In a message on the occasion of the retreat days prior to the start of the Synod of Synodality, Cardinal Mario Grech asked the participants to abandon the burdens that endanger the credibility of the Catholic Church.
The general secretary of the Synod has stated that this meeting “can only be a prayer, a liturgy in which the main actor is not us, but the Holy Spirit”, which is why days of retreat are celebrated beforehand.
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In the same way that Moses took off his shoes to meet God on Sinai before leading the Jewish people towards the freedom of the promised land, Cardinal Grech considers that, before the Synod of Synodality, “we put aside ‘robes’, approach “and models that could have made sense yesterday, but that today have become a burden for the mission and endanger the credibility of the Church.”
In this sense, he stated: “We must be willing to strip ourselves of ourselves, because listening is a radical action of plundering before the other and before God.”
Taking the Virgin Mary as a model of “listening and obedience to the will of God”, the cardinal also pointed out that “without prayer we are not a synodal assembly, but a ‘group of entrepreneurs of faith’”.
“Mary is a synodal woman because with her life she teaches us that the Church – as can be seen from the teaching and theological reflection of Benedict XVI – is not the work of our hands, but the work of God,” he added.
The general secretary of the Synod of Synodality has asked for the intercession of the Virgin Mary so that the participants in the second session of this assembly, which will be held in Rome from October 2 to 27, may be “good land in which “The Word of God may bear abundant fruit.”
Finally, he invited people to pray the Rosary during the celebration of the meeting because through this practice of piety “we not only address Mary in prayer, but we keep the Word of God with her.”
“Let us invoke together this month the Virgin Mary, model of the Church, so that the synodal Assembly that begins its journey today may be a renewed Pentecost, so that the Gospel of Jesus continues to fertilize the life of all humanity and we may be a synodal Church. and missionary.”
Nicholas de Cardenas
Born in 1980, I am a Spanish husband and father and journalist with more than 20 years of experience in print and digital media, specializing in sociopolitical and religious information. I have worked for more than 10 years in defense of human rights and have accreditations in Journalism and Comprehensive Communication. Since July 2022, I have been a correspondent for ACI Prensa and EWTN Noticias in Spain, covering international events of the Catholic Church.