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Synod retreat, day 1: ‘Stripping ourselves before the other and before God’

October 01, 2024

As the beginning of the final session of the Synod on synodality approached, participants began a two-day retreat on September 30 (video 1, video 2, video 3).

During the retreat:

Cardinal Grech and Mother Angelini

“We strip ourselves of the ‘clothing’ of approaches and patterns that perhaps had meaning yesterday, but today have become a burden for the mission and jeopardize the credibility of the Church,” said Cardinal Grech. “We must be willing to strip ourselves, since listening is a radical action of stripping ourselves before the other and before God ... In these days we are ‘sitting together’ to preserve the Church’s goods through an undivided inheritance to be shared with everyone, no one excluded.”

Cardinal Grech also entrusted the Synod session, which begins on October 2 and concludes on October 27, to the Blessed Virgin Mary, “the listening Virgin, who welcomes the Word of God with faith,” and encouraged Synod participants to pray the Rosary.

Amid reflections on the Psalms and the Gospel drawn from St. Jerome, the Desert Fathers, and St. John of the Cross, Mother Angelini said:

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.

Father Radcliffe

“Last year on retreat we meditated on how to listen to each other,” Father Radcliffe began. “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.”

Father Radcliffe then reflected on “three seekers, Mary Magdalene, the Beloved Disciple, and Simon Peter.” He commented:

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.

In his second meditation, Father Radcliffe, who has emphasized homosexuality in recent writings (May, September), spoke of holiness as “being alive in God” as he advised listening and warned against “gazing at our ecclesiastical navels.”

“We all know the fear of being hurt,” he said. “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.”

Turning from emotional wounds to doctrine, he said:

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 ...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.’ ...

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.

Archbishop Costelloe

Archbishop Costelloe, preaching on the memorial of St. Jerome, noted that the saint “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!”

“The journey we have taken so far has led us to a deeper understanding of the meaning of synodality,” he continued. “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.”

He concluded:

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.

 


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  • Posted by: Randal Mandock - Oct. 02, 2024 11:21 AM ET USA

    Maybe this can help. I quote Lewis Carroll in reference to the meaning of the word "synodality": "'When I use a word', Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.' 'The question is', said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.' ’The question is', said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master--that’s all.'"

  • Posted by: RoseMore - Oct. 01, 2024 7:43 PM ET USA

    I was born and raised a Catholic and am now 91 years old. I have read all articles I've come across on Synodality and still have no idea what it means. This article doesn't help either.