Head of Italian bishops: Synodal Path leading to need for courageous choices.....which others would call dangers on the horizon
Cardinal Zuppi: it is time for courageous choices- key section highlighted in red below.
We publish the text of the Introduction by Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna and President of the CEI, to the proceedings of the Spring Session of the Permanent Episcopal Council, which will take place in Rome from 20 to 22 March 2023.
On this day - we know it - the liturgy offers Saint Joseph to our meditation and prayer. It seems providential to let us be guided by the figure of him. The first striking trait is the care he takes of Mary and the Child Jesus. He loves them as requested by the angel, going beyond justice and overcoming understandable fear. In the uncertainty, often tiring, terrible for many, of the steps of our wanderings - in any case always counted by God - listening to and putting the Word into practice allows us to find the path, to choose the direction, to take care of others, to see with the eyes of faith the crops that are already blonde even if there are five months left before the harvest. St. Joseph reminds us that we are guarded and must guard, especially in times of crisis, in pandemics triggered by evil. In them we all discover ourselves vulnerable and pilgrims on this earth. Joseph assumes paternal responsibility: he is not a consultant who lends his work to him without assuming responsibility. Guarding him is making Jesus grow, protecting him so that he reveals himself. Joseph doesn't tie it to himself, he doesn't own it: he keeps it because he listens and loves.
From winter to spring
The solemnity of Saint Joseph is a prelude to spring, which according to the civil calendar opens tomorrow. Even the Lenten liturgy helps us to anticipate the joy of Easter. Life is blooming again. But can life flourish again? In my Introduction to the Permanent Episcopal Council of 20 September 2022, held in Matera, I used the metaphor of winter to identify some fragilities and sufferings of our time and of our people: winter of the environment, of society, of territorial differences, of the falling birth rate of education. According to some, winter is irreversible. I suggested taking advantage of this situation to learn a "gaze from below", which would allow one to be moved and take on the burdens of the poorest. But I also asked to engage in a "long view", to build with generosity and intelligence, thinking about what is after us, to communicate the Christian hope that believes with confidence that everything can change and the desert flourish.
I believe this is our perspective today: sincerely recognizing ecclesial and social difficulties, believing, however, that today "Tantum aurora est", that we are close to a new springtime of the Church, opening up new and courageous prospects for the future. For this we need passion, prophetic vision, evangelical freedom and understanding of communion, generous responsibility and gratuitousness in service. Synodality is anything but renunciation or orders from on high! We must know how to recognise the many signs of his predilection and of the gifts entrusted to us and accept the real challenge which is to build communities, houses where the Lord Jesus and his Mother, our Mother, the Church live.
(Cathcon: The return of the post-Conciliar, "New Springtime". Synodality is an attempt to give new life to an idea that died years ago)
The pandemic has brought to light some more or less latent ecclesial weaknesses. We must not observe them with pervasive pessimism, with that subtle temptation to stop only on the difficulties, on the limits, with that practical incredulity of only knowing how to see the problems, even interpreting them in a refined way but without believing that they are an occasion for God's work. Let us not forget the temptations of Gnosticism and Pelagianism, indicated by Pope Francis. And we must not even run after the illusory and hypocritical search for perfect communities but let us recognize in our fragility and contradiction, the many virtuous behaviours, which we must not forget or lose because they are a gift of the Spirit.
Still with indispensable caution, we can say that we are now in the post-pandemic season, as the WHO has announced. The painful season of COVID imposes a strong commitment on us to transform suffering into human and ecclesial awareness and wisdom. "Together with the physical manifestations, COVID-19 has caused, even with long-term effects, a general malaise that has concentrated in the hearts of many people and families, with significant implications, fueled by long periods of isolation and various limitations of freedom”, just as it “touched some raw nerves in the social and economic order, bringing out contradictions and inequalities. It has threatened the job security of many and aggravated the increasingly widespread loneliness in our societies, especially that of the weakest and the poor. We think, for example, of the millions of informal workers in many parts of the world, left without work and without any support throughout the confinement period".
This is what Pope Francis wrote to us in his message for the Day of Peace. I am also thinking of the psychic discomfort that makes many people suffer, often young people, and which asks us to rediscover a sense of community, of relationship, of intelligent and strong attention to fragility.
Considering the pandemic season, we must avoid that the use of digital communication, so important during isolation, replaces presence and becomes functional to individualism and the pathology of fear. I would think, for example, it would be appropriate to end with so many computer transmissions that lead to closure. We ask ourselves: “What have we learned from this pandemic situation? What new paths will we have to take to abandon the chains of our old habits, to be better prepared, to dare to be new? What signs of life and hope can we grasp to move forward and try to make our world better?”. We must nurture a Christian culture that gives meaning and form to the word "together" because "it is together, in fraternity and solidarity, that we build peace, guarantee justice, overcome the most painful events" (Pope Francis, Message for the Day Peace World Cup 2023).
Remembering the pandemic, a thought goes to the many priests, deacons, hospital chaplains and pastoral workers who have committed themselves, sometimes even at the cost of their lives, to bringing consolation where there was loneliness and death. But even more numerous is the host of lay people, doctors, nurses, professionals or simple volunteers, who have lovingly accompanied so many people, especially the elderly, in the last stretch of their existence. It was the season of the "saints next door". They have in fact reinvented a pastoral care outside the usual physical and mental confines of the parishes, showing so much solidarity, closeness, gratuitous love. We understood more vividly that the identity of the Christian community is not measured only on the basis of participation in the Sunday liturgy. Prayer, personal and community, always has a much broader horizon, which makes the Christian community what it should be, a family capable of making people feel at home, of reaching people in their homes so that they are not isolated places or solitary prisons , weaving the human and emotional ties commanded by Christian love. Charity belongs by right to the faith experience of every Christian and cannot be delegated to only a few, just as it can never be separated from the spiritual dimension. Love and truth feed on each other.
