Cardinal Tobin: ‘God journeys with us; guides our path’
My dear sisters and brothers in Christ,
Happy New Year!
As I said in my video message for New Year’s Day, “Regardless of how we celebrate New Year’s Day, today is an occasion when we hope for new beginnings, make new resolutions, share new excitement, and glimpse new challenges. But today, we also celebrate the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God. As Mother of God, she is also honored as the Queen of Peace – a gift that is so needed today.” I hope you had a joy-filled New Year’s celebration, and I wish you every grace and blessing during the coming year.
In his Message for the 56th World Day of Peace, January 1st (see full text below), Pope Francis says:
When tragic events seem to overwhelm our lives, and we feel plunged into a dark and difficult maelstrom of injustice and suffering, we are likewise called to keep our hearts open to hope and to trust in God, who makes himself present, accompanies us with tenderness, sustains us in our weariness and, above all, guides our path.
I can’t think of a better way to begin this new calendar year than by taking to heart this synodal message of our Holy Father. No matter how bad things may seem, our God journeys with us—“accompanies us with tenderness” and “above all, guides our path.”
As you know, we are currently involved in a multi-year synodal process of prayer, active listening, and discernment of God’s will for us, the Church. The theme for this synod is “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission” and this journey is unfolding in phases over a three-year period from October 2021 through October 2024.
Last year, during Phase I, dioceses throughout the world engaged in prayerful discernment through listening sessions that invited all the People of God to come together and share their hopes and dreams, their joys and frustrations, and their hopes for a better future for our Church and our world. Our Archdiocese was an active participant in this first phase of the Synod, and the summary report that we submitted to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) can be found on our website at rcan.org. I urge you to read this prayerfully.
Now we are in the second phase of the Synod process. This is the Continental Phase which involves representatives from each of the five continents meeting to review the results of the worldwide listening sessions that were held in Phase I. These continental groups are working from a synthesis of all the reports submitted by bishops’ conferences in diverse regions of the Universal Church. The Document for the Continental Stage (DCS) is entitled Enlarge the Space of Your Tent (Is 54:2), and it clearly states that it is “a work in progress,” not a finished product or a statement of Church teaching. Instead, this document is intended to allow “the voices of the People of God from all parts of the world [to] speak as much as possible on their own terms and find resonance.”
I encourage you to read Enlarge the Space of Your Tent in its entirety. It is available online at synod.va, and, as the working document says in the Introduction, this working document “expresses the shared sense of the experience of synodality lived by those who took part. What emerges is a profound re-appropriation of the common dignity of all the baptized. This is the authentic pillar of a synodal Church and the theological foundation of a unity which is capable of resisting the push toward homogenization. This enables us to continue to promote and make good use of the variety of charisms that the Spirit with unpredictable abundance pours out on the faithful.”
Click here to continue reading Cardinal Tobin’s column Rejoice in the Lord.
