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Illustration: The Denial of Saint Peter, an oil-on-canvas painting by Gerard Seghers,
dating to around 1620–25 and now held by the North Carolina Museum of Art[1]
Pope Francis’ discourseto the Annual Meeting with the Moderators
of Associations of the Faithful, Ecclesial Movements and New Communities
organized by the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life
Synod Hall – Thursday, 13 June 2024
“God is always bigger than our ideas”
Your Eminence, dear brothers and sisters,
I am happy to meet you, and I take this opportunity to reflect with you on synodality, which you have chosen as the theme of your day of meeting.
I have often said that the Synodal journey requires a spiritual conversion, because without an inner change no lasting results can be achieved.
My wish is that, after this Synod, synodality will remain a permanent way of doing things in the Church, at all levels, and that it will penetrate into the hearts of all, pastors and faithful, to the point of becoming a common “ecclesial style”. All this, however, requires a change that must take place in each one of us, a true and authentic “conversion”.
It’s been a long rroad. Just think that the first person to see the need for synodality in the Latin Church was St. Paul VI, when after the Council he created the Secretariat for the Synod of Bishops.
The Eastern Church had preserved synodality, while the Latin Church had lost it.
It was St. Paul VI who opened this way.
And today, almost 60 years later, we can say that synodality has become part of the Church’s way of working.
The most important thing about this Synod on Synodality is not so much to deal with this problem or that one.
The most important thing is the parochial, diocesan and universal journey into synodality..
And in the perspective of this spiritual conversion, I would like to try to indicate some attitudes, some “synodal virtues”, which we can derive from the three proclamations of the Passion in the Gospel of Mark (cf. 8:31; 9:31; 10:32-34): to think according to God, to overcome all closure and to cultivate humility.
Mark 8:31 – And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
Mark 9:31 – for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise.”
Mark 9:31 – And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; and they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, 33 saying, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles; 34 and they will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise.”
First, to think according to God.
After the proclamation of the Passion, the Evangelist tells us that Peter rebuked Jesus.
He himself, who should be an example and help the other disciples to be in the service of the Master’s work, goes against God’s plans and rejects God’s passion and death.
And Jesus says to him: “You are not thinking according to God, but according to men” (Mk 8:32 – 31 And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he said this plainly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter, and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men.”).
This is the first great interier change that is required of us: to pass from a “mere human thought” to a “divine thought”.
In the Church, before making any decision, before starting any program, any apostolate, any mission, we should always ask ourselves: what does God want from me, what does God want from us, at this moment, in this situation?
What I have in mind, what we have in mind as a group, is it really the “mind of God”?
Let us remember that the protagonist of the synodal journey is the Holy Spirit, not us.
He alone teaches us to listen to God’s voice, individually and as a Church.
God is always greater than our ideas, he is greater than the prevailing mentality, he is greater than the “ecclesial fashions” of the moment, he is greater even than the charism of our particular group or movement.
Therefore, let us never take it for granted that we are “in tune” with God: rather, let us always seek to go beyond ourselves, to be converted, to think according to God and not according to men. This is the first great challenge. Think according to God.
Let us think of that passage of the Gospel when the Lord announces the Passion and Peter objects. What does the Lord say? “You are not thinking according to God, you do not think according to God.”
Second: to overcome every blockage
After the second proclamation of the Passion, John confronted a man who was performing an exorcism in the name of Jesus, but who was not one of the disciples: he said “We wanted to prevent him because he did not follow us!” (Mk 9:38).
Jesus did not approve of his attitude and says to him: “He who is not against us is for us” (Mk 9:40); then he invites all the Apostles to be more vigilant about themselves, so as not to cause scandal for others (see Mk 9:42-50 in footnote below).
Let us beware of the temptation of the “closed circle”.
The Twelve had been chosen to be the foundation of the new People of God, open to all the nations of the earth, but the Apostles did not grasp this great horizon: they turned in on themselves and seemed to want to defend the gifts they had received from the Master – to healing the sick, casting out demons, proclaiming the Kingdom (cf. Mk 2:14) – as if they were privileges.
