.

We are all radically incomplete and need each other. Karl Barth, the great Protestant theologian, wrote of the Catholic 'both/ and.' For example, Scripture and tradition, faith and works. He is said to have called it the 'damned Catholic "And"', 'das verdammte katholische "Und"'. So when we listen to each other during the coming weeks and disagree, I pray we shall often say, 'Yes, and…..' Rather than 'No'! That is the Synodal way. Of course, No is also sometimes necessary!

In the second reading at Mass today, St Paul says to the Philippians: 'Complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing'. (Philippians 2.2). We are gathered here because we are not united in heart and mind. The vast majority of people who have taken part in the synodal process have been surprised by joy. For many, it is the first time that the Church has invited them to speak of their faith and hope. But some of us are afraid of this journey and of what lies ahead. Some hope that the Church will be dramatically changed, that we shall take radical decisions, for example about the role of women in the Church. Others are afraid of exactly these same changes and fear that they will only lead to division, even schism. Some of you would prefer not to be here at all. A bishop told me that he prayed not to be chosen to come here. His prayer was granted! You may be like the son in today's gospel who at first does not want to go to the vineyard, but he goes!

At crucial moments in the gospels, we always hear these words: 'Do not be afraid.' St John tells us 'Perfect love casts out fear.' So let us begin by praying that the Lord will free our hearts from fear. For some this is the fear of change and for others the fear that nothing will change. But 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.[1]'

Of course, we all have fears, but Aquinas taught us that courage is refusing to be enslaved by fear. May we always be sensitive to the fears of others, especially those with whom we disagree. 'Like Abraham, we leave not knowing where we are going (Hebrews 11.8). But if we free our hearts of fear, it will be wonderful beyond our imagination.

To guide us during this retreat, we shall meditate on the Transfiguration. This is the retreat Jesus gives to his closest disciples before they embark on the first synod in the life of the Church, when they walk together (syn-hodos) to Jerusalem. This retreat was needed because they were afraid of this journey they must make together. Until now they have wandered around the north of Israel. But at Caesarea Philippi, Peter confessed that Jesus was the Christ. Then Jesus invites them to go with him to Jerusalem, where he will suffer, die and be raised from the dead. They cannot accept this. Peter tries to prevent him. Jesus calls him 'Satan', 'enemy'. The little community is paralysed. So Jesus takes them up the mountain. Let us listen to St Mark's account of what happened.

'Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus.' (9.2 - 8).

This retreat gives them the courage and hope to set off on their journey. It does not always go well. They immediately fail to free the young lad from the evil spirit. They quarrel about who is the greatest. They misunderstand the Lord. But they are on their way with a fragile hope.

So we too prepare for our synod by going on retreat where, like the disciples, we learn to listen to the Lord. When we set off in three days' time, we shall often be like those disciples, and misunderstand each other and even quarrel. But the Lord will lead us onwards towards the death and resurrection of the Church. Let us ask the Lord to give us hope too: the hope that this synod will lead to a renewal of the Church and not division; the hope that we shall draw closer to each other as brothers and sisters. This is our hope not just for the Catholic Church but for all our baptised brothers and sisters. People talk of an 'ecumenical winter'. We hope for an ecumenical spring.

We also gather in hope for humanity. The future looks grim. Ecological catastrophe threatens the destruction of our home. Wildfires and floods have devoured the world this summer. Small islands begin to disappear under the sea. Millions of people are on the road fleeing from poverty and violence. Hundreds have drowned in the Mediterranean not far from here. Many parents refuse to bring children into a world that appears doomed. In China, young people wear T-shirts saying, 'We are the last generation'. Let us gather in hope for humanity, especially hope for the young.

I don't know how many parents we have at the Synod, but thank you for cherishing our future. After a difficult time in South Sudan, on the frontier with the Congo, I flew back to Britain beside a child who screamed without interruption for eight hours. I am ashamed to confess that I had murderous thoughts! But what more marvellous priestly ministry than to raise children and seek to open their minds and hearts to the promise of life. Parents and teachers are ministers of hope.

So we gather in hope for the Church and for humanity. But here is the difficulty: We have contradictory hopes! So how can we hope together? In this we are just like the disciples. The mother of James and John hoped that they would sit on the left and the right of the Lord in glory and so displace Peter; there is rivalry even within the closest circle of Jesus' friends. Judas probably hoped for a rebellion that would throw out the Romans. Some of them probably just hoped not to get killed. But they walk on together. So what shared hope can we have?

At the Last Supper, they received a hope beyond all that they could have imagined: the body of Christ and his blood, the new covenant, eternal life. In the light of this Eucharistic hope, all their conflicting hopes must have seemed as nothing, except to Judas who despaired. This is what St Paul called 'hoping against hope' (Romans 4.18), the hope that transcends all of our hopes.

We too are gathered like the disciples at the Last Supper, not as a political debating chamber competing to win. Our hope is Eucharistic. I first glimpsed what this means in Rwanda in 1993, when the troubles were just beginning. We had planned to visit our Dominican sisters in the north but the Belgian ambassador told us we should stay at home. The country was on fire. But I was young and foolish. Now I am old and foolish! That day we saw terrible things: A hospital ward filled with young children who had lost limbs through mines and bombs. One child has lost both legs, an arm, and an eye. His father sat beside him weeping. I went into the bush to weep, accompanied by two children each hopping on one leg.

We went to our sisters, but what could I say? In the face of such meaningless violence, one has no words. Then I remembered the words of the Lord, 'Do this in memory of me.' We are given something to do. At the Last Supper, there seemed to be no future. All that lay ahead apparently was failure, suffering and death. And in this darkest moment, Jesus made the most hopeful gesture in the history of the world: 'This is my body, given for you. This is my blood poured out for you'. This is the hope that calls us beyond all division.

One of my brothers in the east of Ukraine went to say Mass for some sisters who were moving. Everything was packed. All they could offer for the paten was a red plastic plate. He wrote: 'This was how God showed us that he was with us. 'You are sitting in a basement, in the damp and the mould, but I am with you - on a red child's plate, and not on a golden paten.'". This is the Eucharistic hope of this synodal journey. The Lord is with us.

The hope of the Eucharist is for what lies beyond our imagination/ The Book of Revelation: "Behold, an immense multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language. They all stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wrapped in white robes, and held palm branches in their hands. And they cried with a loud voice: 'Salvation belongs to our God, who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb'" (Rev 7:9f.). This is the hope that the disciples glimpsed on the mountain in the Transfigured Lord. It makes the conflict between our hopes seem minor, almost absurd. If we are truly on the way to the Kingdom, does it really matter whether you align yourselves with so-called traditionalists or progressives? Even the differences between Dominicans and Jesuits pall into insignificance! So let us listen to him, come down the mountain and keep on walking confidently. The greatest gifts will come from those with whom we disagree if we dare to listen to them.

During our Synodal journey, we may worry whether we are achieving anything. The media will probably decide that it was all a waste of time, just words. They will look for whether bold decisions are made on about four or five hot-button topics. But the disciples on that first synod, walking to Jerusalem, did not appear to achieve anything. They even tried to stop blind Bartimaeus being cured. They seemed useless. When the vast hungry crowd gathers around Jesus, the disciples ask the Lord 'How can one feed these people with bread here in the desert?'. Jesus asks them what they have, just seven loaves and a few fish (Mark 8.1 - 10). That is more than enough. If we give generously whatever we have in this Synod, that will be more than enough. The Lord of the harvest will provide.

Next to our priory in Baghdad is a home for abandoned children of all faiths, run by Mother Theresa's sisters. I shall never forget little Nura, about eight years old, born without arms or legs, feeding the younger children with a spoon in her mouth. One can wonder what is the point of small acts of goodness in a war zone. Do they make any difference? Aren't they just sticking plasters on a rotting body? We do small good deeds and let the Lord of the harvest give them the fruit he wishes. Today we gather on the feast of St Therese of Lisieux. She was born 150 years ago. She invites us to follow her 'little way' that leads to the Kingdom. She said, 'Remember that nothing is small in the eyes of God.'

In Auschwitz, Primo Levi, the Italian Jew, was given a share of bread every day by Lorenzo. He wrote: 'I believe it was really due to Lorenzo that I am alive today; and not so much for his material aid as for his having constantly reminded me by his presence, by his natural and plain manner of being good, that there still exists a world outside our own, something and someone still pure and whole, not corrupt, not savage…something difficult to define, a remote possibility of good but for which it was worth surviving. Thanks to Lorenzo I managed not to forget that I myself was a man.[2]' The small portion of bread saved his soul.

The last words of St David, the patron saint of Wales, were: 'Do simple things well.' Our hope is that whatever small deeds we do in this synod will bear fruit beyond our imagination. On that last night, Jesus gave himself to the disciples: 'I give myself to you'. During this Synod let us share not just our words and convictions, but ourselves, with Eucharistic generosity. If we open our hearts to each other, wonderful things will happen. The disciples gather all the fragments of bread and fish left over after the feeding of the five thousand. Nothing is lost.

A final point. Peter tries to stop Jesus going to Jerusalem, because it makes no sense to him. It is absurd to go there to be killed. Despair is not pessimism. It is the terror that nothing makes sense anymore. And hope is not optimism but the confidence that all that we live, all our confusion and pain, will somehow be seen to have meaning. We trust that, as St Paul says: 'Now I know in part; then I shall understand even as I have been understood.' (1 Corinthians 13.12).

Senseless violence destroys all meaning and kills our souls. When St Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador visited the scene of a massacre by the Salvadorian army, he came across the body of a young boy lying in a ditch: 'He was just a kid, at the bottom of the ditch, face up. You could see the bullet holes, the bruises left by the blows, the dried blood. His eyes were open, as if asking the reason for his death and not understanding[3].' Yet it was at this moment, he discovered the meaning of his life and the call to give it up. Yes, he was fearful to the end. His dead body was soaked in sweat as he looked at the man who was about to kill him. But he was no longer the slave of fear.

