By Most Rev Prakash Mallavarapu
Archbishop of Visakhapatnam
A listening Church is necessary to discern to know and to be the Church today this is one of the important points driven home in the document, “Vademecum.” Speaking of the Synodal Process, it is said, “the Synodal process first and foremost is a spiritual process. It is not a mechanical data gathering exercise or a series of meetings and debates.” Synodal listening is oriented towards discernment:
It requires us to learn and exercise the art of personal and communal discernment. We listen to each other, to our faith tradition, and to the signs of the times in order to discern what
God is saying to all of us.” (Vademecum, 2.2). Let us reflect on this theme of ‘listening” in order to know and to take initiatives to be a “Synodal Church.”
The first phase of the Synodal Process is supposed to be over by April, 2022. It is a moment for us in the local Church to think about the initiatives to be taken in the diocese, parish, and villages or localities where Catholic Community exists! Listening, we know, is so crucial to human life, its growth, wellbeing, and development. We can respond to what we are listening or who we are listening to, either with receptive and open mind or with non-receptive and negative mind. Important, or even essential, point for serious consideration is about ‘whom to listen to and how to listen to.’ It is true that not everyone and not everything we listen is acceptable. But, a refusal even before we listen completely and reflect on what is being brought to our notice will only mean that we are saying, we do not need to listen, nothing to learn or nothing to take in. Such an attitude indicates a selfimage of being totally self-sufficient and leaves one to an impoverished state. One can be caught up in the whirlwind of listen only to oneself!
While it is absolutely necessary to listen to our own self, one’s inner voice, one’s conscience, shutting oneself from everyone else is not good. The “other” can bring for me moments of enlightenment, can lead to critical reflection of one’s life, self-awareness and self-evaluation or self-assessment, and to fresh beginnings on the journey of life! The “other” could be our dear and near ones, elders, teachers, resource persons with expertise in a particular subject, and so on. For believers, the “other” is God and His spokespersons like the prophets, priests and religious teachers, and the Church or the religion one belongs to. And there is no substitute to the “listening to voice of God!”
This voice of God is mediated through Scriptures, through those who break the ‘Word of God.’ through the silent moments in the Divine presence, through ordinary people and events, through
the “nature,” with all its fauna and flora, and through the Church, the People of God! Of course, what is needed is “a disposition of listening” and “a willingness to take time or
giving time to listen” and “a deep desire to listen to the voice of God!”
In the immediate context of the closing of the first phase of the process of Synod and Synodality, towards a Synodal Church: Synod 2021 -2023, we know that all of us in the Church are invited to be and to become a “listening church.” We have been reflecting with you through our monthly newsletter about what is expected to be the outcome of the Synodal process that
is initiated by our Holy Father, Pope Francis. The objective is to bring awareness, renewal, and change in being the Church in the world today, a journeying together: Communion, Participation, and Mission. We have to be the church wherein there is Communion among the members of different sections of the believers, including priests and religious, where there is participation and sharing of the privileges, responsibilities, duties or works of the church, and where there is a sense of mission and urge to share in the saving mission of the church. All of this has to happen at the parish level (has to happen in the villages or localities of the parish).
The question before you is, “Has anything happened or has been initiated in your parish in response to the call of the Synod-2021- 2023?” Not that ‘communion, participation, and mission’ are not at all there in your parish community but are you able to make a statement about the reality or the truth of the matter in the parish you are heading or leading or belong to? If nothing is done or initiated at the parish or community level, it might be surely be an indication that we are not listening to “What the Spirit is saying to the Church.” It is good to pause a while as individuals and as faith communities in the given parish or village/locality to what the Church is inviting us to see, reflect, and act through the instrumentality of our Holy Father Pope Francis and the Synodal fathers. It is the prophetic mission of the ‘head of the Catholic Church’ calling all the faithful like the prophets of the Old Testament, “Listen, O Israel,” to see how we are as the church and how we strive to be the Church today!