‘To be a missionary synodal Church requires patient, imaginative, intelligent and open-hearted listening’
Brother Timothy Radcliffe, OP
Brother Timothy Radcliffe, OP, former Master of the Order who will be created a Cardinal by Pope Francis at the Consistory to be held on 8 December, was commissioned as preacher of the preparatory retreat for the second session of the Synod on Synodality. The retreat took place on 30 September and 1 October. Br. Timothy’s reflections were published by the official Vatican media.
Br. Timothy introduce his meditations by pointing out that last year’s retreat focused on how to listen to one another. This year’s retreat, he said, would have a new focus: How to be a missionary synodal Church. “But the basis of all that we will do is the same: patient, imaginative, intelligent and open-hearted listening.” To guide the meditations, Br. Timothy took four moments from the resurrection, according to the Gospel of St John. The mediations were entitled Searching in the Dark, The Locked Room, The Stranger on the Beach, and Breakfast with the Lord.
Searching in the Dark
In his first meditation, (30 September), Br. Timothy recalled that in the garden of the tomb there were three seekers in the darkness of the early morning, Mary Magdalene, the Beloved Disciple and Simon Peter. This detail makes it clear that each seeks the Lord in his own way, each has his own way of loving and his own emptiness, and each has his own role in the dawn of hope. Even so, there is no rivalry. The disciples’ mutual dependence on each other embodies the heart of synodality. “Like those three seekers in the garden, we must attend to each other’s questions if we are to find a renewed way of being Church,” he said.
The Locked Room
In his second meditation, (30 September), Br Timothy recalled the moment when the disciples were again in the dark, immobilised in the closed room. He first warned that, though we have vastly different viewpoints, love for the Church can lock us all into a narrow world, looking at our “ecclesiastical navel”, observing others, and make us ready to detect their deviations and denounce them. He recalled that Pope Francis, before his election, said that the Lord would come knocking at the door and demanding to be let out of the sacristy! Of course, there are changes that some of us long for, but let us not let that lock us into our little ecclesiastical world. We will get bored. God reveals himself on mountaintops with limitless horizons and outside the camp. Our liberation from these rooms needs not only courage, but God’s healing forgiveness,” Br. Timothy said, noting that sin locks us into prisons of narcissism and partisan politics, like the eldest son who won’t join his prodigal brother’s welcome home party.
The Stranger on the Beach
In his third meditation, (1 October), Br. Timothy made the observation that for Mary Magdalene it was the darkness of her ignorance that the Lord had risen, but He was there waiting for her. For the disciples in the locked room it was the darkness of their fear. “Christ rose on Easter Sunday, conquering the night, and yet again and again we find ourselves in darkness. The darkness of war, the crisis of sexual abuse, and so on,” noted Br. Timothy. He then recalled the scene in which the disciples returned to their old routine and went fishing. However, their nets were empty until they obeyed the voice of the Lord, whom they had not initially recognised, and cast the net on the other side, filling it with fish. “We have come to this Synod in obedience,” Br. Timothy continued. “For many it seems futile. We have worked days and nights and perhaps doubt that anything will be achieved. But the Church says come, and we have come. We have cast our net across the boat, even when some of us believe there will be no catch. But this obedience can be fruitful in ways we never imagined,” he said.
Breakfast with the Lord
For his fourth meditation, (1 October), Br. Timothy used the scene that took place on the shore after the catch of fish. He noted that the conversation that takes place there “is perhaps the most subtle and delicate in the Bible.” Jesus opens the space for Peter to three times disavow his threefold denial. “Do we rub people’s noses in the foolishness of what they have said or done? Or do we gently open up space for them to move on?” asked Br. Timothy. In this scene, he observed, there is a “lesson of utmost importance for this Synod.” Jesus trusted Peter and entrusted the flock to him even though he had been untrustworthy up to that point. “The Church is founded on the rock of God’s undeserved trust in Simon Peter. Will we dare to trust one another despite some failures? This Synod depends on it,” he said.
