Reading Francis

If a miracle happens, and nobody notices, it’s still a miracle.

The synod on synodality’s first general session (of two) just ended. After a break of eleven months to go home, do some laundry, get some sleep, and catch up on bills, the 365 members of the synod will reconvene next year to re-engage on the issues raised by two years of process among Catholics around the world.

The report the synod issued after this first half outlined a lot of areas of agreement and a lot of areas of disagreement, and they did not really offer a lot of hope that those latter would be resolved in the second half. And so, the small sliver of the world that has paid any attention to the synod on synodality has been unimpressed. Apparently, they were banking on this thing to yield results that were immediately apparent, like the ordination of women or the blessing of same-sex couples, to name two topics raised often at meetings of local Catholics in the US and Western Europe. (NOT ordaining women, NOT blessing same-sex couples, and going back to celebrating mass in Latin were also raised at those local meetings, by the way.)

Even so, from what I can tell (since I wasn’t invited. I’m available as an injury substitute next year, though. Put me in, Pope!), a miracle happened, if not the one some folks wanted.

When was the last time you listened to someone you didn’t already agree with?

Really listened, to understand where they were coming from and why they thought what they did, rather than to identify the weaknesses in their argument that you could exploit in your response?

Listened across the table from someone you prayed with, ate with, hung out with, rather than someone you heard on talk radio for three minutes before changing the channel and muttering “Moron.”?

When was the last time you listened with so open a heart that you were willing to risk what you believed, with trust that, when you offered back your own vulnerable perspective, they would return that openness?

Apparently, that’s the kind of stuff these 365 people did for a month, pretty much every day. They prayed together, they listened to each other, and they looked for God’s presence in what got said.

I know there are a lot of miracles out there that we could use right now, ones with more concrete returns on investment. 

But if we are ever going to navigate the troubled waters in which we live, we will have to remember, as St. Teresa of Calcutta warned us, that we all belong to each other.

That 365 people from opposite corners of the world and opposite perspectives on every issue managed to listen to each other for a month? That’s a miracle. We may not notice it right away, but if we could see it replicated throughout the world, it’s the miracle we need.