Cardinal Grech: Prayer and entrustment to Mary at heart of Synod Retreat

By Vatican News staff reporters

In his welcoming address on the first day of the retreat for those taking part in the General Assembly of the Synod, Cardinal Mario Grech highlighted the importance of prayer, without which changes in the Church would be simply “group changes”; and entrustment to the Blessed Virgin Mary, without whom the Church would be “nothing more than another organization.”

In rapid sequence, the Secretary General of the Synod combined two quotes with similar content – the first from Pope Francis, the second taken from a document of the German bishops from 1979 – to bring out a meaning and a pattern to be kept clearly in mind on the eve of the Second Session of the General Assembly of the Synod on Synodality, which formally opens on Wednesday.

On sacred ground

In his welcoming address, Cardinal Grech said that “the protagonist of the Synod is the Holy Spirit”; and if the Spirit is not present, “there will be no Synod,” – repeating the oft-expressed sentiments of Pope Francis.

The Cardinal took the image of Moses on Mount Sinai, insisting that Synod participants must humbly recognize – as Moses did before the burning bush – that they find themselves on “holy ground.”

Undivided heritage

The image of Moses removing his sandals in the presence of the Lord, Cardinal Grech explained, is an image of a “stripping away” that Synod participants are also called to.

“We strip ourselves of the ‘clothing’ of approaches and patterns that perhaps had meaning yesterday, but today have become a burden for the mission and jeopardize the credibility of the Church,” he explained. “We must be willing to strip ourselves, since listening is a radical action of stripping ourselves before the other and before God.”

Although Synod participants come “from various local Churches, all with their own riches, all with their own challenges, all striving to renew themselves and to find new ways and new language to speak of Jesus to the men and women of today,” the Cardinal said, “in these days we are ‘sitting together’ to preserve the Church's goods through an undivided inheritance to be shared with everyone, no one excluded.”

The Blessed Virgin Mary, constitutive act of the Church

In this perspective of sharing and mutual acceptance of viewpoints and sensitivities, Cardinal Grech’s emphasized the importance of entrusting this session of the General Assembly to the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

“Mary is the listening Virgin, who welcomes the Word of God with faith; and this was for her the premise and the way to divine motherhood,” he said, quoting from Pope St Paul VI’s apostolic exhortation Marialis cultus.

From the 1979 document of the German bishops, Cardinal Grech drew a passage that echoes what Pope Francis said to journalists during the press conference on the plane back from Belgium, on the theme of the superiority of women in the Church.

The Mother of Jesus, the bishops say, “posits the true constitutive act of the Church; everything that has come subsequently – the apostolic ministry, the sacraments, the sending forth on mission in the world – presupposes this Marian foundation.”

The Rosary, prayer of the Synod

The Synod’s secretary general expressed his hope that the Synod Assembly that is being inaugurated will be that “good soil in which the Word of God can bear abundant fruit.”

In this month of October dedicated to Mary, he invited participants to pray the Rosary assiduously throughout their work.

All participants will be given a Rosary, “so that this prayer may accompany us on the journey of these days” through that “incessant contemplation on the Word of God” that the Rosary itself proposes, “an invocation that does not tire of ‘knocking’ on the door.”

The mysteries of Rosary, Cardinal Grech noted, follow the whole life of Jesus, ensuring that He remains the focus and “generating Him to the world.” “With the Rosary,” the Cardinal said, “we learn, like Mary, to be disciples of the Lord.”

Cardinal Grech concluded his address with the hope that “the Synodal Assembly that begins its journey today might be a renewed Pentecost, so that the Gospel of Jesus may continue to fertilize the life of all humanity; and that we may we be a synodal and missionary Church.”