+THE INSTRUMENTUM LABORIS FOR THE COMING SYNOD 30 July 2023
What I would like to share this morning are some thoughts from the working document that has just come out this past June for the coming Synod in October. Reading through the first sections of this document left me pleasantly surprised at its content. It “was drafted on the basis of all the material gathered during the listening phase, in particular the final documents of the Continental Assemblies.” This document gives us a real sense of what’s happening within the whole Church throughout the world today.
There are a lot of difficult situations with which the Church is faced in the different regions of the world. A carefully written summary of these is at the beginning of our document. There are the many wars “that stain our world.” There is the growing threat of climate change, economic systems that lead to exploitation, the throw away culture we live in, persecutions leading to martyrdom, emigrations that hollow out communities, a growing cultural pluralism, the often aggressive secularism right amid a thirst for the Good news of the Gospel. Then there are the various forms of abuse, sexual as has happened within our Church, the abuse of power, of conscience and of money.
“The Synodal Assembly of October 2023 will be asked to listen deeply to the situations in which the Church lives and carries out its mission.” The importance of a careful listening, a listening with the heart I have touched upon earlier is what is being asked of the whole Church so as to creatively deal with the challenges of our time. The Church has been synodal from its beginning but now we are seeing how this dynamic aspect of ecclesial life can be wonderfully fruitful for its future. More than ever we have come to:
“understand the importance of taking the local Church as a privileged point of reference, as the theological place where the Baptized, experience in practical terms ‘walking together’….
The vision of Vatican II is the shared point of reference, starting from the catholicity of the People of God, in virtue of which ‘each individual part contributes through its special gifts to the good of the other parts and of the whole Church. Through the common sharing of gifts and through the common effort to attain fullness in unity […] without in any way opposing the primacy of the Chair of Peter, which presides over the whole assembly of charity and protects legitimate differences, while at the same time assuring that such differences do not hinder unity but rather contribute toward it’ (LG 13). This catholicity is realized in the relationship of mutual interiority between the universal Church and the local Churches, in which and from which there “comes into being the one and only Catholic Church” (LG 23).
The same happens in a healthy monastic community where the monastic calling of each member is respected and encouraged. Each of us has something special to offer for the good of the whole community. In this common sharing of our gifts, there is brought about a beautiful unity in the whole of our life together. The role of the abbot is critical as he helps us to respect our differences without letting them hinder the unity of spirit that is life-giving. We share a mutual interior journey that brings about abundant fruit for the Church as we remain faithful to our charism.
Our document goes on to say:
“..what emerges with great force from all the continents: an awareness that a synodal Church is founded on the recognition of a common dignity deriving from Baptism, which makes all who receive it sons and daughters of God, members of the family of God, and therefore brothers and sisters in Christ, inhabited by the one Spirit and sent to fulfil a common mission. In Paul’s language, “we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Cor 12:13)”
When we share together our common dignity as sons and daughters of God, we realize we are one family in Christ, a community inhabited by one Spirit and sent as bearers of good news. In that there is this living respect for one another, an honoring of our dignity as brothers and sisters, listening to the wisdom each of us has to offer, a creative and a mutual affirmation takes place. Let me end with a final quote from the document:
Baptism thus creates a true co-responsibility among all the members of the Church, which is manifested in the participation of all, with the charisms of each, in the mission of the Church and the building up of the ecclesial community. A synodal Church cannot be understood other than within the horizon of communion, which is always also a mission to proclaim and incarnate the Gospel in every dimension of human existence. Communion and mission are nourished in the common participation in the Eucharist that makes the Church a body “joined and knitted together” (Eph 4:16) in Christ, able to walk together towards the Kingdom.