Dear Friends,
Thanks to everyone who helped make our Spaghetti Dinner last Sunday a great success!! I hope you had fun serving and eating and talking with new friends and helping All Saints School with their finances. I am always so proud of you as we offer this event to the community. I hear many comments during the day about how smoothly the whole thing operates and how good the food is. Congratulations!
You may have seen comments on the internet or in the news about the synod of bishops meeting in Rome to discuss the faith life and the church in the region of the Amazon. It is a time where they are looking for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and have a chance to discuss openly all the options. Some commentators have attacked the process and are worried about what decisions may come out of the synod. Those attacks are premature and clearly not of God. We need to trust the process and the presence of God in the Church.
Pope Francis in his audience on Wednesday gave a beautiful reflection on the Church based upon the experience of the early church in the Acts of the Apostles. I offer it to you here for your reflection:
The nature of the Church emerges from the Book of the Acts; she is not a stronghold, but a tent capable of extending her space, and of allowing access to all. The Church is either “outbound” or she is not a Church; she is on the move, always broadening her space so that all may enter, or she is not a Church. “A Church with open doors,” always with the doors open. When I see a little church here, in this city, or when I saw them in the other diocese where I am from, with the doors closed, this is a bad sign. Churches must always have their doors open, because this is the symbol of what a Church is: always open. The Church is “called to be the house of the Father, with the doors always wide open … so that if someone, moved by the Spirit, comes there looking for God, he or she will not find a closed door.” But this novelty of the doors open to whom? To the Gentiles, because the Apostles preaches to the Jews, but also the Gentiles came to knock on the door of the Church; and this novelty of the doors open to the Gentiles unleashes a very lively controversy. Some Jews affirm the need to become Jews through circumcision in order to be saved, and then to receive baptism. They say: “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved,” that is, you cannot then receive baptism. First the Jewish rite, then baptism: this was their position. And to resolve the matter, Paul and Barnabas consult the council of the Apostles and elders in Jerusalem, and what is considered the first council in the history of the Church, the council or assembly of Jerusalem, to which Paul refers in the Letter to the Galatians, takes place.
A very delicate theological, spiritual and disciplinary issue is faced: the relationship between faith in Christ and observance of Moses’ Law. Decisive in the course of the assembly are the speeches of Peter and James, “pillars” of the Mother-Church. They suggest not to impose circumcision on the Gentiles, but to ask them only to reject idolatry and all its expressions. From the discussion a common way emerges, and this decision is ratified by the so-called apostolic letter sent to Antioch.
The assembly of Jerusalem offers us an important light on the ways in which divergences can be faced, and to seek the “truth in charity.” It reminds us that the ecclesial method for the resolution of conflicts is based on dialogue made up of attentive and patient listening and on discernment carried out in the light of the Spirit. Indeed, it is the Spirit that helps to overcome closure and tensions, and works in hearts so that they may reach, in truth and goodness, that they may reach unity. This text helps us understand synodality. It is interesting how they write the Letter: they begin, the Apostles, by saying “We and the Holy Spirit and think that …”. It is proper to synodality, the presence of the Holy Spirit, otherwise it is not synodality, it is a parlour, a parliament, another thing…
Let us ask the Lord to strengthen in all Christians, especially in bishops and priests, the desire and the responsibility of communion. May He help us to live dialogue, listening and the encounter with brothers in faith and with those who are far, to savour and express to the fruitfulness of the Church, called to be in every time a “joyous mother” to many children.
Peace,
Fr. Damian