0
0
Pope Francis’ First address to the second session of the
xvi general ordinary assembly of the synod of bishops
(2-27 October 2024)
first general congregation
Audience Hall – Wednesday, 2 October 2024
“Humility is also a gift of the Holy Spirit. We must ask him for it!”
Since the Church of God was “convoked in Synod” in October 2021, we have travelled together a part of the long journey to which God the Father continually calls his people.
He sends them to every nation to proclaim the good news that Jesus Christ is our peace (Eph 2:14 – he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility,) and he confirms them in their mission through the Holy Spirit.
This Assembly, guided by the Holy Spirit, who “bends stubborn hearts and wills, melts the frozen, warms the cold, and guides the steps that go astray”, contribute to the creation of a synodal Church, a Church in mission, capable of setting out, of being present in the geographical and existential peripheries of today, and of seeking to enter into a relationship with everyone in Jesus Christ, our brother and Lord.
A sermon by a fourth-century spiritual writer [1] can serve to summarize what happens when the Holy Spirit begins to work, beginning with Baptism, which gives equal dignity to all. The experiences described by our author can help us to understand what has happened in these three years and what is yet to come.
First, it helps us understand that the Holy Spirit is a sure guide and that our first task is to learn how to discern his voice, since he speaks through everyone and in all things. Has this synodal process made us experience this?
The Holy Spirit is always with us. The Spirit comforts us in moments of sorrow and grief, especially when – precisely because of our love for humanity – things do not go well, when injustices seem to prevail, when we see how difficult it is to respond with good in the face of evil, when we see how difficult it is to forgive and how little courage we show in the search for peace.
In these moments it seems that there is nothing left to do, and we give in to despair. Just as hope is the humblest and strongest virtue, so despair is its opposite.
The Holy Spirit wipes away our tears and comforts us because he communicates God’s gift of hope. God never tires; his love is tireless.
The Holy Spirit penetrates the part of us that so often resembles a courtroom where we accuse and judge, usually condemning.
The author of our homily tells us that the Holy Spirit kindles a fire in those who receive him, a “fire of such love and rejoicing that, if it were possible, we would embrace all humanity, without distinction, good and bad alike”.
For God always embraces everyone. Let us not forget everyone, everyone, everyone, always.
He offers new possibilities in life to everyone, even to the last moment.
That is why we must always forgive others, because the willingness to do so comes from our own experience of having been forgiven.
The only one who cannot forgive is the one who has not been forgiven.
Yesterday, during the service of repentance, we had this experience. We asked for forgiveness; we acknowledged that we are sinners. We put aside our pride, and we put aside our presumption that we are better than others. Have we really become more humble?
Humility is also a gift of the Holy Spirit. We must ask him for it.
Humility, as the etymology of the word tells us, brings us back to earth, to the ground, the humus, and thus reminds us of the beginning, when, if not for the breath of the Creator, we would have remained lifeless mud. Humility, as the etymology of the word tells us, brings us back to the earth, to the soil, to the humus, reminding us of the beginning when, without the breath of the Creator, we would have remained lifeless mud. Humility allows us to look at the world around us and realize that we are no better than others. As Saint Paul says, “Do not think too highly of yourselves” (Rom 12:16 – Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly;[a] never be conceited)..
We cannot be humble without love. Christians should be like the women described by Dante Alighieri in one of his sonnets. They are women who mourn the loss of the father of their friend Beatrice: “You who have a humble appearance, with your eyes downcast, showing grief” (Vita Nuova XXII, 9). This is the humility, the compassion, of those who consider themselves brothers and sisters of all. They suffer their pain, and in their own woundedness and pain they see the wounds and sufferings of our Lord.
I encourage you to meditate prayerfully on this beautiful spiritual text and to realize that the Church – semper reformanda (always to be reformed) – cannot continue her journey and be renewed without the Holy Spirit and his surprises. Without allowing herself to be formed by the hands of God the Creator, his Son Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit, as Saint Irenaeus of Lyon tells us (Adv. Haer., IV, 20, 1).
From the very beginning, when God brought man and woman out of the earth; from the time when God called Abraham to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth, and called Moses to lead a people through the desert freed from slavery; from the time when the Virgin Mary said “yes” to the message that made her the Mother of the Son of God in the flesh and the Mother of every disciple and every disciple of her Son; and from the time when the Lord Jesus, crucified and risen, poured out his Holy Spirit at Pentecost – ever since, as “those who have been shown mercy”, we have been journeying towards the definitive fulfilment of the Father’s love. Let us not forget that we have been shown mercy.
We know both the beauty and the fatigue of this journey. We walk it together, as a people who are also in our time a sign and instrument of communion with God and of the unity of the whole human race (Lumen Gentium, 1). We do it together with and for the sake of every man and woman of good will, in each of whom grace is invisibly at work (Gaudium et Spes, 22). We do it because we are convinced of the “relational” nature of the Church and because we want the relationships given to us and entrusted to our responsible creativity to always be a sign of the gratuitousness of mercy. A so-called Christian who does not enter into the gratuitousness and mercy of God is simply an atheist dressed as a Christian. The mercy of God enables us to be trustworthy and responsible.
