{"id":327670,"date":"2015-10-24T04:00:44","date_gmt":"2015-10-24T02:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/the-synod-moving-on-together\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:01:46","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:01:46","slug":"the-synod-moving-on-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/the-synod-moving-on-together\/","title":{"rendered":"The Synod: Moving on Together"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20151024-02\"<\/a>It was a solemn celebration in the presence of all the synod Fathers, delegations, ambassadors and Pope Francis<\/strong> \u2013 who gave one of the most important speeches of his pontificate – on 17 October in the Nervi Hall, to commemorate 50 years since the institution of the Bishops\u2019 Synod by Pope Paul VI. Focolare President, Maria Voce<\/a> defined it, “a masterpiece”, when asked to comment on the spur of the moment, on the Pope\u2019s speech. “He illustrated that there cannot be a progress of the Church if not as a synodal body. I was struck when he underlined the importance of the sensus fidei<\/em>, that is, the sense of faith, and the infallibility of the people of God, who together listen to the Holy Spirit, thus expressing the faith of the Church. And this starts always from the base. In this manner, with all the juridical collegiate figures that emerged after the Second Vatican Council \u2013 Pope Francis makes us see \u2013 that if we don\u2019t live this synodal spirit, starting from the people it addresses, they will not serve to enhance communion. They would all be just masks.” And regarding the primacy of service: \u201cLet us never forget this!\u201d the Pope exclaimed.<\/strong> \u201cFor the disciples of Jesus, of the past, today and for always, the only authority is that of service, the sole power is the cross, in the Master\u2019s words: \u201d’You know that the governors of the nations rule over them and the leaders oppress them. Among you it will not be so; whoever wishes to be great among you, will be your servant and whoever wants to be first among you, will be your slave’ (Mt 20,25-27). Among you it will not be so: in this expression we reach that very heart in which we have been trying for some time now to reflect ourselves, exactly in the sense which he explained: \u201cthe top is found below the base. Due to this, those who exert authority are called ‘ministers’ because, according to the original meaning of the word, they are the smallest among all.\u201d What comes out once more in his speech is the same wavelength between Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew I:<\/strong> “The commitment to build a synodal Church \u2013 a mission to which we are all called, each in the role the Lord entrusted us with \u2013 is burdened by ecumenical implications. Due to this, in speaking to a delegation of the Patriarchate of Costantinople, I recently stressed the conviction that \u2018the careful examination of how the principle of synodality is expressed in the life of the church and the service of he who presides it, will offer an important contribution to the progress of relationships between our Churches.” Maria Voce also underlined, “It is a synergy \u2013 that not only regards the problems of creation expressed in the encyclical Laudato si\u2019<\/em>; it is precisely this feeling of synodality of the Church that pushes Pope Francis to open a door to say: we must get together as one. It is a responsibility that urges him to find a way of getting down to concrete steps towards a full communion among Christians, because only in this can the synodal spirit of the Church be seen.” Lastly, Maria Voce continued, <\/strong>“The effort is not to seek compromises, but that which the Holy Spirit wants to say to us, which is a challenge that requires a strong unity of the entire Church. We spoke with various participants of the Synod for Families in the past days, and also with the family of married focolarini from Colombia, Mar\u00eda Ang\u00e9lica and Luis Rojas, and all asked us for prayers. So let us intensify our prayers as if we were there, trying to understand how to respond to the anguish and difficulties of the family in the modern world, and regard the family as part of God\u2019s plan.” The motivation and strong words of Paul VI that accompanied the institution of the Synod of Bishops on 15 September 1965 are particularly important for the Focolare Movement<\/strong>, precisely because the institution of the Synod, Maria Voce explained, “brought a new climate within the Church, a turning point: that of collegiality, communion, passing from a manner of conducting the individual and rather hierarchical Church, to a collegial one. As the Focolare Movement, as a movement of unity, we thus could not but take this event into consideration, and with joy I accepted Cardinal Baldisseri\u2019s invitation to participate in the commemoration.” The Synods, in fact, are the concrete prosecution of the Second Vatican Council<\/strong>: \u00abPaul VI, evidently inspired by the Holy Spirit after having made such a beautiful experience of the council, which had stirred up new realities in the Church \u2013 just think of the documents Gaudium et Spes, Lumen Gentium, Nostra Aetate \u2013 felt that this experience had to continue.\u00bb “Synod,” in fact, precisely means \u201cjourney together\u201d as Cardinal Sch\u00f6nborn explained in his speech on the birth of the Synod of Bishops and on the various Synods, with the force of the Pope. It thus means that \u00abthe Church is walking together, not the Pope by himself, the bishops by themselves, the people of God by themselves, or the laity by themselves: this journey is undertaken by the Church, in which all have something to say and give.” Read more:<\/strong> press release<\/a> on the participation of the Focolare in the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Synod of Bishops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Synod of Bishops is \u00abone of the most precious fruits of the Second Vatican Council,\u00bb Maria Voce affirmed in underlining the participation of the Focolare Movement in the 50th anniversary of the institution of the Synod, last 17 October in the Vatican. Here is one of her comments just after the event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[894],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-senza-categoria-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}