I hope that in this Synod, there will be no violence! But often we shall probably wonder what is the point of it all, but if we listen to Him and listen to each other, we shall come to understand the way forward. This is our Christian witness in a world which has often lost confidence that human existence has any meaning. Shakespeare's Macbeth asserts that life is but a tale, 'told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing[4].' But through our thinking and praying together about the great issues that the Church and the world faces, we witness to our hope in the Lord who grants meaning to every human life.

Every Christian school is a testimony to our hope in 'the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.' (John 1.5). In Baghdad the Dominicans founded an academy which has the motto, 'Here no questions are forbidden.' In the middle of a war zone, a school testifies to our hope that the nonsense of violence will not have the last word. Homs in Syria is a city largely destroyed by senseless violence. But there amid the ruins we discovered a Catholic school. Here the Dutch Jesuit, Franz van der Lugt, refused to leave despite death threats. He was shot sitting in the garden. But we found an old Egyptian Jesuit who was still teaching. He was training another generation of children to go on trying to make sense of their lives. That is what hope looks like.

So, my brothers and sisters, we may be divided by different hopes. But if we listen to the Lord and to each other, seeking to understand his will for the Church and the world, we shall be united in a hope that transcends our disagreements, and be touched by the one whom St Augustine called that 'beauty so ancient and so new…I tasted you and now hunger and thirst for you; you touched me, and I have burned for your peace.'[5] In the next session we shall look at another way in which we may be divided, by our understanding of what sort of home the Church is.

“The Lord’s voice resounding on the waters,

The Lord on the immensity of the waters,

The voice of the Lord full of power,

The voice of the Lord full of splendour.” (Psalm 29:3)

It has been a great joy for the Bishops of Oceania to gather in Fiji this week to pray for and consider our shared mission as the Chief Shepherds of our region. As we have prayed for our people, we have also been aware of the prayers they have been offering for our assembly and our ministry.

Our assembly has provided the opportunity for us to pray together, to build fraternal relationships, learn from one another and consider common pastoral challenges. The delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic meant we cherished this chance to gather in particular.

Our assembly focused on three themes: Care for the oceans; Becoming a more synodal Church; and Formation for mission. 

Oceania is a network of islands, large and small, rich in diversity. Our Oceanic identity and location provide the context in which we participate in God’s mission. In our region, the ecological crisis is an existential threat for our people and communities. It is experienced in sea level rise, the acidification of the oceans, droughts, floods and more frequent and more extreme weather events. 

Cardinal Michael Czerny SJ, Prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, presided at our opening Mass and gave the opening address for the assembly. We welcomed his emphasis on an integral approach to care for the wellbeing of people and all of creation. This affirms the cultural wisdom of our peoples. 

We recognise ecological conversion as an urgent mission priority not only for us, but also for the whole Church. Furthermore, we feel called to make our voices heard at the highest levels of government in our own countries, and also at the global level – in the Church and broader society– for the sake of our ocean home and its peoples.

The themes of becoming a more synodal Church and formation for mission were chosen by the Federation’s Executive following reflection on the Bishops Conferences’ syntheses for the diocesan stage of the international Synod for a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission. Although our region is very diverse in many ways, these two themes were important concerns in each of our Conferences.

Oceania is home to some of the world’s youngest local churches and also the oldest continuing culture in the world. We appreciate the complexity of the contemporary world that our people must negotiate. While being young may entail vulnerabilities, it also offers freshness and vitality. We learned that the youngest churches in our region have lessons to teach the more established churches about synodality and about maintaining the freshness of the encounter of the Gospel with local cultures and societies.

Accompanying our young people, in particular, in more courageous, creative and engaging ways is an essential aspect of mission for our Church in the context of our world today. In this year of World Youth Day, we encourage their participation in local and international celebrations. 

We shared our reflections on the many ways in which our churches are already living synodality, and how they can become more synodal. As always, our desire is to be communities of ever-closer followers of Jesus Christ, led by the Holy Spirit to the Kingdom of the Father. 

We recognise that as a pilgrim people we are always on a journey, and at times may make wrong turns. As we continue on the journey towards the Synod Assemblies in Rome, we place our trust in the mercy of God who will surely accompany us.

Indeed, significant time during our week was spent in anticipation of those Synod assemblies, as we prayed with and discerned our response to the Working Document for the Continental Stage of the Synod. Guided by the voices of the People of God in Oceania, we progressed the work already undertaken to ensure a distinctively Oceanic voice will continue to resonate through the Synod documents. Our response will be completed in coming weeks.

We were able to further our understanding of synodality through the experience of our gathering. We appreciated hearing of the Synod experience from other parts of the world through the presence and contribution of Sr Nathalie Becquart XMCJ, the Undersecretary of the General Secretariat of the Synod. As in Oceania itself, there is no “one size fits all” template. We felt affirmed in responding in our own way in our own context.

The nature of our context and the desire to become more synodal call for an integral formation for the entire People of God – lay, religious and clergy. Integral formation requires a holistic approach to the human person. It considers the physical, emotional, social, spiritual and intellectual dimensions of being human, and acknowledges that we are creatures within God’s creation. 

Formation is always at the service of mission, which has several dimensions: the witness of life; explicit proclamation of the Gospel; conversion; entry into and growth within the Christian community; and becoming an agent of evangelisation oneself. With Pope Francis, we affirm that the witness of life requires the defence of human life from conception to natural death; respect for all life; the promotion of justice and peace; and an ecological conversion that is personal, communal and structural.

As we walk together on the synodal path, our formation programs may need to give more emphasis to inclusion, transparency, accountability, intercultural competency, new theological methods and leading in a more participative and collaborative way. Our efforts should equip our Church to reach out and enflesh a culture of hospitality, encounter and dialogue in a world marked by both sin and grace on our pilgrim way to God’s kingdom.

We seek to become people who are grounded in Scripture and Tradition, and its interpretation in our cultural traditions. Lay people, whose mission is in the heart of the world, especially require formation in the Church’s tradition of teaching and acting on social issues and ecological crises – that is Catholic Social Teaching. Most of all, formation should mould us to be people who joyfully accept the invitation to participate in God’s mission.

We leave our gathering with this mission in ever sharper focus in our hearts and minds. We carry with us the hopes and dreams of our people, and of our precious region of Oceania.

St Peter Chane              Pray for Us

St Mary of the Cross MacKillop               Pray for Us

St Pedro Calungsod                     Pray for Us

Blessed Peter To Rot                   Pray for Us

Blessed Diego Luis de San Vitores                          Pray for Us

Blessed Giovanni Battista Mazzucconi                Pray for Us

European Continental Assembly: final remarks

We have experienced four days of listening and dialogue based on the resonances aroused by the Working Document for the Continental Stage within the Churches from which we come. As the European Continental Assembly, we realise that we have had a profoundly spiritual experience through the synodal method.

We give thanks to the Spirit who guided us for the gift we received and here we wish to share it. We deepened the insights that the ecclesial communities of our continent have gained through the synodal process, as well as the tensions and questions that the European Churches are facing[1]. Above all, we once again felt the pain of the wounds that mark our recent history, starting with those that the Church has inflicted through the abuses perpetrated by people who were performing an ecclesial ministry or office. We have mentioned several times the ruthless violence of the aggression war disfiguring Ukraine. We thought about the victims of the earthquake that devastated Turkey and Syria.

Our work has been rich and exciting, though not without its problems and difficulties. It has allowed us to look into the eyes of the Church in Europe, with all the treasures of the two great Latin and Eastern traditions that make it up. With an awareness that has grown over the course of the Assembly, we feel today that we can affirm that our Church is beautiful, showing a variety that is also our wealth. We feel that we love her even more deeply, in spite of the wounds she has inflicted, for which she needs to ask forgiveness in order to be able to move on to reconciliation, the healing of memory and the welcoming of the wounded. We are convinced that these sentiments also fill the hearts of all the people who have been involved in the journey of Synod 2021-2024 since September 2021.

Throughout the days of the Assembly, we went through a spiritual experience that it is possible to meet, listen to each other and dialogue starting from our differences and beyond the many obstacles, walls and barriers that our history puts in our way. We need to love the variety within our Church and support each other in mutual esteem, strengthened by our faith in the Lord and the power of his Spirit.

This is why we wish to continue walking in a synodal style: more than a methodology, we consider it a way of life of our Church, of communal discernment and of discernment of the signs of the times. Concretely, we want this Continental Assembly not to remain an isolated experience, but to become a periodic appointment, based on the general adoption of the synodal method that permeates all our structures and procedures on all levels. In this style, it will be possible to address the issues on which our efforts need to mature and intensify: the accompaniment of the wounded, the ‘protagonism’ of young people and women, the learning from marginalised people, etc.

The synodal style also allows us to address tensions from a missionary perspective, without being paralysed by fear, but drawing from them the energy to continue along the way. Two in particular have emerged in our work. The first encourages unity in diversity, escaping the temptation of uniformity. The second links the readiness to welcome as a witness to the Father's unconditional love for his children with the courage to proclaim the truth of the Gospel in its entirety: it is God who promises “Love and truth will meet” (Ps 85:11).

We know that all this is possible because we have experienced it during this Assembly, but even more because the life of the Churches from which we come bears witness to it. We are thinking here in particular of ecumenical dialogue, which have echoed strongly in our work, and also of inter-religious dialogue. But above all, we believe that it is possible because grace is involved: building an increasingly synodal Church is a way to concretely implement the equality in dignity of all the members of the Church, founded in baptism. It configures us as children of God and members of the body of Christ, co-responsible for the unique mission of evangelisation entrusted by the Lord to his Church.

