A new ecclesial horizon - 'a gift that we cannot keep to ourselves.'
Dr Liam Hayes, Director of the Centre for Ecclesial Ethics at Margaret Beaufort Institute writes:
As the words and images of our final synod report continue to dance around our minds, and ignite within us both joy and hope alongside grief and anxiety as it suggests 'pathways to follow, practices to implement and horizons to explore' - it is surely the experience of this synodal journey that will continue to not only inspire and renew ourselves but to enrich our communion, deepen our participation and invigorate our mission together as Church.
Our listening and our encounters, our conversations and our meetings, our disagreements and shared passions have offered us a unique gift and indelibly inked into our ecclesial imagination a new way of 'being and doing Church' that is both faithful to the gospel and attentive to the fragility and wisdom of our shared humanity.
It is perhaps however the synodal recovery of the conciliar imperative that we are a 'Church of the baptised' that will furnish us afresh with the theological and ecclesiological nourishment to expand and stretch the contours of our ecclesial horizon as we embark together in our boats for some 'resurrection fishing' and are sent forth in service of our fragile world.
The significance of its synodal remembering as the ecclesial font from which all the people of God are called and sent is perhaps timely and two-fold, for not only can it provide a structural foil and a healing balm to the clericalism that has disfigured our Church through the baptismal amnesia of too many of her leaders, but it also offers an expansive repository of wisdom and expertise, vocation and insight that has been neglected for too long at the cost of the fruitfulness of our witness to the Good News of Jesus. It is indeed through the Spirit, as Francis reminds us that God 'whispers words of love into the heart of each person. It is up to us to amplify the voice of this whisper, without hindering it; by opening doors instead of erecting walls.'
It is through our baptismal anointing therefore, that our synod entrusts and empowers us all in our own context to amplify this voice in its many whispers, to open new doors and to re-imagine the ecclesial relationships, practices and structures that can enlarge not only the space but perhaps reconfigure the shape and pattern of our ecclesial tent, for 'there are many places in which the Spirit breathes, but there is only one Spirit who breathes in all places.'
As the synod ends, the co-responsibility of our baptism continues anew, for we are the women and men who are charged with addressing and untying the remaining ecclesial knots that continue to muffle the voice of God's Spirit before us and our wider world, lest we become a 'sedentary Church, that inadvertently withdraws from life and confines itself to the margins of reality.'
On this threshold of a new ecclesial era in a fast-changing world, 'the contours of which we confusingly sense but do not see clearly', I wonder what you see and notice as the priorities still entangling our Church as we emerge from this rich synodal journey? What are the challenges that continue to quieten the voices of God's Spirit? How in your context and space might the knots of accountability and governance, ministry and leadership, plurality and diversity, gender and race, liturgy and vocation be untied to enrich and inform this new ecclesial horizon in which we shall dwell and journey together?
It is time to set out as a people of resurrection and hope to become a better Church that is a 'feast for all peoples', for 'if we are truly to live, we cannot remain seated. Life entails being on the move, setting out, dreaming, planning, opening up to the future.'
As part of this conversation, we invite all of you to join us in Cambridge on the 5th of December at 5pm at St Laurence Catholic Primary School for the event:
Conversation in the Spirit: Untying the Ecclesial Knots for a Synodal Church
Using the same methodology of the 'conversation in the spirit' that has enriched the discernment of the people of God worldwide, participants will engage with insights from the synod's final document. They will be invited to identify key ecclesial 'signs of the times' that resonate with them and, in dialogue with their peers and the Spirit, creatively imagine and propose ecclesial practices and structures that may help unravel difficult ecclesial knots and weave together a new ecclesial tapestry. This tapestry aims to deepen our communion and strengthen us for mission through the full and active participation of all the people of God.
Our evening of 'conversation in the spirit' will commence with a celebration of Mass at 5:00 pm, followed by our time of discussion, and will conclude more informally with light refreshments.
All are welcome! Todos! Todos! Todos!
Let us live our life,
not as a game of chess
where everything is calculated,
not as a game where everything is difficult,
not as a theorem that breaks our minds,
but like an endless party where your meeting is renewed,
like a ball, like a dance, in the arms of your grace
in the music that fills the universe with love.
Madelaine Delbrêl
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