Synod on Synodality: The 8 paragraphs approved unanimously in the final document

He final document of the Synod of Synodality, announced on Saturday, October 26 after a two-year synodal process, has eight paragraphs approved unanimously, unlike the rest, which received at least one vote against from a synod father.

This process concludes with a series of proposals that, among other things, could profoundly transform the way the faithful, the hierarchy and the mission of the Church relate in the contemporary world.

Since the document was only published by the Vatican in Italian and English, the ACI Prensa team translated the paragraphs cited below and which were paragraphs approved by the 355 members who participated in the final vote, that is, without votes against.

Paragraph 1

“Each new step in the life of the Church is a return to the source, a renewed experience of the encounter with the Risen Lord that the disciples experienced in the Upper Room on Easter night. Like them, we too, participating in this synodal Assembly, have felt enveloped by His mercy and touched by His beauty. Living the conversation in the Spirit, listening to each other, we have perceived His presence among us: the presence of Him who, by giving the Holy Spirit, continues to raise in His People a unity that is harmony in differences.

Paragraph 15

“From Baptism in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit arises the identity of the People of God. This is carried out as a call to holiness and a sending on mission to invite all peoples to welcome the gift of salvation (cf. Mt 28:18-19). It is, therefore, from Baptism, in which Christ clothes us with Himself (cf. Gal 3,27) and makes us reborn of the Spirit (cf. Jn 3,5-6) as children of God, from which the Church is born. synodal and missionary. “The entire Christian life has its source and its horizon in the mystery of the Trinity, which awakens in us the dynamism of faith, hope and charity.”

Paragraph 34

“«The human creature, as a spiritual nature, is fulfilled in interpersonal relationships. The more you live them authentically, the more your own personal identity matures as well. It is not by isolating himself that man values ​​himself, but by putting himself in relationship with others and with God. The importance of such relationships then becomes fundamental” (CV 53). A synodal Church is characterized as a space in which relationships can flourish, thanks to the mutual love that constitutes the new commandment that Jesus left to His disciples (cf. Jn 13:34-35). In the midst of increasingly individualistic cultures and societies, the Church, “a people gathered in the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” (LG 4), can bear witness to the strength of the relationships founded on the Trinity. The differences in vocation, age, sex, profession, condition and social belonging, present in each Christian community, offer each one that encounter with the otherness essential for personal maturation.

Paragraph 51

“We must look to the Gospels to draw the map of the conversion that is required of us, learning to make the attitudes of Jesus our own. The Gospels “present him to us constantly listening to the people who approach him on the roads of the Holy Land” (DTC 11). Whether they were men or women, Jews or pagans, doctors of the law or publicans, righteous or sinners, beggars, blind, lepers or sick, Jesus did not dismiss anyone without stopping to listen and without enter into dialogue. He revealed the face of the Father as he approached each one where their history and freedom are found. By listening to the needs and faith of the people he met, words and gestures emerged that renewed his life, opening the way to healed relationships. Jesus is the Messiah who “makes the deaf hear and the mute speak” (Mk 7:37). He asks us, His disciples, to behave in the same way and grants us, with the grace of the Holy Spirit, the ability to do so, molding our hearts to His: only “the heart makes any authentic bond possible, because a relationship that does not “It is built with the heart and is incapable of overcoming the fragmentation of individualism” (DN 17). When we listen to our brothers and sisters, we participate in the attitude with which God, in Jesus Christ, approaches each one.”

Paragraph 58

“Each baptized person responds to the needs of the mission in the contexts in which they live and operate, based on their own inclinations and capacities, thus manifesting the freedom of the Spirit when granting their gifts. It is thanks to this dynamism in the Spirit that the People of God, by listening to the reality in which they live, can discover new areas of commitment and new ways of fulfilling their mission. Christians who, in various ways—in the family and other states of life, in the workplace and in the professions, in civic or political, social or ecological engagement, in the development of a culture inspired by the Gospel, as well as in the evangelization of the culture of the digital environment—they travel the roads of the world and in their living environments they announce the Gospel, they are sustained by the gifts of the Spirit.”

Paragraph 140

“On Easter night, Christ gives the disciples the messianic gift of His peace and makes them participants in His mission. His peace is fullness of being, harmony with God, with brothers and sisters, and with creation; The mission is to announce the Kingdom of God, offering each person, without exception, the mercy and love of the Father. The delicate gesture that accompanies the words of the Risen Lord evokes what God did in the beginning. Now, in the Cenacle, with the breath of the Spirit the new creation begins: a people of missionary disciples is born.”

Paragraph 144

“The Church already has many places and resources for the formation of missionary disciples: families, small communities, parishes, ecclesial groups, seminaries, religious communities, academic institutions, as well as places of service and work. with marginality, missionary and volunteer experiences. In all these areas, the community expresses its capacity to educate in discipleship and to accompany in witness, in a meeting that often makes people from different generations interact. Popular piety is also a precious treasure of the Church, which instructs all the People of God on the way. In the Church, no one is purely a recipient of formation: everyone is an active subject and has something to offer others.”

Paragraph 152

“The story of the miraculous catch ends with a banquet. The Risen One has asked the disciples to obey His word, to cast the nets and bring them to the shore; However, it is He who prepares the table and invites us to eat. There are loaves and fish for everyone, as when he multiplied them for the hungry multitude. There is, above all, awe and charm in His presence, so clear and resplendent that it requires no questions. By eating with His own, after they had abandoned and renounced Him, the Risen One once again opens the space of communion and forever imprints on the disciples the mark of a mercy that opens to the future. For this reason, the witnesses of the Passover will identify themselves like this: “we who ate and drank with him after his resurrection from the dead” (Acts 10:41).”