We are confident that the continuation of Synod 2021-2024 can support and accompany us, in particular by addressing at the level of the Synodal Assembly some priorities:

-          deepen the practice, theology and hermeneutics of synodality. We have to rediscover something that is ancient, belongs to the nature of the Church, and is always new. This is a task for us. We are taking the first steps on a path that opens up as we go along it;

-          address the question of an all ministerial Church, as the horizon of a reflection on charisms and ministries (ordained and non-ordained) and the relationships between them;

-          explore the forms of a synodal exercise of authority, i.e. the service of accompanying the community and safeguarding unity;

-          clarify criteria for discernment on the synodal process and which decisions belong on which level, from the local to the universal.

-          take concrete and courageous decisions on the role of women within the Church and on their greater involvement at all levels, also in decision-making and decision-taking processes;

-          consider the tensions around the liturgy, so as to synodally re-understand Eucharist as the source of communion;

-          foster the formation to synodality of the whole People of God, with particular regard to the discernment of the signs of the times with a view to carrying out the common mission;

-          renew a lively sense of mission, bridging the gap between faith and culture to bring the Gospel back to people's feelings, finding a language capable of articulating tradition and aggiornamento, but above all, walking with people rather than talking about them or to them. The Spirit asks us to listen to the cry of the poor and the earth in Europe, and in particular the desperate cry of the victims of war who demand a just peace.

Loving the Church, the richness of its diversity, is not a form of sentimentalism for its own sake. The Church is beautiful because the Lord wants her to be so in view of the task he has entrusted to her: to proclaim the Gospel and invite all women and men to enter into the dynamic of communion, participation and mission that constitutes her raison d'être, animated by the perennial vitality of the Spirit. To build our European Church means then to renew our commitment to carry out this mission, even on our continent, in a culture marked by the many diversities we know.

We entrust the continuation of our Synodal journey to the Patron Saints and martyrs of Europe!

Adsumus Sancte Spiritus!

Process

Due to the short time available to consult about the Document of the Continental Stage (DCS), and the desire to have as many voices as possible heard across the diocese, as well as providing the complete text and facilities for responding to the three questions which had been raised, a precis (two sides of A4) was circulated to all parishes, together with simplified versions of the three questions. Some parishioners engaged with the full DCS whereas the majority read through the precis and responded to the three questions (slightly simplified versions of the questions found in paragraph 106 pf the DCS) at the end of the precis. Parishes as well as chaplaincies and Religious communities were asked for their responses, and were encouraged as far as possible to seek the views of those wider parish or chaplaincy community. 

In some cases responses were received from individuals, some from families, some from parishes or deaneries, and a collective response from the Religious was received. Between these various modes of consultation, and the forms which were available in paper and on-line formats, 101 responses have been received. 

After having read and prayed with the DCS, which intuitions resonate most strongly with the lived experiences and realities of the Church in your continent? 

Which experiences are new, or illuminating to you? 

The overwhelming majority of responses focused on the current downturn in Mass attendance and the falling and aging numbers of parishioners; some addressed this situation overtly but many more implied this as the foundation by the tone of their responses. There was a great echo of paragraph 32, that the Church should be (or become) more welcoming; this was often linked to paragraphs 38, that the Church should listen to those who feel neglected and excluded; and to paragraph 57, concerning communion, participation, and co-responsibility. The need to welcome, encourage, and accept young people within the Church was often cited as being a priority, and paragraph 35 found an echo in many of the responses ranging from a need for more children’s liturgy groups during Mass to the ways in which catechesis and sacramental programmes are delivered for those who are in a time of preparation. One respondent said that ‘the Catholic Church is dying on its feet – let’s evangelise through our young people’. 

A renewal of ecumenical links and outreach, echoing the sentiments of paragraph 48, was an important issue for a good number of responses, including the recognition that not only does ecumenical outreach increase the numbers of individuals involved, but also makes a more credible witness in the contemporary (often unbelieving) world. One response suggested that there is ‘little enthusiasm for Christian Unity Week’, whereas another suggested that we might ‘learn to walk with others from different Christian denominations’.

 Paragraph 58, to move beyond clericalism, was reflected in many of the responses, with people recognising a desire to empower the laity to undertake more roles within the parish and the Church in general, recognising the God-given talents which often aren’t fully utilised and which could be put at the service of the Church. “Women’s voices must be called forth and heard’ is a typical response to this sentiment, which also seems to link to paragraph 73, considering the current structures and institutions within the Church. This was felt by some to be a place where there was an urgent need for renewal. Sometimes this was expressed in the form of more consultation, indeed more synodality at all levels within the decision-making processes of the Church. At other times this paragraph was reflected in simple changes desired in parishes, such as better (more transparent, more timely, more accessible) communication, or the establishment of parish pastoral councils. 

Some elements which were mentioned in responses but in smaller numbers included the desire for deeper formation of seminarians so that they were more able to articulate the truths of the faith in what they preached; they should be ‘governed by quality teaching, training, and formation’. Another response recognised the beauty of the Latin liturgy (alluding to the extraordinary form) which isn’t often seen, but has a rich tradition within the Church. Likewise the need to speak strongly on ethical matters, such as the protection of the sanctity of life (both in preaching and in practical action), or the importance of the environment, were highlighted by some respondents. A few respondents write about how the Church should show leadership in political matters, such as the provision of warm spaces to assist those in the current cost-of-living crisis, recognising the possibility of the Church in not only speaking truth to power, but actively assisting those who find themselves in particular need. 

The place of the Eucharist, as the source and summit of the community and found in paragraph 89, was seen by some to be vital to each community (such that churches shouldn’t be closed, or parishes merged), but others felt that a more diverse range of liturgies and styles of worship would be a way in which the Church could be more appealing and to a wider audience. 

After having read and prayed with the DCS, what substantial tensions or divergences emerge as particularly important in your continent’s perspective? 

Consequently, what are the questions or issues that should be addressed and considered in the next steps of the process? 

Many responses called for an inclusion of all people into the Church, regardless of their state of life (for example welcoming those in second marriages, actively in gay relationship), level of belief or previous association with the Church (actively seeking those who have been hurt and have left the Church). ‘Has the person in the pew been given a voice’ is typical of this thought; and others have encouraged moving further, outside of the Church, into the margins of society and throughout the world. Means of becoming more welcoming include a desire not to preach or speak about sin or traditional Church disciplines; to make the Mass simpler to understand, and more accessible through the use of familiar hymns; as well as other forms of liturgy and prayer; to become more aware of each other within a parish context. 

There was a recognition that the youth of the Church is a vital component, often missing from parish life, and that without it the Church faces a challenging future. The Church should be ‘providing opportunities for encounter with authentic witness [for young people] who are unafraid to commit, and risk, their lives for Christ.’ Some examples of best practice have been shown, as well as a desire to remove that which is perceived as being old-fashioned, outdated, and irrelevant to the contemporary era, and so (presumably) alien to the lives which young people lead. 

Consideration of the structures within the Church was an area addressed by many respondents. Alongside those roles currently available to the laity was a recognition that administration should be removed from the clergy (priests especially) so as to free them to be involved in the sacramental and pastoral life of the parish. Trained administrators who can take the burden from priests and allow them time to provide for the sacraments and pastoral encounters is vital. Enhanced formation for priests found an echo here, especially in the desire for ‘better’ homilies, often defined as being more relevant, simpler, shorter, more interesting, containing Church teaching, and rooted in the scriptures heard at Mass: ‘homilies need to have some relevance to people’s lives and experiences’. Alongside this was the thought, often given in various ways, that the clergy in general, and the priesthood in particular, should be opened to a wider section of people than is currently the case (married men, and in some cases women). Priests, whoever they are, should be more open to listening, to working collaboratively, to taking on board criticism, and to seeing themselves as being servants after the model of the Good Shepherd, rather than being (perceived) as better than others, and ministering only to those who are already worthy. 

Perhaps the most prevalent response to the document was in light of paragraph 60, and a desire to rethink women’s participation in the life of the Church. This sentiment was expressed in various ways, sometimes focusing more on the ways in which women’s gifts and talents could be better utilised in the Church; one respondent acknowledged that women usually make better listeners, and this could be a specific role; another wished the Church to ‘invite women who are Catholic scholars to preach as a first step’. But the greater emphasis was on the ordination of women, so that they might have a definite place of authority within the Church, whether as deacons or as priests. There was a clear tension here between the views that priests (as currently understood) should be removed from much of the administrative (and so leadership) roles, and concentrate on the sacramental and pastoral, rather than leadership, functions of the parish; whilst at the same time women should be ordained to the priesthood so that they would have a voice heard within the Church’s hierarchical structures in a way which isn’t the case currently. 

Looking at what emerges from the previous two questions, what are the priorities, recurring themes and calls to action that can be shared with other local Churches around the world and discussed during the First Session of the Synodal Assembly in October 2023? 

Almost all the responses which indicated a way forward spoke of the need for change, and usually along the lines of reversing those elements which they felt were currently out of step with contemporary society (largely as given in the forgoing paragraphs) such that the Church would be more relevant in the world. The removal of tensions within the Church such that all feel welcome, the growing of attendance at Mass and in parishes, and the relevance of the Church in the modern world, might be areas to share with other local Churches. 

A development of the ways in which authority is used within the Church would be something to consider in the light of the responses of other local Churches.  One comment asks about the ‘possibility for women to preach in parish settings’; another wishes to ‘embrace women and men as equal partners’. An openness to all-comers is significant for many respondents, with one typical comment being that consideration should be given to ‘show support and acceptance for those who feel unwelcomed by the Church with official statements’. Overall there is a desire to grow, ‘in faith, hope and charity’, that we might have a ‘missionary approach in the Western world’. 

There is a desire for the renewal of the Church so that it may be, more clearly, a loving mother who cares for all her children and wishes to draw them all closer to her. Implicit in this is a desire to become a more welcoming and inclusive Church and to be more outward facing, more missionary. There is a recognition that we want others to know the difference that opening our hearts to God’s love can make to their lives. This means we must bear clearer witness to this in the way we live our lives and in how we care for others, especially those who may be on the margins of society. May the Synod process lead to a deepening of faith, a greater confidence in speaking about it to others, and a clearer witness to the living out of our faith in daily life.