The post-pandemic Church
Saint Joseph makes courageous choices that lead to a turning point in his own life and that of his family. How can we not think about escaping from Herod, becoming a refugee in Egypt? And how can we fail to remember the latest tragedy involving refugees, who have not found who was looking after their lives? I sincerely thank all those who have done their utmost to help them, a manifestation of so much humanity and the Church of Crotone (Cathcon: where refugees land in Italy) which has shown the face of the mother of our Church. Saint Joseph is and remains an "ordinary" man, a normal worker, as demonstrated by the fact that in Nazareth he was known as "the carpenter" (Mark 13:55). His fortitude and temperance are virtues required even today of our entire Church, which is resetting its being a believing community after the pandemic.
I would like to recall the appeal that we sent from Matera to politicians, but in some ways to everyone and which indicated some concerns that ask us to find certain answers, not temporary, precarious, always partial: "Poverty is constantly and worryingly increasing, the demographic winter, the gaps between the territories, the ecological transition and the energy crisis, the defense of jobs, especially for young people, migrants, the overcoming of red tape, the reforms of the democratic expression of the State and of the electoral law ”. It is truly a time for everyone to make courageous choices and not opportunism.
It is in this context that the Synodal Path of the Churches in Italy takes place, which experiences the transition from the phase of listening to that of discernment, the driving force of this "ecclesial rewriting". No one has the illusion that there is a solution to every difficulty or that this process is experienced by everyone with the same enthusiasm. Those who have been involved in this journey, starting with the diocesan representatives up to the members of the Committee and the Presidency of the Synodal Path, tell us of the satisfaction of the journey made together, which is progressively educating all the protagonists to a new spiritual and pastoral style. The Churches have given voice to a plurality of subjects, who have shown the value of faith lived as a domestic experience.
This variety of subjects and their responsible participation in ecclesial dynamics seems to me the best premise for arriving prepared when the time comes to take the necessary and courageous evangelical decisions, which will involve everyone at various levels, from the individual local Churches, to the ecclesiastical Regions, to the Church in Italy in its unity and to the CEI itself. I think it is necessary not to lose the momentum of vitality and creativity, which in the time of the pandemic has generated pastoral practices that are new in form and content.
The Church of the post-pandemic and of the Synodal Path is configured ever more clearly as a missionary Church, of everyone's call and sending, which measures itself against questions, challenges, with the need to spread a Christian culture as the key to understand and console so much suffering. The pandemic has suddenly placed everyone before some fundamental existential questions, such as the meaning of death, the reason for innocent pain, the all-human value of life from its beginning to its end, the importance of gratuitousness, fragility. I like to imagine a Church that takes charge of these questions and offers light and hope for new motivations that free from fear.
10 years of Pope Francis
On 19 March 2013, on the solemnity of Saint Joseph, Pope Francis received the pallium and the fisherman's ring as a sign of the beginning of his Petrine ministry. We know that for him Joseph is a special saint. In these ten years of pontificate, he has shown those traits that I have noted so far.
Today we feel like giving him a big "thank you" for the teaching that he has given us over the years. We know his speeches and his official documents, which have had a profound effect on the life of our communities. We have learned to appreciate him in his symbolic gestures such as the prayer of March 27, 2020 in a deserted St. Peter's Square or the kiss on the feet of the leaders of South Sudan asking for their effort for the pacification of that land. We have once again grasped his explicit commitment to peace in Ukraine, but also in the many hotbeds of war around the world. He showed himself close to the populations tormented by natural disasters, such as the terrible earthquake that recently struck Turkey and Syria. He denounced the "globalization of indifference" and showed attention to those who are forced to migrate in the hope of a better life, risking and unfortunately often losing life itself. He has always invited us not to be satisfied with "it has always been done this way" and rather urged us to create an outgoing Church, projected towards the existential peripheries.
This is why I said that Pope Francis has taken on some traits of Saint Joseph: (Cathcon: Latin Mass supporters would not see him as a caring father!!!!!)
we see in him the care for others, the custody of the weakest, the solidity of daily faith and the courage to dream of the Church of today and tomorrow. His words and his gestures have become an ecclesial program for us and they also offer us a language that brings many together and is understandable to all. Now, acting as the spokesperson for the Pastors of the Churches who are in Italy, I wish to thank him. And at the same time assure him of our prayers, that St. Joseph may support him in his ministry. His words and the reference to the speech in Florence remain a precious indication for us, they mark the urgency of so much pastoral commitment together with all the people entrusted to us and they push us to undertake our ecclesial journey with courage and responsibility.
Prayer to St. Joseph
I wish to conclude this Introduction, therefore also entrusting the work of this Permanent Episcopal Council to the care and paternal intercession of St. Joseph. An in-depth reflection awaits us, especially in view of the next General Assembly in May. Ours is a high and delicate task, which involves the life of the Churches that are in Italy. We need to face these days with faith and a sense of responsibility. For this, we ask for the protection of the Patron of the universal Church. We turn to him with the prayer that the Pope placed at the conclusion of the Apostolic Letter Patris Corde (December 8, 2020):
Hello, guardian of the Redeemer, and husband of the Virgin Mary.
To you God entrusted his Son; Mary placed her trust in you; with you Christ became man.
O Blessed Joseph, show yourself a father to us too, and guide us on the journey of life.
Get us grace, mercy and courage, and defend us from all evil. Amen.
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