Skip to main content
Read page text
page 6
Leadership and Ministry Towards Part Two of the Synod Building relationships of communion – the synodal mission of the people of God This is an edited version of the Hayes Towey Memorial Lecture at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, 11 June 2024 / BY JOHN WILSON, ARCHBISHOP OF SOUTHWARK ARCHBISHOP JOHN WILSON BY RUTH GLEDHILL theorising about problems’, but by ‘taking time to encounter the Lord and one another’. As the Great Commandant’s double formula obliges love of God and neighbour, there is also a two-fold synodal directive. We pray, to discern ‘what the Spirit wants to say to the Church’. Then we ‘look others in the eye’, listening, building rapport, sensitive to their questions, letting ‘ourselves be enriched by the variety of charisms, vocations and ministries’. Christiform ‘looking steadily and loving’ is a synodal attitude the entire Church needs to practice more generously. I once visited a Catholic school in a poorer part of San Salvador. A seven-year-old girl’s first words to me were ‘you have beautiful eyes’. Can we encounter others, not least those different to us, including the stranger, with disarming kindness, recognising their dignity? When launching the synodal pathway, Pope Francis used St Mark’s account of the rich young man as a programmatic synodal parable of encounter, listening, and discernment. The rich young man’s struggle hindered his wholehearted discipleship. Knowing this, the Lord fixed his gaze upon him and loved him.1 Encountering, listening, and discerning. These interdependent dimensions of synodality hinge on a salvific truth: the Lord looking steadily at us and loving us, a truth we are called to imitate towards others. Modelled on Christ, synodality requires expertise ‘in the art of encounter’. This happens, says Pope Francis, ‘not so much by organising events or Synodal discernment unfolds prayerfully ‘in dialogue with the word of God’. This ‘living and active’ word ‘guides the Synod’, ‘preventing it from becoming a Church convention, a study group or a political gathering, a parliament’, making it instead ‘a grace-filled event, a process of healing guided by the Spirit’.2 Recalling the nature, content, and transmission of divine revelation, Dei Verbum is an indispensable synodal companion.3 For Fr Yves Congar OP, this ‘great text … provides theology with the means of becoming fully evangelical’.4 The Council’s clarification about the revelation and communication of divine truths is foundational. ‘Jesus calls us,’ says Pope Francis in his Opening of the Synodal Path, ‘to empty ourselves, to free 6 | Pastoral Review Vol. 20 Issue 4 | October/November/December 2024
page 7
Towards Part Two of the Synod ourselves from all that is worldly, including our inward-looking and outworn pastoral models; and to ask ourselves what it is that God wants to say to us in this time’. This is necessary for contemporary evangelisation, where a Christocentric dynamism charts the mission envisaged by the Second Vatican Council and ‘the Holy Spirit always surprises us’, suggesting ‘fresh paths and new ways of speaking’. I had the privilege of participating in the Synod on Synodality. The Universal Church held a mirror to herself, considering her missionary purpose to ref lect Christ’s light to the world. The encounter between clergy, laity, and consecrated people, made the Church feel smaller and relationships of communion more tangible. Following the landslides in Papua New Guinea, I contacted a lay delegate living there whom I met at the synod. Our Archdiocese helped construct a formation centre in Ukraine through a bishop I met at the synod. Two miniscule examples of synodality, of realising human and spiritual interconnectedness. From the tradition of Catholic social teaching, we are familiar with the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity. Synodality rightly underpins and stands alongside these. Terminology is important. This synod was unlike previous Synods of Bishops. With 450 participants, over 350 were voting members, 120 of these chosen by Pope Francis. The majority were bishops, with just over a quarter lay and consecrated women and men. Perhaps a new name would better ref lect the reality of this gathering, maybe ‘A Synodal Assembly of the People of God’. Synodality pivots around three foundational themes requiring interpretation and application. Communion asks what it means to be bound together in relationship with Christ, and with each other, in faith and action. Participation asks what it means for all members of the Church, each according to their particular vocation and gifts, to fulfil their roles, co-essentially and co-responsibly.5 Mission asks what it means for the whole People of God to co-operate in announcing the gospel of Jesus Christ. Understanding the biblically rooted concept of the People of God is key to Lumen gentium and synodality.6 The People of God encompasses everyone baptised into Christ, within which the common priesthood of the baptised, and the ministerial priesthood of the ordained, differ ‘in essence and not only in degree’ (LG 9 and 10). They are, however, intrinsically ‘interrelated’, ‘each of them in its own special way … a participation in the one priesthood of Christ’. The ministerial priesthood serves the common priesthood, directed to ‘unfolding … the baptismal grace of all Christians’.7 Looking steadily and loving is inherent to priestly ministry, imitating the self- emptying servant-leadership exemplified by the Lord Jesus. It is mistaken to equate the People of God with the laity, or to set the People of God against the ordained ministry as competing forces struggling for power. Vatican II affirms the distinct and mutually necessary roles of the laity and the ordained. They synergise an authentically mission-focused Church, comprised of co-cultivators of the seeds of the gospel.8 Attitudinal transformation towards greater collaborative evangelisation secures everyone’s rightful place in the Church as a missionary witness to Christ. Pope Francis shared his vision for the proclamation of the Gospel in Evangelii gaudium.9 The synodal mission of the People of God is characterised by the Pope’s familiar phrase ‘missionary disciples’ (EG 119–21). He links this not only to responsibility for evangelisation, something shared by all the baptised, but also to the sensus fidei, the instinct of faith which enables divine truths to be grasped (EG 119). The Pope references Lumen gentium’s teaching that the ‘discernment’ or appreciation ‘of matters of faith’ (the sensus fidei) ‘is aroused and sustained by the Spirt of Truth’ … ‘exercised under the guidance of the sacred teaching authority’. the magisterium, through which the People of God ‘accepts’ ‘the faith once delivered to the saints’ (LG 12). Understanding this ‘acceptance’ is pertinent to synodality. The sensus fidei concerns how the whole body of the faithful receives, not determines, revealed truths of faith. For Vatican II, the ‘people of God unwaveringly adheres to this faith, penetrates it more deeply with right judgement, and applies it more fully in daily life’ (LG 12). The People of God manifests the sensus fidei by holding fast to the faith received, by probing what that faith means, and by applying it to life. In this, the ‘whole body of the faithful’ cannot err when it remains faithful to the truth received. Pope Francis illustrated this simply: ‘When you October/November/December 2024 | Pastoral Review Vol. 20 Issue 4 | 7