‘Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.’ Ps 37:4

Seeking Our Hearts’ Desire

A Reflection from the Bishops of England and Wales following the  compilation of the Synodal National Synthesis Document 

With thankful hearts

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as your bishops we were pleased to receive recently the National Synthesis Document which collates the fruit of our individual diocesan synodal processes from across the Church in England and Wales. We want to express our sincere gratitude to everyone who took part in sharing, listening and discerning, in response to Pope Francis’ call that we become ‘experts in the art of encounter'1.  Our National Synthesis Document will now go forward, together with this reflection, to form part of the European  continental synodal phase. This will, in turn, then contribute to the Synod of Bishops due to  take place in Rome in October 2023. 

Having considered carefully the Synthesis, we offer here some initial reflections in the light of our shared faith in Christ and our shared belonging to his Church. We do so grateful for the enthusiasm and joy which, as bishops, we see and experience constantly in our parish communities. We thank our laity, clergy, and religious for their commitment and dedication. With you we share a deep desire that the Church be at the heart of our world, radiating to all the love and mercy of Jesus Christ.

Signs of the times echoed in our hearts

When Pope St John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council he called the Church to renewed confidence in the Lord Jesus as Saviour. He invited us to discern ‘the signs of the times' 2, thereby participating in the Church’s responsibility to ‘scrutinise’ what happens in our world through the lens of the Gospel 3.  

What are the ‘joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties’ of our world and society today?  Among the good wheat, we know there are weeds too which choke the harvest God intends for all people 4. For us to reap a good harvest, we know, for example, that we have a duty to defend human life and human rights, to rediscover the central value of marriage and family life, to eliminate injustice and to address the threat of climate catastrophe. We know, too, that the reality of warfare, hostility towards refugees and environmental recklessness are among the destructive forces at work in our world. Similarly, the rising costs of living, food poverty, homelessness and challenges to mental health are just some of the issues which impact the wellbeing of so many. 

In the synod responses, among the tensions and tragedies, we have also found so many signs of hope. They give witness that the needs of people today elicit compassionate responses of remarkable generosity. The Church plays her part by putting the Gospel into practical, loving action towards the poorest and the weakest. It is clear that nothing genuinely human – whether it be a cause of rejoicing or sadness - fails to echo in our hearts as the People of God, united in Christ and led by the Holy Spirit in our journey to the Kingdom of the Father 5.

The bishop’s discernment of heart

Called together to be the Body of Christ we are privileged to be ‘a people made one with the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’ 6.  The Church has a human reality, but only ‘with the eyes of faith’ can we see her spiritual reality as the ‘bearer of divine life' 7.  In every diocese, the unity of the Church is guaranteed through the bond of communion with the bishop, joined in apostolic faith with the successor of Peter. 

In every diocesan synodal process the bishop is charged with discerning, with a ‘shepherd’s heart,’ the next steps on the pathway of communion, participation and mission. The giftedness of the whole People of God is taught clearly by the Church. In this giftedness, the bishop has a particular role and responsibility: ‘those who have charge over the Church should judge the genuineness and proper use of these gifts, through their office … to test all things and hold fast to what is good’8. Quoting Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis affirms it is through ‘the Apostolic College, today the Bishops …… that the Lord reaches souls, instructs, guards and guides them’9. The bishop listens so as to teach and preach at this particular time and in this particular place.

Hearts speaking to hearts

There are communal aspects of our individual diocesan syntheses which are likely to be prominent in our continued synodal conversations. Essential will be trying to engage the ninety percent who attend Sunday Mass but have not yet participated in any process.   Having heard what has been said so far, we note that some voices may be absent, not least, the distinctive voice of different ethnic communities who enrich many parishes in the Church in England and Wales. 

Noticeable across all responses is the concern to renew the missionary dynamism of the Church at local level, and to provide increased opportunities for lay formation in the faith.  Integral to this is greater consideration of how the gifts of all the baptised are recognised and harnessed. This is vital for mission-orientated pastoral planning and practice which values and utilises the gifts of women especially, together with other lay professional competences and experiences. 

A synodal ethos will enhance transparent and collaborative decision-making, listening out, in particular, for those who might have a ‘small voice.’ It seeks to hear the contribution of  everyone, not least the younger and older members of our communities and people with  disabilities. 

Hearing the broken hearted

Ongoing discernment will need to reflect further on the hurt and pain voiced as part of this first stage of our synodal journey. Some have expressed their concerns about how power is exercised in the Church. Others have spoken of the devastating impact of clerical sexual abuse on survivors and within the wider Church.  

The voices of those who feel marginalised or unwelcome because of their marital situation, sexual orientation or gender identity have been raised and heard sincerely. Equally, others who feel excluded from the life of the Church, or identify as being on the peripheries, have not been forgotten in our synodal process of encounter. 

In a different sense, the synod responses showed appreciation for our continued dialogue with other Christians and people of different religious traditions, together with a desire for the Church to be more present in, and to, our society and culture. 

Reflecting on all these synodal conversations has heightened the sense of our shared need to value everyone who enriches our Church by their presence. Similarly, we understand the need to work for healing and reconciliation, modelled on Christ himself who loves without limit. 

The journeying of hearts together

Our faith is born from the powerful truth that God became flesh in Christ and dwelt among us 10. In his ministry the Lord Jesus witnessed to the importance of a personal encounter with him, the call to conversion, and the necessity of journeying alongside others, ‘dwelling’ with them as we walk together on the road 11. To be a disciple of Jesus Christ is to have an expansive heart, open to loving Christ and our neighbour. Discipleship is never individualistic, but inherently the way of companionship. This is often expressed as the ‘spirituality of accompaniment’- travelling with those who share our lives: in our families, our parishes, and our local and global communities. 

Accompaniment is especially important for those who experience hurt, pain and a sense of distance or exclusion from the life of the Church. Pope Francis speaks of the ‘art of accompaniment,’ which ‘must be steady and reassuring, reflecting our closeness and our compassionate gaze which also heals, liberates and encourages growth in the Christian life’12. Learning to accompany others is a disposition, a skill of the heart, which we wish to develop in our communities in the pastoral service of others.

Forming hearts for Christ

Formation in our Catholic faith is a significant theme identified consistently in diocesan synodal conversations. Within a deepening relationship with the Lord Jesus, and a greater familiarity with Sacred Scripture, we can all understand better what the Church teaches and why. We echo strongly the desire expressed for a schooling in prayer, spirituality and liturgy which draws from the wellsprings of salvation. The formation of all the People of God, in particular parents, catechists and teachers, contributes to ‘witnessing to an encounter that keeps the focus on Jesus Christ, the Son of God, incarnate in the history of humanity, in order to bring to fulfilment the revelation of the Father’s saving love’13. The more we are formed in the love of Christ the better equipped we are to be the love of Christ to and for others. This is especially so as we look to greater clergy and lay collaboration in serving the Church’s missionary mandate.

Important here too are recent developments, aimed at both children and adults, relating to liturgical formation in Catholic schools in our countries. Furthermore, the call to institute formally laymen and laywomen as Catechists, Acolytes and Lectors offers a rich  opportunity for new formational ministries.

Missionary hearted discipleship 

In making our journey together in Christ, everyone needs a strong and personal sense of being called to holiness. This ‘universal call’ has to be rooted deeply in conversion of life  and apostolic service. An expanding interior spiritual life inspires our mission to proclaim Christ to others. This mission is to be rooted in the heart of every disciple and anchored firmly in the heart of the local Church so that we grow as a community of missionary disciples. Together we will discern what new evangelising priorities need to be undertaken. 

Our recent experience of the pandemic has revealed a deep yearning for togetherness and connectivity, in short for human and spiritual communion. One of the blessings during the crisis was the way parishes reached out to those in need, giving eloquent expression to the maxim that ‘communion is for mission.’ This attitude characterises and unifies the formation which needs to accompany our ongoing synodal journey. 

Love at the heart of the Church

St Therese of Lisieux captured something of everyone’s missionary discipleship when she spoke of being ‘love at the heart of the Church.’ Our synodal conversations have increased this desire through an emphasis on welcome, evangelisation and outreach. Every human family is marked by failure and the human family of the Church needs to learn how Christ’s love and mercy can be expressed and offered, faithfully and consistently, today. Through our diocesan listening we heard the crucial call for the Church’s mission and ministry to  pulse with the heartbeat of Christ’s merciful love. The loving and merciful nurturing of families, both human and spiritual, needs always to be uppermost in the Church’s mind and heart.

 ‘Christ yesterday and today…’ we proclaim at the Easer Vigil, ‘…all time belongs to him, and all the ages.’ We are a people of the Resurrection and therefore of hopefulness and rejoicing. Pope Francis encourages us to ‘spend time with the future,’ looking forward with a vision ‘filled with the joy of the Gospel' 14.  We have begun a synodal process in our dioceses. We have stepped out on a journey. Our hearts have been awakened. We must now keep walking in attentive faith, seeking to recognise Christ more clearly as our way to truth  and life. Together, we desire to encounter anew the risen Lord among us, he who sets our hearts ablaze.

The 60th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council is a moment of particular grace also for the Synod, which represents a fruit of that ecumenical assembly, indeed one of its "most precious legacies" (Francis, Apostolic Constitution Episcopalis Communio, Sept. 15, 2018, 1). The Synodus Episoporum, in fact, was instituted by St. Paul VI at the beginning of the fourth and final period of the Council (Sept. 15, 1965), responding to requests made by many council fathers.

