NEWS …from Synod-2015

The 2015 Synod on the Family formally opened on Sunday morning, October 4, with the celebration of Holy Mass at the Altar of the Confession in the Papal Basilica of St Peter’s, with the Holy Father presiding and the Synod fathers concelebrating. In his homily, Pope Francis described the Synod as a “moment of grace,” and began his reflections on the day’s Scripture with images reminiscent of Pope St John Paul II. Thus the Pope spoke of the “original loneliness,” or solitude, of Adam before the creation of Eve, a loneliness repaired by the presence to Adam of one who was flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone – the one whose creation completed the humanum by establishing, “in the beginning,” a community of persons who find their fulfilment making gifts of themselves to one another. The Holy Father regretted that today’s world is replete with “so much loneliness and vulnerability,” and noted that one prominent example of this is the contemporary crisis of the family: “People are less and less serious about building a solid and fruitful relationship of love – in sickness and in health, for better and for worse, in good times and bad. Love which is lasting, faithful, conscientious, stable, and fruitful in increasingly looked down upon, viewed as a quaint relic of the past…[Indeed] the most advanced societies are the very ones which have the lowest birth-rates…” Pope Francis then spoke of the divine pain at Adam’s loneliness and the divine remedy that he created. For in creating woman to be for man one with “a heart like his own,” the Creator revealed that he did not create us to live in sorrow or isolation. “He made man and woman for happiness, to share their journey with someone who complements them, to live the wondrous experience of love: to love and to be loved, and to see their love bear fruit in children….This is God’s dream for his beloved creation: to see it fulfilled in the loving union of a man and a woman, rejoining in their shared journey, fruitful in their mutual gift of self.” The truth of marriage, a divine gift in creation marked by complementarity, fruitfulness, and permanence, is further clarified by the redemption. For, as the Holy Father put it, it is “in the light of the folly of the gratuitousness of Jesus’s paschal love [that] the folly of the gratuitousness of an exclusive and life-long conjugal love make[s] sense” – especially in times like our own which, while marked by a lot of  talk about love, are also marked by the radical individualism and self-centeredness that makes authentic love impossible. In the closing section of his homily, the Pope, while recognising that the Church’s teaching on marriage is a hard saying for many, nonetheless called the Church to “carry out her mission in fidelity, truth, and love.” Fidelity, by “defending faithful love;” by “defending the sacredness of life, of every life;” and by “defending the unity and indissolubility of the conjugal bond as a sign of God’s grace and of the human person’s ability to love seriously.” Truth, by resisting the temptations posed by “passing fads or popular opinions,” so that humanity is drawn away from the temptation to turn “fruitful love into sterile selfishness, faithful union into temporary bonds.” Love, by exercising her pastoral responsibility “to seek out and care for hurting couples with the balm of acceptance and mercy; to be a ‘field hospital’ with doors wide open to whoever knocks in search of help and support; even more, to reach out to others with true love, to walk with our fellow men and women who suffer, to include them and guide them to the wellspring of salvation.” Pope Francis concluded by commending the work of the Synod to the Lord, “through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.”