Communion, participation, listening and mission
“‘Being a synodal Church means recognising that truth is not possessed, but sought together, allowing ourselves to be guided by a restless heart in love with Love’.”
(L-R): Fr Nelson Po, Parish Priest, Applecross Parish, Perth, Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the Synod, and Daniel Lynch, Chancellor & Executive Director, Perth.
The recently concluded Jubilee of Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies (24 - 26 October 2025) coincided with the one-year anniversary of the conclusion of the second General Assembly of the Synod on Synodality (26 October 2024). The journey of the last 12 months has seen the beginnings of the implementation phase of the Final Document of the Synod on Synodality across the universal church. Bringing together, in Rome, participants from around the world, the Jubilee of Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies offered the opportunity to openly reflect on, and listen to, the individual and collective journeys and experiences of synodality ‘taking root’ across the richness of cultures, languages and the varied contexts of the universal church. In recognising that unity is not the same as uniformity with respect to the lived experiences of the synodal journey, Pope Leo affirmed that there is no single approach to the implementation of synodality across all continents, but rather synodality should be a way of ‘being’ that opens each of us to greater communion, listening and participation in the life and mission of the church. These words offer an encouraging echo to Pope Francis’s emphasis that the Final Document of the Synod serves to ‘guide the mission of the Churches, on different continents, and in particular contexts’.
What is the invitation that the synodal journey opens for you, me and the collective ‘we’ as part of the Marist Association of St Marcellin Champagnat?
An indication might be found in Pope Leo’s homily on Sunday, 26 October, at the closure of the Jubilee for Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies when, quoting from the Final Document of the Synod on Synodality, he said:
‘… ecclesial discernment requires “interior freedom, humility, prayer, mutual trust, an openness to the new and a surrender to the will of God. It is never just a setting out of one’s own personal or group point of view or a summing up of differing individual opinions”.
As we, as Marists, continue to reflect and dialogue together regarding the journey we have embarked upon following our own assembly in Brisbane this year, how might we recognise God’s call within ourselves, and in each other, to a greater openness to welcoming the inbreaking of God’s will in our own lives and the life we share and give expression to in the Marist communities to which we belong? What might God be asking of us in terms of abandoning our own point of view, or a comfortable, self-assured and self-referential view-point for ‘our group’ that has remained unexamined?
While for many of us the broader context of the unfolding synodal journey across the universal church might seem all too big a thought to wrestle with, we, as Marists, must continue to recognise that our identity is, at its essence, an ecclesial identity that is grounded in the reality of the local churches to which we are present to and minister within. We are presented with the opportunity for boldness, creativity and, like Mary, the inbreaking of new life through an ongoing conversion to God’s will in our own time and place. In mutual trust we are reminded that we are the sum parts of a greater ‘whole’ that is the church in which our identity finds its expression.
As people of prayer, in tune with ourselves and one another, we are well placed to set-out, each day, as reflections of love for our world, to those to whom we have been sent.
May we each continue to embrace the invitation to create and hold spaces for the Holy Spirit to lead us with greater hope and boldness as we respond to the unfolding calls to communion, participation, listening and mission that are the ‘green shoots’ of synodality that are taking root across our church.
Daniel Lynch
Chancellor and Executive Director
Archdiocese of Perth
Association Councillor, Marist Association Member Perth