The purpose of the Synod was and remains to prolong, in the life and mission of the Church, the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, as well as to foster in the People of God the living appropriation of its teaching, in the awareness that that Council represented "the great grace from which the Church has benefited in the 20th century" (John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Novo millennio ineunte, Jan. 6, 2001, 57). This task is far from being completed since the reception of the conciliar magisterium is an ongoing process; in some respects it is still in its infancy.

Throughout these decades, the Synod has constantly placed itself at the service of the Council, contributing for its part to renewing the face of the Church, in ever deeper fidelity to Sacred Scripture and living Tradition and in attentive listening to the signs of the times. Its Assemblies - Ordinary General, Extraordinary General and Special – have been permeated, in its own way, by the life-giving sustenance provided by the Council. From time to time, these Assemblies have deepened this same teaching, disclosed its potential in the face of new scenarios, and fostered inculturation among peoples.

The synodal process currently underway, dedicated to "Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church," is also within the Council's wake. The concept of “Synodality” is found throughout the Council, even though this term (only recently coined) is not found expressly in the documents of the ecumenical assembly. The magna charta of Synod 2021-2023 is the Council's doctrine on the Church, particularly its theology of the People of God, a People whose "condition is the dignity and freedom of the children of God, in whose heart the Holy Spirit dwells as in a temple" (Lumen Gentium 9).

After all, the three terms "communion, participation and mission" which Pope Francis included in the very title of the synodal journey as key words, are eminently conciliar words. The Church that we are called to dream and build is a community of women and men drawn together in communion by the one faith, our common Baptism and the same Eucharist, in the image of God the Trinity: women and men who together, in the diversity of ministries and charisms received, actively participate in the establishment of the Kingdom of God, with the missionary impetus of bringing to all the joyful witness of Christ, the only Saviour of the world.

Even before the Church embarked on this synodal journey, Benedict XVI had already affirmed that the "synodal dimension is constitutive of the Church: it consists of a coming together of every people and culture in order that they become one in Christ and walk together, following him, who said: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (Jn 14: 6)" (Angelus, Oct. 5, 2008). In a similar way, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Synod’s establishment, Pope Francis asserted that the path of synodality, "a constitutive dimension of the Church" and that it "is the path that God expects from the Church of the third millennium" (Oct. 17, 2015).

Vatican City, 10 October 202

One year from the opening of the 2021-2023 Synodal Process

Welcome and Opening Prayer 

Karen Foong, Diocesan Director for Ongoing Formation, welcomed all present and especially Father James Hanvey SJ, the keynote speaker. Karen noted the joy of having both laity and clergy coming together for this Ongoing Formation event, recognising that this is a fruit of the Synod, and something which has been spoken of in the Synodal listening and discussions. 

The Conference began with praying the Synod Prayer. 

Reverend Dr James Hanvey SJ - Dimensions 

Some of the material this evening comes from the soon-to-be-published ‘Spirituality in Synodality’ document, which will be on-line later this week. 

Spirituality is at the core of Synodality. Where is the Diocese of Nottingham in this synodal process? What are the features which have surprised, or consoled us? Our diocesan document gives the impression of a strong and lively Church. A wonderful commitment, and a deep love of the Church. There is also a longing for the Church to be more than we are presently. We are on a journey, and some people are uneasy about this, perhaps even about Pope Francis, since he comes from a South American culture which has lived Synodality for the last 40 years. He is calling us to become a genuinely missionary Church. 

Seeking the fruits of renewal, of healing, and of mission. The Church has been discredited in the secular world, but we are called not to ‘buy-into’ this secular agenda. Is God ever absent? No – God is also at work in the secular, and there are no no-go areas for God. And so part of the challenge of mission is to hear where God is unexpectedly found. This calls us to a real change, to a systemic change. There is a grace of new beginnings in this, as the Church manages to grow in these new contexts. We are also called to rediscover the mysteries of the uniqueness of the Church, more than simply an institution (which might be all that is recognised by society); the living body of Christ. We might wish to recover the image of the mystical body of Christ, and thus at the service of humanity. We are called to recognise what it is to be deeply human, and none other than the Church has the ability to do this. 

What’s new on the Synodal path? Firstly that the Synodal Church is alive in the Trinity, and is alive in the world. Synodality is fundamental to the life and the being of the Church. The Church is also vulnerable; we are being called to embrace this, in joy. The Church as the People of God, founded in baptism, is another gift in the Synod which we are being called to re-recognise. Each baptised person is called to help to rebuild up the Church in the world, in union with one another, in harmony and not in competition with one another. The way into this Synodality is by living in the Spirit, through prayer, through the Sacraments. In this we are called to attend to the people on the margins: to see them first and foremost (which is counter-cultural), and then to recognise the pain and the disjointedness. There are margins in the Church too. 

The Theological, the Practical, and the Spiritual. 

One of the great things about Synodality is that it can’t be done by deduction – it has to be learned by doing, by induction, not by deduction. The closer we come to Christ, the closer we come to our own woundedness, and see our vulnerability, which we can then embrace. We come closer to Christ and to come another in this vulnerability, both physically, and especially spiritually. We can still be faithful in this. We have a Church which needs forgiveness, and we need this to be heard in society too, for the Church to live forgiveness and reconciliation, and then we can live in the world, for one another. 

Ideas of Conversion 

We need to live in a process of conversion in order to keep rediscovering Christ. We don’t put Christ into a box, or a bottle, but see that constant renewal in our relationship with Christ. There is always the possibility of a new beginning, natalism (from Saint Augustine), and this is a gift that we bring. We recognise too change that is adaptive and change that istechnical. The adaptive change is the one which changes our way of life; thee technical change might be baptism, but the adaptive change is the living out of the Christian way of life. The Church is at a point where something more than a technical change is necessary. But we can’t not change if we life in Christ. 

There can be a failure in formation, not building on the graces which we have been given. Office is a charism, and not simply a power-structure (in the secular world): the Office of the Pope is to empower us all, for example. We have to be careful of neo-nationalism, and not having simply different ways of being in different countries, different places: we have to attend to the universality of the Church, the deep coming-together. We are also coming out of an ultra-montane Church, which was comforting, but had an emphasis on bishops and the Pope. We mustn’t be afraid of the journey we are on. 

We need a spirituality to deepen our Church, our lives. There is a centrality to reading and praying scripture (see the Synodal document about praying with scripture). Liturgy is also central, since we pray when we communicate with God. A contemplative Church; not a nostalgic Church, afraid of the future, and not seeking to move forward. A ‘memory’ Church is one which remembers what God has done, and in what God continues to do – and this leads to witness. What is the quality of our daily lives, living out our lives in our own communities? This is life-giving, and gives us the promise of eternal life. 

Those who are poor, the Anawim. Our Lady, the widow who gives her mite. Such people are in our parishes, are in the world around us. There are the poor in so many cultures, on the margins, opening ourselves to Christ. We need to listen to the heart which understands; listen with heart, which is knowledge and teaches understanding. We have to recognise that there is more than simply the intellectual Church, but also the hart-centred Church. God listens to the silence in our lives, as well as the ways in which we speak and communicate. 

Discernment is not simply making a good decision, weighing the pros and cons. It is finding where God wants me to be; a good decision yes, but a recognition of God’s will. The Garden of Gethsemane is the deepest discernment. Discernment is an ecclesial act, not a personal act. I need the prayers of the Community around me, not simply on my own. Discernment is an action across all religions; in different ways there is a mechanism for listening, in coming to a place of peace and harmony between different people and communities, but who wish to travel together in whatever ways are good. Decisions can have an impact not only on each other, but also on nature, on ecology, on the whole of God’s creation. 

Where are we not free? We have prejudices, and personal hobby-horses. We can’t discern from a negative place; we have to recognise, in thanksgiving, the gifts we have received from God, in joy. Each person has gifts and talents to give, and to share with the community. From this place there can be a movement in to true discernment. Using the freedom we have been given by God we look to find the place God wants me to be, and the people with whom God wishes m to be. We need the collective, the community, to keep each other faithful, in tune with one another. 

What do we do when we have tensions, divisions? This comes about when someone sees a situation differently from me; a different way of doing things, of seeing things, of hearing things. We have to discern this different, without a threat, but rather as a point of growth. Conflict can be destructive (repression, etc) but can be something which allows for building up; good conflict which leads to new life. If we are seeking something bigger than both of us then we have to move beyond compromise, to see that the whole is truly bigger than the parts, a complete commitment. The Holy Spirit comes in here, allowing us to be heard and to be wholly present. We have to be open to recognise one another. 

Redeeming Power 

This is both the redemption of power, but also using power to redeem. We have to have power for one another, a service in love, and not to have power over one another. The power to let-go, and to be powerless. Not to pick up the sword and turn to the world’s way (as in the Garden of Gethsemane), but rather as God does, choosing righteousness and humility, not to impose but to accept. This can be subversive – by loving, and not by power. 

The Seven Tasks of Leadership for a Synodal Church 

• The leader needs to articulate the reality for the community 

• We need to be able to carry the pain (such as comes from the abuse crisis in the Church) 

• To hold the vision 

• To legitimate creativity, to encourage, to bless others, to not see others’ gifts and talents as a threat 

• To enact values, a symbolic praxis 

• Leadership which allows leadership 

• To free the Community to take the risk 

The Synodal Church is a disciple Church in communion one with another. 

We are the prophets of a Church, a future, not our own. 

Feedback from the Tables 

There was an opportunity to feedback from the conversations on each table. Some highlights are: 

• Insularity and inertia have been hallmarks of the parish experience in one place. We could look happy in church. There is insularity in the myriad ministries. 

• The idea of listening to each other is important, and this is novel for some of us. 

• Building relationships, listening to each other, taking time over a decision can be very time-consuming. There can be a tension in this decision-making. Should we be more patient in our decision-making? 

• The pain of abuse scandals, and the response of society, might be painful, but should still be embraced and worked-through. • We are all in this together, in the Church, we all have gifts to offer in the service of the Church. 

• Faith-formation is ‘hung’ on sacraments, and there is a good offering from the diocese as to what’s on offer. 

