Jul 15 Tue
What is synodality?
Synodality is a basic attitude of the Church's life and mission, understanding it as the "walking together" of Christians with Christ and towards God's Kingdom. It flows from the action of the Holy Spirit and requires our response.
A good leader communicates a sense of mission, or it doesn’t get communicated at all. Synodality is not endless meetings, these do not energize; they sap your strength.
Meetings to create or receive “marching orders”, together, of course, can be very effective.
This may explain why Pope Leo refers to synodality as “a style” or “an attitude.”
The Pope explained the word “synod” beginning from its Greek roots (marching together along the Way). “Synodality” means that we, Catholics, are on “a way together” that benefits from the active participation of all, not so much in discussions or planning sessions but in the “way together” itself, that is, in ongoing apostolic work, ongoing witness to Christ, in fraternal union.
Under Pope St. John Paul II, anyone who truly and deeply accepted the wholeness of the Catholic Faith knew what it meant to be energized into apostolic action through an immense variety of personal and group initiatives. His motto was: ‘Duc in altum’, ‘Sail where the sea is deep.’
I suspect that many did not accept a process of wasting inordinate amounts of time, energy, and money attending huge group sessions to harvest the fruits of a synodality understood primarily in terms of what we might call “bureaucratic insight and control.” They jumped into action.
A better model for fruitful Catholic action is the classic agricultural model proposed by Jesus Christ, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Mt 9:37-38, Lk 10:2). Or as Our Lord said, apparently to those who are constantly talking about the future harvest: “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’?”
Jesus continued: “I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white for harvest. He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together." (Jn 4:35-36)
At some point, we all need to stop chattering and take our Lord’s words seriously: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Lk 9:62). Talk is not only very often self-interested but exceedingly cheap. Worst of all, it often creates an illusion of progress when no real work is actually being done.
Real farmers have little use for empty talk. But they excel at working hard together, and planting. With considerable urgency, they dig in and get their hands dirty so that existing crops are harvested, and new crops begin to grow. As Pope Leo just said, “We do not need too many theoretical ideas about pastoral plans. Instead, we need to pray to the Lord of the harvest. Priority must be given, then, to our relationship with the Lord and to cultivating our dialogue with him. In this way, he will make us his laborers and send us into the field of the world to bear witness to his Kingdom.”
Some excerpts from Jeffrey Mirus