His Eminence Filipe Neri Cardinal Ferrao, the Archbishop of Goa in his message during the inauguration of the formative year 2024-2025 at the mission seminary in Pilar had called seminary formation to prepare young seminarians to be synodal disciples and synodal priests. His eminence indicated that a synodal Church has three qualities: Listening, Being inclusive and Healing. Listening involves listening to God and his people and even to the cry of the creation. Being inclusive takes us to the peripheries and margins and healing leads us bring salubrious ministries to people suffering divisions, discrimination and exploitation. This makes our discipleship a pilgrimage of hope. Christ being our true hope , our Holy Father , Pope Francis rightly gave the Catholic theologians dual tasks. Pope Francis called upon the theologians to put Christ back at the centre of theologizing and develop of theology of synodality. Putting Christ back at the centre means rekindling hope leading to deepening of the ecclesial and missionary dimension of synodality.
Pope Francis sees tomorrows priests as missionary disciples in the light of the synodal journey of the Church. Pope Francis calls the young seminarians as missionary disciples to learn to listen, to walk together and bear witness. It is by listing to God and others and walking together bears fruit in becoming living signs of the presence of Jesus in the world. Synodal discipleship requires us to enlarge the space of the tent (Isa52: 2). It is in this process of enlarging that we listen to everyone especially the voiceless. St. Francis Xavier , like many other Saints is a great inspiration to move towards the synodal enlargement of the space of the tent. Enlarging the space of the tent is expanding our being-with. Listening is central to being-with. Active listening keeps our ears fixed on the ground. It opens us to the sensus fidei in the Church that will bring energy and grace to listen to vox populi which then will raise the gradients of synergy, synaxis and symphony within and beyond the boundaries of the pilgrim Church. Indeed, it is the dynamism of the enlargement of the space that challenges us to convert our living space into a Trinitarian space leading us to participate in divine life.
Being missionary disciples in the age of synodality humbles us as pilgrims of hope reminding that we all carry treasures in earthen-vessels ( 2Cor 4: 7) . St Francis Xavier becomes a great example of humility. He was open to St. Ignatius of Loyola’s last minute proposal to venture on a missionary journey to India. He read the signs of his times and developed his responses that moved him to appropriate actions in his missionary ministry. While, St. Francis Xavier continues to inspire our synodal journey of discipleship, the same spirit of synodality challenges us to open ourselves to the decolonial horizons as we listen to the voices that are interrogating the colonial legacy of the Saint in Goa. We have the imperative of ‘ wider ecumenism’ particularly in Goa to listen to these aggressive voices and generate appropriate responses. We have suffered colonialism yet the politics often pushes the burden of colonization on the Catholics alone while fogetting the role played by the upper caste. The same forces use the position of St. Francis Xavier in Goan society to crucify further the Catholic community in Goa . The synodal spirit of the people of Goa, honours the St. Francis as ‘Goycho Saib’ and in doing so the people of Goa has decolonized him at several levels.
Synodality that we have embraced leads us to discern the existence of sinodality both within as well as outside the Church. The sinful structures in our society do continue our solidarity with sin as sinodalities multiply in the market, politics as well as our religious and social life. Synodal praxis of missionary disciples has the prophetic challenge to denounce the exclusion of the poor as well as destruction of ecosystems. Synodal discipleship can move us to build ecologies of people that engage society with praxis that works to protect the common good of humanity and the created order. This would mean as missionary disciples in an age of synodality we have the challenge to work to dismantle structures of sinodality in our society.
The spirit of synodality opens us to diversity. While remaining obedient to the authoritative character of the universal Church , we have the challenge to see plurality and diversity as ordained by God and bearing God’s signature of goodness. Perhaps, this new attention to the synodal character of the Church, will push the Church to truly become a pluriversal Church. St. Francis Xavier does exhibit this openness to diversity to some extent. He being a man of his times and saint for our times inspires us to give up triumphalism of the Pantokrator , all power full God of the colonial empire. Missionary action has given up this hegemonic culture , but we may still have to deimperialize elements within our culture that might be holding us back from truly becoming missionary disciples of the crucified one.
The impetus of deimperialization flowing from synodality will certainly push us to resist what may be called as ‘ elite capture’ in the Church. We may see ‘elite capture’ when caste dominates, regional fidelities influence at several processes and administrative offices in the Church in our country. Synodality that enlarges the space of the tent of God with us has a compulsive imperative to work to dignify women, tribals, children and the Dalits in our country. While keeping the dialogical doors open for the inter-faith and ‘ecumenical’ conversations with our brothers and sisters of neighbourly faith, separated brethren, science community and even with the atheists, we have the challenge to serve our nation at all levels and prepare people to serve as good citizens. May be we have the challenge to open ourselves to developing indic and Goan theologies. Asia a Method , a intriguing book by K. H Chen might show us the path. A deeply synodal discipleship while learning from the universal Church, has the task of deimperializing western theology. Deimperializing theology does not mean rejection of western theologies. It only mean we stay open to inclusive thrust of synodality and listen critically to the local voices that enable us to theologize in India and Goa.
