We come to this Synod with conflicting hopes. But this need not be an insuperable obstacle. We are united in the hope of the Eucharist, a hope which embraces and transcends all that we long for.
But there is another source of tension. Our understandings of the Church as our home sometimes clash. Every living creature needs a home if it is to flourish. Fish need water and birds need nests. Without a home, we cannot live.
Different cultures have different conceptions of home.
The Instrumentum Laboris (IL) tells us that ‘Asia offered the image of the person who takes off his or her shoes to cross the threshold as a sign of the humility with which we prepare to meet God and our neighbour.
Oceania proposed the image of the boat and Africa suggested the image of the Church as the family of God, capable of offering belonging and welcome to all its members in all their variety.’ (IL B 1.2).
But all of these images show that we need somewhere in which we are both accepted and challenged.
At home we are affirmed as we are and invited to be more. Home is where we are known, loved and safe but challenged to embark on the adventure of faith.
We need to renew the Church as our common home if we are to speak to a world which is suffering from a crisis of homelessness. We are consuming our little planetary home.
There are more than 350 million migrants on the move, fleeing war and violence. Thousands die crossing seas to try to find a home. None of us can be entirely at home unless they are. Even in wealthy countries, millions sleep on the street. Young people are often unable to afford a home.
Everywhere there is a terrible spiritual homelessness.
Acute individualism, the breakdown of the family, ever deeper inequalities mean that we are afflicted with a tsunami of loneliness. Suicides are rising because without a home, physical and spiritual, one cannot live. To love is to come home to someone.
So what does this scene of the Transfiguration teach us about our home, both in the Church and in our dispossessed world?
Jesus invites his innermost circle of friends to come apart with him and enjoy this intimate moment. They too will be with him in the Garden of Gethsemane.
This is the inner circle of those with whom Jesus is most at home. On the mountain he grants them a vision of his glory. Peter wants to cling to this moment.
‘ “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” ’.
He has arrived and wants this intimate moment to endure.
But they hear the voice of the Father. ‘Listen to him!’
They must come down the mountain and walk to Jerusalem, not knowing what awaits them. They will be dispersed and sent to the ends of the earth to be witnesses to our ultimate home, the Kingdom.
So here we see two understandings of home: the inner circle at home with Jesus on the mountain and the summons to our ultimate home, the Kingdom in which all will belong.
Similar different understandings of the Church as home tear us apart today.
For some it is defined by its ancient traditions and devotions, its inherited structures and language, the Church we have grown up with and love. It gives us a clear Christian identity.
For others, the present Church does not seem to be a safe home.
It is experienced as exclusive, marginalising many people, women: the divorced and remarried. For some it is too Western, too Eurocentric. The IL mentions also gay people and people in polygamous marriages.
They long for a renewed Church in which they will feel fully at home, recognized, affirmed and safe.
For some the idea of a universal welcome, in which everyone is accepted regardless of who they are, is felt as destructive of the Church’s identity. As in a nineteenth-century English song, ‘If everybody is somebody then nobody is anybody.[1]’
They believe that identity demands boundaries.
But for others, it is the very heart of the Church’s identity to be open.
Pope Francis said, ‘The Church is called on to be the house of the Father, with doors always wide open … where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems and to move towards those who feel the need to take up again their path of faith.’[2]
This tension has always been at the heart of our faith, since Abraham left Ur.
The Old Testament holds two things in perpetual tension: the idea of election, God’s chosen people, the people with whom God dwells. This is an identity which is cherished.
But also universalism, openness to all the nations, an identity which is yet to be discovered.
Christian identity is both known and unknown, given and to be sought.
St. John says, ‘Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. ‘What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.’ (1 John 3. 1 – 2).
We know who we are and yet we do not know who we shall be.
For some of us, the Christian identity is above all given, the Church we know and love. For others Christian identity is always provisional, lying ahead as we journey towards the Kingdom in which all walls will fall.
Both are necessary!
If we stress only our identity is given – This is what it means to be Catholic – we risk becoming a sect. If we just stress the adventure towards an identity yet to be discovered, we risk becoming a vague Jesus movement.
But the Church is a sign and sacrament of the unity of all humanity in Christ (LG. 1) in being both. We dwell on the mountain and taste the glory now. But we walk to Jerusalem, that first synod of the Church.
How are we to live this necessary tension? Read more
- Father Timothy Radcliffe, OP, is an English Catholic priest and Dominican friar who served as master of the Order of Preachers from 1992 to 2001. This is Part 2 of the reflection he shared with those about to attend the General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which began yesterday.