Synod24: 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops - Retreat in preparation for the Second Session: Welcome greeting from His Eminence Cardinal Mario Grech (30 September 2024)

16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops

Second Session

RETREAT

WELCOME GREETING

from His Eminence Cardinal Mario Grech

Secretary General of the Synod

(30 September 2024)

Dearest brothers and sisters,

As I welcome you, it comes to mind to me to say with the Psalmist, “How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity” (Psalm 133). The phrase “dwell together” appears in Deuteronomy 25:5 in the context of Levirate legislation and is a technical expression implying living together in a united land that makes sense in a social and historical context that aimed at the preservation of group property through an undivided inheritance. Is this not the purpose for which the Holy Father has called us to this synodal assembly? Although we come from various local Churches all with their own riches, all with their own challenges, all committed to renewal and to finding new ways and a new language to speak of Jesus to the men and women of today, we are “dwelling together” to preserve the goods of the Church through an undivided inheritance to be shared with all, no one excluded.

We are about to embark on the path of the second session of the Synod Assembly. We are like Moses on Sinai in the presence of the Lord. To us too today, the Lord repeats: “put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Ex 3:6). Yes, the Synod Assembly is a “holy place” of encounter with the Lord who is present where “two or three” are gathered in his name (cf. Mt 18:20). Either we enter into this perspective of prayer, of faith, of encounter with God, or we do not assume an authentic synodal style, we do not experience synodality. In fact, the Synod can only be a prayer, a liturgy, in which the main actor is not us, but the Holy Spirit. The Holy Father reminded us of this at the very beginning of the synodal journey: “The Synod is an ecclesial event and its protagonist is the Holy Spirit. If the Spirit is not present, there will be no Synod” (Pope Francis, Address, 9 October 2021).

For this reason, we will begin our journey with the days of retreat. They are not a preparation for the Synod, but rather form an integral part of it. In these days of listening to the Word of God and of prayer, we, like Moses, who was even placed in charge of a people, take the shoes off our feet, we divest ourselves of all our resistance to the voice of the Holy Spirit, so that we can cross the desert and walk together with God’s people towards the land of God’s Promise. Without Moses’ encounter with the God of the Fathers on the holy mountain, there would have been no exodus to freedom; without that spoliation of Moses, there would have been no journey of salvation. We divest ourselves of “robes”, approaches and patterns that may have been meaningful yesterday, but today have become a burden to the mission, and jeopardize the credibility of the Church. So, these days of our retreat are what brings out the foundation of what we live. The synod hall is holy ground and therefore we need to take off our shoes to listen. We need to be willing to divest ourselves, for listening is a radical action of spoliation before the other and before God.

Dear brothers and sisters, inspired by Hugo Rahner’s appeal when he invited us to “relearn what was so familiar and dear to the primitive church: to see the church in Mary and Mary in the church”, I would like to propose that we entrust this new part of the synodal journey to the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary is the model of the Church: “As St. Ambrose taught, the Mother of God is a type of the Church in the order of faith, charity and perfect union with Christ” (LG 63; cf. LG 53). Ivo of Chartres writes “Sicut enim Christi mater, sic mater Ecclesiae”.

Vatican Council II exhorts us to “turn our eyes to Mary” (cf. LG 65), to learn to be a Church with a synodal style. Indeed, Mary is first and foremost the woman of listening and obedience to God’s will. As Saint Paul VI affirmed in Marialis Cultus, “Mary is the listening Virgin, who welcomes the Word of God with faith; and this was for her the premise and way to divine maternity” (MC, 17). In her, listening becomes a celebration of the Word, a concrete gesture of charity and thoughtful presence, courageous fidelity in the moment of trial, communion in prayer and in hope with the missionary Church. The document of the German bisihops, Maria, die Mutter des Herrn of the year 1979, proposes the Virgin Mary to the faithful as a model and image of the Church in her openness to God’s will: “She performs the true constitutive act of the Church; everything that came afterwards, the apostolic ministry, the sacraments, the sending forth on mission into the world, presupposes this Marian foundation. Without it, the Church would be what it unfortunately seems to many to be: nothing more than an organization”.

As Pope Francis reminds us: “Changes in the Church without prayer are not changes made by the Church. They are changes made by groups”. Without prayer we are not a synodal assembly, but a “group of entrepreneurs of faith”. Mary is a prayerful woman (cf. MC 17). The Virgin of Nazareth is the model of a Church that prays, gives thanks, sings the glory of her Lord. In the Acts, we see Mary in prayer with the Apostles gathered in the Upper Room awaiting the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14). Mary is for us today the model of prayer in living these intense days of the Synodal Assembly.

Mary is moreover a synodal woman, because with her life she teaches us that the Church – as emerges from the teaching and theological reflection of Benedict XVI – is not the work of our own hands, but the work of God: the Church is not the product of our doing, of our effort, but is a living entity that matures and grows in a mysterious way through grace. Mary is a a poor woman of the Lord, who knows how to welcome everything from him as a gift and grace. In her virginal conception we see the most eloquent sign of the primacy of God in her life and for her fruitfulness. The Church too is fruitful if she knows how to put the action of the Holy Spirit in her in first place.

Let us invoke the intercession of Mary so that we too might be, today, in the synodal Assembly that we are inaugurating, the “good soil” in which the Word of God may bear abundant fruit. I would like to invite everyone, in this month of October dedicated to Mary, to pray with the Holy Rosary during the journey of these days. The Rosary is an incessant rumination of the Word of God, an invocation that never tires of “knocking” at the door. Through the Rosary we too not only address Mary in prayer, but safeguard together with her the Word of God: “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:19). Through the mysteries of the Holy Rosary, we retrace the life of Jesus, his incarnation and his Passover. A prayer “with a distinctly Christological orientation” (MC 46), the Rosary invites us to place Christ at the centre, to generate him for the world, following the example of Mary. With the Rosary, we learn, like Mary, to be disciples of the Lord.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us invoke together in this month the Virgin Mary, model of the Church, so that the synodal Assembly that begins its journey today may be a renewed Pentecost, so that the Gospel of Jesus may continue to render fruitful to life of all humanity and we may be a synodal and missionary Church.