Faithful from around the world – including laymen and -women, priests, seminarians, women and men religious, cardinals and bishops – took part in the liturgy, which marked the beginning of a two-year synodal process.
Encounter
The Pope invited us to ask ourselves if we are good at listening, if we allow others to express themselves. He said that the Holy Spirit is asking us to listen to the “questions, concerns, and hopes of every Church,” and to the challenges and changes presented by the world around us.”
“Let us not soundproof our hearts; let us not remain barricaded in our certainties,” he pleaded. Instead, “Let us listen to one another.”
Discern
” Pope Francis insisted that “encounter and listening are not ends in themselves,” but must lead to discernment. “Whenever we enter into dialogue,” he explained, “we allow ourselves to be challenged, to advance on the journey.”
Where God is leading us
In these days of the Synod, the Pope said, “Jesus calls us, as he did the rich man in the Gospel, to empty ourselves, to free ourselves from all that is worldly, including our inward-looking and outworn pastoral models.”