And this is also a challenge for us: not to go beyond what our “circle” thinks, to be convinced that what we are doing is good for everyone, to defend, perhaps without realizing it, positions, prerogatives or the prestige “of the group”. Or to be blocked by the fear of losing one’s sense of belonging and identity, of opening up to other people and other ways of thinking, without seeing diversity as an opportunity, and not a threat.
These are “enclosures” in which we all risk becoming prisoners.
Be careful: one’s own group, one’s own spirituality, are realities that help one to walk with the People of God, but they are not privileges, because there is the danger of ending up imprisoned in these enclosures.
Synodality, on the other hand, asks us to look beyond the fences with greatness of soul, to see the presence of God and his action even in people we do not know, in new pastoral ways, in areas of mission in which we have never been involved:
He asks us to allow ourselves to be touched, even “wounded” by the voice, the experience and the suffering of others: of our brothers and sisters in the faith and of all the people around us. Open, open heart.
Finally, the third is to cultivate humility.
After the third proclamation of the Passion, James and John ask for places of honor beside Jesus, who instead responds by inviting everyone to consider true greatness, not to be served, but to serve, to be servants of all, because that is what he himself came for (cf. Mk 10:44-45 – whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”).
Here we understand that spiritual conversion must begin with humility, which is the gateway to all the virtues.
It saddens me when I find Christians who boast: because I am a priest from here, or because they are lay people from there, because I comefrom this institution…
This is a bad thing.
Humility is the door, it is the beginning. And this also leads us to ask ourselves: what am I really looking for in relationships with my brothers and sisters in the faith?
Why do I carry out certain initiatives in the Church?
And if we realize that in some way a little pride, or arrogance, has broken through, then we ask for the grace to return to return to humility.
Only the humble do great things in the Church, because the humble have a solid foundation, founded on the love of God, which never fails, and therefore does not seek recognition from others.
And this stage of spiritual conversion is also fundamental to the building a synodal Church.
In fact, it is only the humble person appreciates others, who welcomes their contribution, their advice, their inner richness, who does not recognize his own “I”, but the “we” of the community.
It pains me when we find Christians who …, in Spanish we say “yo me mí conmigo para mí“, “I am with me for me”.
These Christians are “at the center.” It is sad.
It is the humble one who defends communion in the Church, avoiding divisions, overcoming tensions, knowing how to put aside even his own initiatives to contribute to shared projects, because in service he finds joy and not frustration or resentment.
Living synodality, at every level, is truly impossible without humility.
And I would like to reiterate the role of ecclesial movements. Ecclesial; movements are for service, not for ourselves. It is sad when one feels that “I belong to this, to the other, to the other,” as if it were a superior thing.
Ecclesial movements are at the service of the Church, they are not in themselves a message, an ecclesial centrality. They are there to serve.
I hope that these thoughts will be useful to you on your journey, in your associations and movements, in your relations with pastors and with all ecclesial realities.
I hope that this meeting and other similar moments will help you to value your respective charisms in an ecclesial perspective, so that you can make your generous and valuable contribution to the evangelisation to which we are all called..
Always look at this:
is my membership in the ecclesial movement,
is it with the association or is it with the Church?
It is in my movement, in my association for the Church, as a “stadium” to help the Church. But closed movements must be abolished they are not ecclesial.
I bless you, go ahead! And please pray for me. Cheers!
Now I give you my blessing. Let us first pray together to Our Lady.
Recite Hail Mary
Blessing
And I say this to pray in favor thinking of something that happened to me once.
I was finishing the General Audience and there was a little old woman, you could see that she was a peasant, a humble woman, but she had beautiful eyes.
And she signaled to me, she was twenty meters away.
I went. “How old are you?” – “87,” she told me. “But what do you eat that feels so good?” – “I eat ravioli, I make them“, and she also explained the recipe for ravioli.
And at the end I say to her, “Pray for me.” And she said, “I do it every day” –
“But tell me, ma’am, do you pray for or against?”
The answer of an ignorant woman: “Your Holiness, you understand!
They are praying against in there!”
That is why I ask you to pray for it. That lady made me laugh.
Footnote (Mark 9:42.50)
42 “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,
[a]it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea. 43 And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.[d]
45 And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell.
47 And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell. 48 where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.
49 For every one will be salted with fire.[j] 50 Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its saltness, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