Responses from the Pledges in the February Synodal Evening Prayer 

Leicester Deanery 

Leicester Deanery believes that we are all made in the image of God and likeness. We believe that the church is a safe refuge for all, accommodating both the place for saints, sinners, the strong, weak, and vulnerable. As a result, the responses from the synodal questionnaires are hugely challenging and re-reiterate the need for the common good of all. In a vastly changing world, the emphasis on common humanity and the basic elements of human dignity must not be forgotten. We are a people of God, or so we should be. 

Jesus welcomed sinners and fed a great multitude of people. Our church should be able to reflect that humanness taught by Jesus. Our dreams are many, yet it is our dream that the church extends huge open arms to peoples from all works of life and nationalities, the defenceless, the despised and the outcast. The Gospel of Jesus should be preached by our resolve to follow his paths. The Synodal discussions have opened up the yearnings of the people across the deanery. There are anticipations and some aspects of apprehensions. The voices of the school children are loud and clear. 

Amongst others, they wonder if there is a place for them in the church, non-least the youth. That the church needs to be a place where children are happy and welcomed. 

Whilst respecting different cultures and nationalities, we must unite as one. Parishioners need to realise that the parish cannot run itself, it needs people to run various activities, attend meetings, help to achieve maintenance needs and be part of the sacramental life providing training for the lay faithful to help with the proper running of the church. Inclusivity is our catch phrase. 

Fenland Deanery 

Spalding and Holbeach parishes have taken a more practical approach to the Pope’s initiative, to take a more active part in the local community. The Church should be more outward-facing and inclusive. A pledge is being made to serve the people of South Holland area, brought to the fore in 2018 by the purchase of a local unused Methodist church. There is an outreach initiative to provide services to people in the local community; after a covid-pause the projects are beginning, in Project Saint Thomas, being Hub In – Hub Out. There has been a soft launch with some good feedback (positive and more challenging), with a formal launch this Saturday. This is a way of re-engaging with parishioners, and engaging afresh with the local community, with people of faith or no faith, with Catholics returning or those who have never been in church before. An open day this coming Saturday will be a chance to be more outward facing. 

Grantham Deanery 

A couple of areas were identified which were common across the deanery – adult formation, and outreach to those on the margins. Bishop Barron’s material has been used and circulated around the parish (Oakham and Exton) to help people, in an interactive fashion, to engage, or re-engage. These resources have been used with those preparing for sacraments too. A Family Mass has been established to encourage younger people to come to Mass; social activities have been recommenced too, along with parish groups to help those who might need help, such as a bereavement group. 

Lindsey Deanery 

Social and environmental justice has been part of the Synodal response, as well as increased outreach to young people. A new parish image and mission statement for one of the parishes (Holy Trinity) has been established, as well as integrating these into the work of the Synod. Local and national charities are being assisted (such as the port chaplaincy, and Safe Families for Children), showing the outreach of the parish. Environmental issues are being addressed in imaginative ways, such as the establishment of hives of bees which will be launched on Trinity Sunday. 

Catechetical work with parents, for them to work with their children, is another way in which the faith can be transmitted not only to young people, but to the families in which they live. Confirmation preparation will be undertaken by young people too, allowing a sharing of the fruits from one generation to another. 

Sherwood Deanery 

The deanery of large and mighty oaks might have been sleeping during the covid time, but ideas are beginning to emerge now, with ideas coming to the fore, and groups in each parish bringing to fruition ideas about communion and mission. Stronger links between parishes and schools are being developed with three of the primary schools. Could a paid catechetical post be created to assist with this work? In two of the parish groupings the Synodal process is being used to help these groupings come together as new parishes. There is definite work to facilitate gatherings with contemplative listening, and this has been undertaken to hold in tension participation and mission, and so grow in mission. 

Nottingham Deanery 

Two priorities in one parish (East Nottingham) are looking at adult formation and the preparation of young people – and so work is being done to bring more focus into this work in the parish. A youth worker in the deanery (or in a cluster of parishes) might be a way of re-engaging with young people too. 

A practical aspect of parish life is the administration necessary to run the functions of the parish, and a support group of administrators has been established to support one another, and to avoid the ‘reinventing the wheel’ in each place. This support can be very helpful for the individuals and for the parish. 

Another parish is looking at community: both for Catholics, and for those outside the parish but within the local community area. Open church days, and support of uniformed organisations, has been strengthened. A different approach to RCIA, with different start dates, might be another way or engaging with those on the margins, or those who don’t find it easy to engage in more traditional ways or timetables. 

Derby Deanery 

Saint Mary’s school asked for a sensory Mass, for those who have additional needs in accessing the Sacraments. This type of Mass allows the young people to engage in the Mass in their own way, running around or drawing for example, and it’s a way of helping to bring the Sacraments to those who might find it difficult to access otherwise. 

Another initiative is the Refugee House for individuals from Ukraine who are arriving very soon. 

Diocesan Curia 

Three ideas have come out from a Curial Retreat – safeguarding (which should be front and centre); faith-formation (a seamless movement, not simply for the Sacraments); administration (take away from clergy / parishes that which could be undertaken more efficiently at the centre). 

Responses from Father James 

There has been an energy and a sense of life in the room tonight, and this doesn’t happen by accident. This has been an opportunity to simply pause tonight, and see the parish, or the deanery, afresh. Imagine being God, and looking down on the parish and seeing what God sees. Who are ones praying? Giving the widow’s mites? Who are the ones who are missing, who aren’t there? 

An Australian survey showed that of all those people who don’t go to Church, only about 2% don’t go because they don’t agree with the Church in some fundamental way – for the majority Church either clashes with children’s commitments, etc, or people find the Mass unengaging. Should we look to create a different type of space? How do we adapt liturgy and Church to the different rhythms of people’s lives? This is already happening in some places, and in some ways, but remember that we can’t make all the changes all the time. Choose one thing, or perhaps two: focus on this or these, and allow them to grow. Other elements will flow afterwards, in God’s time. People are drawn to prayer, and want to come to Church, to encounter God. Don’t forget that God is the formator, not us, and we need to give time to God to see how he is calling us, and forming others through us, and using others to form us. 

Remember that there is but one epiclesis: the Holy Spirit who brings Christ truly present in the Mass, in the bread and wine, is the same Holy Spirit who forms us as Church. Christ doesn’t abandon his Church, even when people do (as on the night of the Last Supper). If Christ doesn’t abandon the Church, then how can we do so? The Church is a place of Grace, and we are blessed to be part of it. 

Conclusion 

On behalf of all of those present Karen thanked Father James. The Salve Regina was sung in honour of Our Blessed Mother. Bishop Patrick then concluded the evening with thanks to Karen, and to Father James. He recognised all the food for prayerful thought we have been given tonight, and how we have made a few more steps along the Synodal Process tonight. Thanks to all the deaneries for the input they have provided to support and encourage each other in the little steps we are making. Let us strive not to do too much: don’t be like marmalade on a sandwich. Let’s share what we do, and let’s do what’s possible in God’s grace. We are on a journey with no end, until we come, in the Spirit, to the Father. God bless to all!

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I write to you today about two important initiatives, taking place across the diocese, which will help shape our diocesan Mission Plan: the reorganisation of deaneries for mission and the Synodal process.

The reorganisation of deaneries for mission

In the autumn of 2018 I wrote a Pastoral Letter setting out three key spiritual themes, ‘encounter’, ‘discipleship’, and ‘missionary discipleship’. These themes continue to underpin the three pastoral priorities I have for our diocese: to help children and young people to encounter God’s love and to become active disciples of Christ Jesus in the life and mission of the Church; to offer support and formation to parishioners to enable them to be confident agents of missionary discipleship, both within their parish and wider society; and thirdly, ongoing support for our clergy to free them up to be pastors, leaders and enablers of mission.

         Since then I have asked my two Vicars General to work with the Deans, clergy and parish representatives of our deanery groupings of parishes to draft a plan to reorganise the deaneries. This draft plan seeks to help our parishes, schools, and chaplaincies to be better supported in becoming more outward looking and missionary, while also striving to ensure that the fewer priests now available for active ministry across the diocese are best able to serve our communities. Those deanery discussions were well advanced in some areas of the diocese when the pandemic struck in March 2020 and covid restrictions meant that in-person meetings were not encouraged. Towards the end of last year this deanery exercise began again in earnest. In just a few days’ time I will begin a journey around the deaneries for a series of evening ‘roadshow’ events. I will be accompanied by the two Vicars General, the Chief Operating Officer of the diocese and the Episcopal Vicar for Finance and Administration. At each deanery ‘roadshow’ we will meet with parish representatives and clergy. This will be an opportunity for me, and those who work most closely with me, to present the reasons for the proposed reorganisation of our deaneries. It will also be an occasion to explain the support that is being put in place to enable this to happen, to listen carefully to the discussion, and to answer questions. These evenings will help shape the necessary reorganisation now needed in each deanery, to both enable the whole diocese to become more missionary and to respond creatively to the declining numbers of parishioners and priests. Even if you are not going to be directly involved in your local ‘roadshow’ event, please do keep these important discussions in your prayers. These will continue throughout Lent and a full report of each ‘roadshow’ will be made available.

The Diocesan Synodal Process

Last year Pope Francis announced that the 2023 Synod of Bishops would be on the theme ‘For a Synodal Church: communion, participation, and mission’, and that each diocese throughout the world would now be invited to contribute to the process. Last October, in my Pastoral Letter on the Synod, and in my Letters to the young people in our schools, I encouraged everyone to look upon this initiative, as Pope Francis does, as first and foremost a spiritual process: an invitation to pray, to listen to the Holy Spirit and to each other, and to dream about the Church the Holy Spirit is calling us to become. I am very grateful that, in spite of covid restrictions, many parishes, schools, and chaplaincies have generously taken part in this process, whether through parish meetings, conversations after Masses, classroom discussions, or by paper or online responses to questionnaires. Since the New Year these responses and practical initiatives have been shared at the level of the deanery, so that those gathered together in prayer might discern which one or two proposed initiatives of outreach and mission the deanery would pledge to work on together. These responses are presently being collated into the interim diocesan report. In the short time available to us as a diocese, we have tried not only to express and listen together to our dreams for the Church, but also to identify some practical outcomes that our parishes, schools, chaplaincies and deaneries could begin to work upon.

