"Come, Holy Spirit! You inspire new tongues and place words of life on our lips: keep us from becoming a “museum Church”, beautiful but mute, with much past and little future. Come among us, so that in this synodal experience we will not lose our enthusiasm, dilute the power of prophecy, or descend into useless and unproductive discussions. Come, Spirit of love, open our hearts to hear your voice! Come, Holy Spirit of holiness, renew the holy and faithful People of God! Come, Creator Spirit, renew the face of the earth! Amen."
This is Pope Francis' prayer on introducing the Synod on Synodality in October 2021. This synod is about founding a new way of our being church. As Francis says, in quoting Yves Congar, a Dominican theologian, we do not need another church, just a different church.
The same can be said of our world. We do not look for another world, we just build a different one. After my ANZAC Day experience at Hellfire Pass, I so concur with this summation. Our world no longer needs brute force to rule the day, nor more absurd wars. Enough of humanity heaping more cruelty ono its own kind and Mother Earth. Rather let the human sprit for good run free and raise up new and fruitful ways of our dealing with each other and our earth.
Let us find new ways for us to recreate world and church together, exerting power with and for, not over and against. As evil exists in the world through us, so good also exists through us. Let us never forget that good, not evil, has ultimately won the day. In meeting Jesus, the Risen Lord, life is truly changed forever. So we take up the challenge to build a new world, a new church. All is possible.
Maybe St Catherine of Siena (14th Century) had another way of expressing this. Simply put, she wrote - "Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire."
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