St. Paul Family and Friends,

Last week, I refreshed you with the meaning, goals, and methodologies of the Synod. This week, allow me to continue by enumerating four (4) attitudes we ought to have and four (4) temptations we ought to avoid (adapted from Facilitator Guide) when entering into the synodal dialogue.

Courage and Honesty. We are invited to speak with authentic courage and honesty in order to integrate freedom, truth, and charity. Everyone can grow in understanding through dialogue. Speak and Listen. Everyone has the right to be heard, just as everyone has the right to speak. Synodal dialogue depends on courage both in speaking and in listening.

Be open to newness and conversion. We must be willing to change our opinions based on what we have heard from others. We are called to abandon attitudes of complacency and comfort that lead us to make decisions purely on the basis of how things have been done in the past. Leave behind prejudices and stereotypes. The first step towards listening is freeing our minds and hearts from prejudices and stereotypes that lead us on the wrong path of ignorance.

The temptation to focus on ourselves and our immediate concerns. The synodal process is an opportunity to open up, to look around us, to see things from other points of view, and to move out in missionary outreach to the peripheries. The temptation to only see “problems.” The challenges, difficulties, and hardships facing our world and our Church are many. Nevertheless, fixating on the problems will only lead us to be overwhelmed, discouraged, and cynical. Let us appreciate where the Holy Spirit is generating life and see how we can let God work more fully.

The temptation of focusing only on structures: The synodal process will naturally call for a renewal of structures at various levels of the Church but these will come about through the ongoing conversion and renewal of all the members of the Body of Christ. The temptation to treat the Synod as a kind of a parliament: This confuses synodality with a ‘political battle’ in which in order to govern, one side must defeat the other. It is contrary to the spirit of synodality to antagonize others or to encourage divisive conflicts that threaten the unity and communion of the Church.

We want this synod to bear good fruits. This is possible when we fill ourselves with goodness that comes from God alone. The Gospel this weekend says, “A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks.”