         This Tuesday evening, the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, I will be presiding at a special celebration of Evening Prayer at our Cathedral in Nottingham; each deanery will be asked to come and share something of the fruits, so far, of the Synodal process within their parishes, chaplaincies and schools. So from across the diocese representatives will gather in the Cathedral, and everyone else is warmly invited to join in virtually by means of the livestream which can be found on the Cathedral’s website. The interim diocesan report will be distributed that evening to everyone present, and then made more widely available. There will be a period for ongoing reflection upon the report until 19th March, the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Guardian of the Church, during which any further responses can be sent to our Synod leads, Father David Cain and Joe Hopkins (whose contact details are at the end of this letter, and in the parish newsletter this Sunday). The final diocesan report, like that of every diocese in England and Wales, has to be sent to the Bishops’ Conference secretariat by 8th April. It will then be collated into the Bishops’ Conference Synod Report. Both reports will be made widely available. On the Thursday of Pentecost week we will gather again in the Cathedral to share how the parish and deanery initiatives are progressing. In this way it is hoped that the Synodal process of listening, dreaming, and then acting will continue on in our diocese.

         Our diocesan reorganisation of deaneries, so as to enable and strengthen mission, and our response to the Synod, are processes that are very much inter-connected. Together they will help shape our next steps as a diocese in genuine renewal and a stronger sense of missionary purpose. Please join me in asking the Holy Spirit to inspire, guide and bless all our diocesan initiatives as we strive to become the Church God is calling us to be.

You are very much in my prayers, please remember me in yours,

Bishop of Nottingham

Rev Fr David Cain – david.cain@dioceseofnottingham.uk 

Mr Joe Hopkins – joe.hopkins@dioceseofnottingham.uk

On Wednesday, January 26, 2022, the XV Ordinary Council of the Synod of Bishops met in person and online. The following items were at the centre of their work: a progress report on the synodal process around the world and the articulation of criteria for the "reports" prepared by Dioceses, Episcopal Conferences, the Synods of Eastern Churches and other ecclesial bodies.

About three months after the opening of the synodal process, the Ordinary Council expressed great satisfaction with the headway being made by the process at the local level. Close to 98% of the Episcopal Conferences and Synods of Eastern Churches worldwide have appointed a person or an entire team to implement the synodal process. The Ordinary Council's assessment was bolstered by the results that emerged from exchanges during some 15 online meetings with synod appointees from around the world organized by the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops from November-December in 2021.

The Synodal Process at the Global Level

The Church is on the move! Dioceses, both the laity (organised or not) and consecrated life in particular are showing great enthusiasm, which is being translated into a myriad of initiatives promoting consultation and ecclesial discernment. This is confirmed by the numerous testimonies received by the General Secretariat from all over the world, some of which are published periodically on the website synodresources.org. In addition to being a reasons for hope, they are also a sign that the Holy Spirit is at work. Those who have experienced this synodal process in action testify to an experience that brings joy and speak of a true transformation in their feeling of belonging to an ecclesial community.

In general, the timing, the modalities employed in the consultation, and the participation of the People of God vary from region to region. The synodal process has been particularly welcomed with joy and enthusiasm in several African, Latin American, and Asian countries. In places where a diocesan or national synodal process was already underway or about to begin, the two synodal dynamics have been successfully harmonised. The extension of the listening phase of the People of God has been particularly appreciated.

The documents published by the General Secretary have been well received, and commendable efforts have been made to translate them at the local level. In some countries, this task is further complicated by multiplicity of local languages and the distances between ecclesial communities.

The ecumenical dimension has been well integrated and follows the indications suggested in the joint letter: www.synod.va/content/dam/synod/news/2021-10-29_ecumenism/EN-Ecumenism.pdf of October 29 written by Cardinal Koch and Cardinal Grech. Even on the part of the other Christian confessions there is a certain enthusiasm and desire to contribute to the synodal journey undertaken by the Catholic Church. The inter religious dimension has become a natural part of this process in countries where Christians are in the minority.

A consistent effort has been made to promote communication through various media and online platforms. Many Dioceses and Episcopal Conferences have provided websites and social network pages recount the journey within their own realities. For its part, in addition to the institutional website synod.va, the General Secretariat communicates through a variety of instruments, such as a weekly newsletter, a website to collect experiences and resources produced at the local level (synodresources.org) and a prayer site for the synod (prayforthesynod.va) created together with the Pope's World Prayer Network and the International Union of Superiors General.

Challenges

Many of the faithful perceive the synodal process as a crucial moment in the Church's life, as a learning process as well as an opportunity for conversion and renewal of ecclesial life. At the same time, various difficulties have also emerged. In fact, fears and reticence are reported among some groups of the faithful and among the clergy. There is also a certain mistrust among the laity who doubt that their contribution will really be taken into consideration.

Furthermore, the current pandemic has constituted a significant obstacle, limiting the ability to meet in person. The consultation of the People of God cannot be reduced to a mere questionnaire because the real challenge of synodality is, precisely, mutual listening and communal discernment.

Other recurring challenges are: 1) the need for formation, especially in listening and discernment so that the Synod is authentically a spiritual process and not reduced to a parliamentary debate; 2) avoiding the temptation to be self-referential in group meetings so that this mutual listening, which finds its foundation in prayer and listening to the Word of God, will lead to opening ourselves to others with a view to proclaiming the Gospel. A synodal church is a missionary church where every single baptized person feels co-responsible for the mission of the Church; 3) finding ways to improve the participation of young people; 4) involving those who live on the margins of ecclesial institutions; 5) the reluctance of some clergy.

Conclusion

In summary, while it seems that the novelty of the synodal process has given rise to much joy and dynamism, a number of uncertainties must also be addressed. There is growing awareness that the synodal conversion to which all the baptized are called is a lengthy process that will prolong itself well beyond 2023. The desire all over the world is this synodal journey which has begun at the local level continue this journey well beyond Synod 2021-2023 so that tangible signs of synodality might increasingly be manifest as constitutive of the Church.

Note for the preparation of reports

In response to the numerous requests received by the General Secretariat, a Note is being prepared for Dioceses and Episcopal Conferences regarding how they are to prepare the "reports" that they will submit to the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops. It is a tool at the service of the various ecclesial realities that will be engaged in the coming months in drawing up the results of their ecclesial discernment. The note proposes the idea that the drafting of the report is itself an act of discernment, i.e. the fruit of a spiritual process and teamwork.

The Parish is the most basic community of the Church, Canon Law  this - "A parish is a certain community of Christ's faithful, stably established within a particular Church, whose pastoral care, under the authority of the diocesan Bishop, is entrusted to a parish priest as its proper pastor".

While it sounds clear and legal, the reality varies as parish communities vary ,,, the parishioners involvement may be slight or deeply committed depending in part on leadership and encouragement.  personal circumstances will effect the particular response ... a key element will be the welcome and fellowship offered to all regular, occasional and visitors alike.

of the early Church we are told. "The whole body of believers was united in heart and soul.  not a man of them claimed any of his possessions as his own but everything was held in common" (Acts 4:32).  when disputes did occur the Apostles called the community together and said "it would be a grave mistake for us to neglect the Word of God in order to wait at table ... Look out seven men from 'among you full of Spirit and wisdom and let them deal with these matters, while we devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word" (Acts 6:2-4).

Two millennia later, while some of those details and methods may be impractical, the parish spirit should remain, Parishioners, united in heart and soul, favouring the option for the poor, either in their midst or in other parts of the world.  Some emerging from within the community, to serve the practical requirements, and so allowing the parish priest the time and space for prayer and Eucharistic celebration.

Currently there are three good reasons to ensure that such a community should put such a lead into practice.   As we recover from Covid pandemic, and all its implications: as the number of priests decline further: and as Pope Francis seeks to encourage a new Synodal Church, the parish community will be required to gain a new strength.

A new post-covid parish must be every dream;  to discard masks; to worship in music and song; to receive communion under both kinds once more; to share in fellowship without fear of contamination.  We pray for the current restriction to cease, but it should allow us to reassess the important things in our lives, and act accordingly.

The declining numbers of priests makes the role of the parish laity even more important.  (as the Parish Priest, in many cases on Sundays, dashes from one Church to another, it gives the people of the parish a more urgent need to act together, 'in the heart and soul' and to attend to 'the waiting on table' to ease the burden).

A Synodal Church also means a listening Church.  Beginning from the basic parish unit, parishioners must be ready to speak out on matters of deep concern for the Church, as they see them in their local reality.  Despite that differing nature of our parishes, an authentic voice crying to the Lord, must be allowed to come forward.

In the Rule of Saint Benedict, the abbot is depicted as a teacher and spiritual father who presides over the life of a community; Benedict describes the monastery as a “school of the Lord’s service” where one is guided in living the paschal mystery (RB, Prol. 45, 50). One of the elements of guidance for the community stands early in this 1,500 year old Rule, in Chapter 3, “Summoning the Community for Counsel.” It was clear for Benedict that important and major decisions were to be made by the community, as a whole. We would like to consider how the text of this one chapter in the Rule of Saint Benedict points out significant perspectives of synodal procedure in the monastic tradition, and rooted in the texts of Sacred Scripture. This Chapter centers a synodal process of decision-making; it should be noted that other parts of the Rule also echo the teaching of Chapter 3.