Page Text

View plaintext

Leadership and Ministry

Towards Part Two of the Synod

Building relationships of communion – the synodal mission of the people of God

This is an edited version of the Hayes Towey Memorial Lecture at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, 11 June 2024 / BY JOHN WILSON, ARCHBISHOP OF SOUTHWARK

ARCHBISHOP JOHN WILSON BY RUTH GLEDHILL

theorising about problems’, but by ‘taking time to encounter the Lord and one another’. As the Great Commandant’s double formula obliges love of God and neighbour, there is also a two-fold synodal directive. We pray, to discern ‘what the Spirit wants to say to the Church’. Then we ‘look others in the eye’, listening, building rapport, sensitive to their questions, letting ‘ourselves be enriched by the variety of charisms, vocations and ministries’.

Christiform ‘looking steadily and loving’ is a synodal attitude the entire Church needs to practice more generously. I once visited a Catholic school in a poorer part of San Salvador. A seven-year-old girl’s first words to me were ‘you have beautiful eyes’. Can we encounter others, not least those different to us, including the stranger, with disarming kindness, recognising their dignity?

When launching the synodal pathway, Pope Francis used St Mark’s account of the rich young man as a programmatic synodal parable of encounter, listening, and discernment. The rich young man’s struggle hindered his wholehearted discipleship. Knowing this, the Lord fixed his gaze upon him and loved him.1 Encountering, listening, and discerning. These interdependent dimensions of synodality hinge on a salvific truth: the Lord looking steadily at us and loving us, a truth we are called to imitate towards others.

Modelled on Christ, synodality requires expertise ‘in the art of encounter’. This happens, says Pope Francis, ‘not so much by organising events or

Synodal discernment unfolds prayerfully ‘in dialogue with the word of God’. This ‘living and active’ word ‘guides the Synod’, ‘preventing it from becoming a Church convention, a study group or a political gathering, a parliament’, making it instead ‘a grace-filled event, a process of healing guided by the Spirit’.2 Recalling the nature, content, and transmission of divine revelation, Dei Verbum is an indispensable synodal companion.3 For Fr Yves Congar OP, this ‘great text … provides theology with the means of becoming fully evangelical’.4 The Council’s clarification about the revelation and communication of divine truths is foundational.

‘Jesus calls us,’ says Pope Francis in his Opening of the Synodal Path, ‘to empty ourselves, to free

6 | Pastoral Review Vol. 20 Issue 4 | October/November/December 2024

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content