Sisters and brothers, we continue on this journey in the full awareness that, like a pale moon reflecting the light of Christ our Sun, we are called to faithfully and joyfully accept our mission to be for the world a sacrament of that light which is not our own.
The 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, now in its second session, represents in a special way this “journeying together” of the People of God.
The intuition of Pope Saint Paul VI, who instituted the Synod of Bishops in 1965, has proved to be very fruitful. In the sixty years that have passed, we have learned to see in the Synod of Bishops a symphonic “plural subject” capable of supporting the continuing mission of the Catholic Church and of effectively assisting the Bishop of Rome in his service to the communion of all Churches and to the whole Church.
Saint Paul VI was well aware that “this Synod, like all human institutions, can be improved in the course of time” (Apostolica Sollicitudo). The Apostolic Constitution Episcopalis Communio sought to build on the experience of the various Synodal Assemblies (Ordinary, Extraordinary, Special) by explicitly presenting the Synodal Assembly as a process and not just an event.
The synodal process is also a learning process in which the Church comes to know herself better and to identify the forms of pastoral activity best suited to the mission entrusted to her by her Lord. This learning process also involves the ways in which the ministry of pastors, and especially of Bishops, is exercised.
In choosing to include as full members of this Sixteenth Assembly a significant number of lay and consecrated persons (men and women), deacons and priests, developing what had already been envisaged in part for previous Assemblies, I have acted in continuity with the understanding of the exercise of the episcopal ministry given by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.
The Bishop, the principle and visible foundation of the unity of each particular Church, can exercise his ministry only within the People of God and with the People of God, preceding, standing in the midst of and following that part of the People of God entrusted to his care.
This inclusive understanding of the episcopal ministry must be clearly seen, while avoiding two dangers. First, an abstraction that would ignore the concrete fruitfulness of different places and relationships and the value of each individual.
Second, the danger of breaking communion by pitting the hierarchy against the laity. It is certainly not a question of substituting one for the other, with the cry: “Now it is our turn!” No, that does not work: “Now it is up to us, the laity”, “now it is up to us, the priests”. No, it does not work. Rather, we are called to work together symphonically, in a composition that unites us all in the service of God’s mercy, according to the different ministries and charisms that the Bishop is called to recognize and promote.
This “journeying together” with all, everyone, is a process in which the Church, in docility to the action of the Holy Spirit and in sensitivity to the reading of the times (Gaudium et Spes, 4), continually renews herself and perfects her sacramentality.
In this way, she strives to be a credible witness to the mission to which she has been called, to gather all the peoples of the earth into one, God himself will finally give us a place at the banquet he has prepared ( Is 25:6-10 – 6 On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well refined. 7 And he will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. 8 He will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth; for the Lord has spoken. 9 It will be said on that day, “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
10 For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain, and Moab shall be trodden down in his place, as straw is trodden down in a dung-pit).
The composition of this 16th Assembly is therefore more than a coincidence. It expresses a way of exercising the episcopal ministry in accordance with the living Tradition of the Church and the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. A Bishop, or any other Christian, can never consider himself “without others”. Just as no one is saved alone, so the proclamation of salvation needs everyone and requires that everyone be heard.
The presence in the Assembly of the Synod of Bishops of members who are not bishops does not diminish the “episcopal” dimension of the Assembly. I do not say this because of some whirlwind of gossip that has gone from one side to another. Nor does it limit or detract, the authority proper to individual Bishops and the College of Bishops. Rather, it points to the form that the exercise of episcopal authority should take in a Church that is conscious of being essentially relational and therefore synodal. The relationship with Christ and with all those in Christ – those who are already there and those who are not yet but who are awaited by the Father – always realizes the substance and shapes the form of the Church.
Forms of a “collegial” and “synodal” exercise of the episcopal ministry (within the particular Churches, in groupings of Churches and in the Church as a whole) need to be identified in due course.
They must always respect the deposit of faith and the living Tradition, and always respond to what the Spirit is asking of the Churches in this particular time and in the different contexts in which they live. Let us not forget that the Spirit is harmony. Let us think of the morning of Pentecost. There was tremendous disorder, but he brought harmony into that disorder. Let us not forget that He really is harmony. It is not a refined or intellectual harmony. It is everything, an existential harmony.
The Holy Spirit makes the Church ever faithful to the mission of the Lord Jesus Christ and attentive to His Word.
The Spirit leads the disciples into all truth (Jn 16:13 – When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.).
He also leads us, gathered in the Holy Spirit in this Assembly, to give an answer, after three years of walking (wandering in the desert?), to the question of “How to be a synodal Church in mission”. I would add merciful.
With a heart full of hope and gratitude, and aware of the demanding task entrusted to you – to us – I express my prayerful hope that everyone will be willing to open themselves to the action of the Holy Spirit, our sure guide and comforter. Thank you!