In the opening sentence of Chapter 3, Benedict makes it clear that when anything of importance is to be considered for the life and well-being of the community, the whole community shall we called together.  Together as a group, they would best understand what is at stake, and so proceed with wisdom and prudence.

Benedict suggests in that opening verse that the matter is explained by the abbot. This may at first sound prejudicial; but there may be genuine prudence in it. Hearing the matter from the leader of the community accomplishes several things. It should be expected that he will have a certain insight into matters, a broader vision of the implications under consideration, and a possible way forward that can then be critiqued by the community at large. It also serves the purpose of knowing the leader’s mind, why thoughts are formed in this way, and a possible vision forward. It can be helpful to know what the leader is thinking, and within the presence of all present, there is a certain freedom which comes from being able to share honestly how another may see a different direction for solving the problem; in other words – the superior does not have a hidden agenda by being the last one to speak. Everyone knows where he stands.

We can note that this opening verse speaks of important matters which should be brought before all; later in v. 12, the text writes of less important business which is handled by a group of seniors, probably a reference to an elected council of the community. We mention this only as a concern in present day situations where everyone can feel that they need to be aware of everything; the result is often that little or nothing ever gets accomplished as it could be, or even worse, a chaotic situation. There must be a level of trust, confidence, and respect in a group that is elected or chosen, so that the process can move forward with the voices of an elected group of the community, when it is a less important matter.

There is something that can almost be taken for granted in reading through this text: both listening and speaking. Today we live in a culture of many words; it can be that there are so many words that we hear the person speaking, yet fail to listen to what is said. For Saint Benedict, listening is a key element to growth in the spiritual realm and to the well-being of communal life. For Saint Benedict, he counsels us to “listen with the ear of the heart” (RB, Pro. 1). That is a beautiful image for us to ponder in the context of synodal discernment. To listen with the ear of the heart is something akin to the practice of lectio divina, where we believe we are taking in a word that comes to us from God. If we do that as a practice in our manner of reading the Scriptures, it will become the way that we listen in other contexts of our life. When someone comes to us to discern something important in their life, we listen with a rare receptivity because we believe we can be of genuine help. It is a considerable challenge for us to take on that posture of listening with the ear of the heart. And yet, it accomplishes two things: first, it enables us to hear with a depth that poses questions within us; and second, it values both the person and the message that is being offered us. Benedict will enlarge this notion in Chapter 6 on “Restraint of Speech,” or “The Importance of Silence,” as an element of spiritual doctrine. Again this is fostered in Chapter 4 on “The Tools of Good Works.” There he writes, “Guard your lips from harmful or deceptive speech. Prefer moderation in speech” (RB 4:51-52). To listen with the ear of the heart stands as a noble virtue for synodal encounter.

Saint Benedict counsels that in calling the community together, after listening to what each one has said, the community members are “to express their opinions in all humility, and not to presume to defend their own views obstinately” (v. 4). In the Rule of Saint Benedict, humility carries a whole Chapter (7) of no less than 70 verses, and is thus considered one of the elements of Benedict’s spiritual doctrine. In his layout out the importance of humility, Benedict quotes the Scriptures 42 times in this chapter alone to emphasize its importance. There could be a very important connection here between humility and the willingness to listen with an open and obedient heart, because it is in this context that the will of God is manifested. In the synodal process, the openness to what may be revealed in definitely seeking the will of God in a particular situation. How does the will of God manifest itself? The Scriptures tell us in Ps 25:9, “[God] guides the humble in right judgment; to the humble he teaches his way.” Humility holds the potential of being able to be the pathway to right judgment in a matter that is seeking an answer or solution. The Book of Proverbs teaches, “When pride comes, disgraces also comes; but with the humble is wisdom” (11:2). Certainly, the synodal process seeks to make decision touched by the wisdom of all the participants bringing their accumulated life experiences, personal judgment, and practiced wisdom.

In this third Chapter of the Rule, Benedict takes special care to note that the reference to all who should be heard, writing, “the Lord often reveals what is better to the younger.” In a society that favored the voices of elders, this is a special contribution of the manner of community discernment. In 1 Samuel 3, we read the call of the young Samuel to ministry as a prophet. Immediately following the call narrative, the test reads, ”Samuel grew up, and the LORD was with him, not permitting any word of his to go unfulfilled” (1 Sam 3:19). In the context of this Scripture passage, a young man is called to reveal God’s will to his mentor, Eli, who had lost favor with God because he and his sons had lost their way in following God’s precepts. The young can often have a vision that takes the elder generation beyond where it presently stands, seeing with new perspective and insight into contemporary situations. In a Synod, that role of the young might also be extended to those who live on the periphery, the poor and excluded who see things differently from the majority.

On the expectation of obedience in this situation, Benedict makes it clear that this teaching is not only offered to the members of the community, but also to the abbot. Notice how the text reads: “Yet as it is proper for disciples to obey their master, so it is also fitting for the master to arrange everything with foresight and fairness” (v.6). Several times in the Rule, Benedict uses this expression, “with foresight” (RB 41:4-5; 64:17).  Someone reading the Rule of Benedict would naturally think that, in our day and age, the abbot holds a power that is more than should be given to a human being. However, here we see that he holds the abbot accountable for all of these decisions that come before the community. In his best efforts at listening, the leader of the community stands as the one who is responsible, not only to the community, but also to and before God. In the synodal process, this can take a number of different expressions. Not only the Pope, but also those who stand as the person responsible for a committee, a report, a discussion, and importantly, a decision. This presents a significant challenge in the ways of discernment, for those who carry the responsibility; they have to weigh what they believe is best, with what others have  considered the most advantageous, with what is possible, and with what likelihood of success the decision can proceed for the good of all. At the same time, there is the challenge of discerning the will of God, which is rarely an easy decision, unless the Gospel itself speaks clearly and directly on the topic. Weighing all the information and deciding what is best is truly a sacred endeavor, as it often involves the well-being of individuals and their future. The account of one’s actions before God is almost always an awesome and frightening personal endeavor – the just and merciful Judge.

To conclude with some points of synodal advice from the Benedictine Rule and spirituality, we would make the following observations.

1. The practice of listening “with the ear of the heart” sets in motion a pathway to authentic discernment of the will of God. While it certainly calls the Scriptures as a significant source, it also respects the way that God can speak through others when all have pondered and listened in faith.

2. Benedict has a sense of inclusivity which invites the whole community to participate in the process of discernment, especially a consideration of the young. This active participation of all should be done in a spirit of humility, ennobling all members of the community as vessels of wisdom, truth, and goodwill.

3. At some point in the discussion of the community, someone, or a small council, will need to recognize and determine a way forward; in faith, those involved in the process need to be willing to be obedient and humble in accepting the process as authentic as humanly possible.

4. The synodal process expects an openness to have one’s heart moved to change, with the belief that God can speak to us through others, even the unsuspected one. And matters of less importance should be entrusted to a smaller group whose wisdom is respected.

5. While in a synodal process many voices, opinions, and suggestions are heard. The great challenge is to discern where wisdom, pastoral insight, and the good of all is best served.

The closing words of this chapter of the Rule conclude with a quotation from Scripture. For Benedict, the word of God stood as the pinnacle of wisdom, and it still speaks loudly to us today: “Do everything with counsel, and you will be without regret afterward” (Sir 32:24[16]).

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

It's so encouraging to see that our churches are beginning to fill up again. My grateful thanks to all of you who continued to serve your parishes and wider communities with such selflessness and creativity during what have been very challenging circumstances.

Prior to the pandemic, with all its restrictions, it was easy to take for granted our access to the sacraments. But the experience of the past eighteen months in our parishes, chaplaincies and schools has made us more appreciative of the grace, the help of God in our lives, that comes to us through our active participation in the sacramental life of the Church. It has also encouraged us to consider what we could do better to be a more outward looking, more missionary Church.

Last Sunday in Rome, Pope Francis launched a 'Church-wide listening process'. He has asked that each diocese begins this process today as the first phase of preparation for the Synod of Bishops in 2023, which is entitled, 'For a synodal Church: communion, participation and mission'. The word 'synod' simply means 'journeying together'. Pope Francis is inviting us all, the People of God, to listen to each other, and to others around us, to discern together how God is calling us to be Church in the third millennium. This

synodal process is not to be seen as a burden that competes with our own diocesan priorities, but rather the local circumstances of each diocese are to be the starting point. So I would like to encourage you to see this 'listening process' as something that is very much in harmony with all that we are already trying to do in our diocese; as a means to help support our desire, as Christ's disciples, to be more missionary and outward-looking.

Let's look upon it as an invitation to all of us, the People of God in this diocese, to dream about the Church the Holy Spirit is calling us to become. It is, first and foremost, a spiritual process, and so I invite you to make use of the Prayer-card that has been produced, so that together we may seek to hear and respond to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Please take one for yourself and another for a non-practising family member, friend or neighbour so that they too can be a part of this 'listening exercise'. The diocesan phase of this process is meant to offer as many people as possible, the lapsed members of our parish communities as well as the poor and the marginalised, an experience of a Church that desires to listen to and to walk alongside people, as guided by the Holy Spirit.

Like every other diocese we are asked to have our reflections ready by next February, so a Timeline (and guidance) for parish, chaplaincy and school participation in this 'listening process' has been produced to enable us to meet this deadline. You will find these details at the back of church and on the parish and diocesan website. As a diocese, we will gather to share together on 22nd February 2022, the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, what this first phase of the 'listening process' has produced. Each parish, school, and chaplaincy is then asked to begin implementing the two actions it has decided to take forward. Then, next Pentecost, we will celebrate the movement so far of God's Holy Spirit within our diocese, and then begin afresh to discern where the Holy Spirit continues to lead us, the People of God, in this Diocese of Nottingham.

Please do your best to join in this process, in whatever way you can. Your contribution is important. May God bless our efforts to hear and respond to the promptings and guidance of his Holy Spirit.

Rt Rev Patrick McKinney

Bishop of Nottingham