Holy Mass for the Opening of the Synod on Synodality

Homily of Pope Francis

St Peter’s Basilica

10 October 2021

Excerpt

Let us ask ourselves frankly during this synodal process: Are we good at listening?  How good is the “hearing” of our heart?  Do we allow people to express themselves, to walk in faith even though they have had difficulties in life, and to be part of the life of the community without being hindered, rejected or judged?  Participating in a Synod means placing ourselves on the same path as the Word made flesh.  It means following in his footsteps, listening to his word along with the words of others.  It means discovering with amazement that the Holy Spirit always surprises us, to suggest fresh paths and new ways of speaking.  It is a slow and perhaps tiring exercise, this learning to listen to one another – bishops, priests, religious and laity, all the baptized – and to avoid artificial and shallow and pre-packaged responses.  The Spirit asks us to listen to the questions, concerns and hopes of every Church, people and nation.  And to listen to the world, to the challenges and changes that it sets before us.  Let us not soundproof our hearts; let us not remain barricaded in our certainties.  So often our certainties can make us closed.  Let us listen to one another.

Finally, discern.  Encounter and listening are not ends in themselves, leaving everything just as it was before.  On the contrary, whenever we enter into dialogue, we allow ourselves to be challenged, to advance on a journey.  And in the end, we are no longer the same; we are changed.  We see this in today’s Gospel.  Jesus senses that the person before him is a good and religious man, obedient to the commandments, but he wants to lead him beyond the mere observance of precepts.  Through dialogue, he helps him to discern.  Jesus encourages that man to look within, in the light of the love that the Lord himself had shown by his gaze (cf. v. 21), and to discern in that light what his heart truly treasures.  And in this way to discover that he cannot attain happiness by filling his life with more religious observances, but by emptying himself, selling whatever takes up space in his heart, in order to make room for God.