Synodality is what I would call a “far-away word.” The strange sound of the word makes it feel distant from our lives. It is simultaneously too old (a Greek word from the early church) and too new (a neologism from the contemporary church). And yet I think this “far-away” word has a lot of nearness to it.
In the context of a parish, we can think about this nearness with a particular focus on new pastors and how they ought to approach their role. Parishes are places where people live synodally without knowing it. We live it because in the parish we work together as a neighborhood in the pilgrim city of God. In the parish, we help each other with Christmas pageants, walk the Stations of the Cross together, organize turkey drives for Thanksgiving, invite neighbors to the Christmas concert and teach our children. These simple things are essential for us to live out our baptismal roles of serving, worshiping and teaching.
As a result, new pastors bring both excitement and trepidation. For a priest, whether older or younger, being a new pastor is no easy matter. I am particularly mindful of priests my age and younger.
Part of a community
Like many young priests, I think our parishes need a renewal in the traditions of the church, a reverent celebration of the liturgy and a commitment to the full teaching of the church. Many parishes need the dynamic color of the faith that helps them witness to the world. But these parishes are still full of people with a deep commitment to the faith. To enrich the color, a priest needs to work within the life of the community, not above it.
When a priest is new in a parish, he would do well to keep in mind the Latin adage festina lente: Make haste slowly. If you are eager for liturgical renewal, for teaching the easy and the hard parts of the faith, for preaching in season and out, for evangelizing in the neighborhood and serving the poorest, good. But don’t rush. Jesus could have quickly corrected the crowd eager to stone the woman caught in adultery. Instead, he drew in the sand and offered gentle words that turned them toward mercy. He could have told the Samaritan at the well that he was Christ and she a serial adulterer as his first words, but he didn’t rush her. You should not rush either.
This does not mean doing nothing. It means reading the signs of the parish and the neighborhood, hearing their rhythms and rhymes and learning where there might be discord (there is always discord). Get to know the hundreds or even thousands of people that God and your bishop have called you to serve. As canon law prescribes, a pastor needs “to strive to know the faithful entrusted to his care.” Being synodal means starting this at the beginning and living it throughout. Your new parish probably has a choir, prayer groups or sisters. Your task is to get to know them, be known by them, and sometimes take their lead. It is a small thing, but as Thérèse of Lisieux taught us, small things are the way of love.
As you listen, take what you hear to prayer. If the choir is singing hymns that you find insufficiently orthodox or liturgically inappropriate, take it to prayer. The hymns may need to change, but pray on how to bring about the change, pray about how you will explain the change and pray for those who might find the change painful.
Take what you hear to study as well. At seminary, you should have learned how to listen with the ears of the church. Listening does not require doing what the speaker tells you to do. When someone tells you that you should publicly bless a same-sex couple, listen with the ears of the church. When a wealthy parishioner tells you that the parish prefers not to hear about the preferential option for the poor, read John Paul II to help them prefer the poor. Return to Scripture, tradition, the saints and the magisterium to figure out what to do and how to do it.
Take what you hear to the people. Ask us how you think you should approach changes you are planning or hard preaching you are preparing to give. You might hear that the homily on pornography is better as a letter to the parish so that young ears do not hear it. Or you will learn that changing the Mass times will inconvenience people, even if you think it would help.
Co-responsibility
If you are worried that you are not doing much while you meet people and get to know the place, do not be. Getting to know the place is about falling in love with it. You won’t preach the Gospel well to people you don’t love, and you won’t love them if you don’t know them. As you listen, people get to know you as someone who listens and cares. Beyond this ministry of presence, you will be shaping the place because of the authority you have and the way you live it.
When the time comes for changes, make sure they are grounded in the church’s preference, not yours. As St. Augustine wrote, “my desire is less to be first in the church than to put her first.” Offer the changes you think are needed based on what the church thinks and in a way that works with the charisms, strengths and weaknesses of the place you serve. What is the best time to add more confession? What are the works of mercy most needed in the neighborhood? What kinds of devotions fit the people in the pews? Figure these things out from the people and then put them in place with the people.
Such a synodal approach means thinking of your parishioners as more than just your “flock.” A pastor is gifted with responsibilities, true: By the grace of your ordination and the decision of the bishop, you are a leader. But remember that the people you lead are your fellow workers in the vineyard, “co-responsible citizens in the City of God” as Cardinal Gerhard Müller calls us. In your flock there are people with all kinds of talents and insights; draw on those. There will be people with richer prayer lives, better educations and better management skills than yours. Leading them will at times mean letting them lead. Your mission is not primarily to us, but with us. You will look more like a leader when you get your hands dirty with us—and sometimes when you do what we tell you to do.
Pastoral pilgrims
As time passes, you will help your parishioners grow toward Christ and so attract others to Christ. You will do this best if you smell like your flock—because you work with them and if you always center yourself on Christ. You will change and your parish will change, but Christ, the center, “is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb 13:8). Remembering this will also remind you of something else that will outlast you: the parish. You are just passing through, but the parish will last. The 90-year-old you bury was here before you and the baby you baptize will be here after you.
In canon law, a parish is a “community of the Christian faithful stably constituted in a particular church.” It is certainly the case that its “pastoral care is entrusted to a pastor,” but the parish exists because the baptized are there, not because you are. Lose track of that and you’ll lose track of us. Keep track of it and you might find a parish eager to follow your lead, eager to work with you and eager to continue the only journey that matters: The pilgrimage into the heavenly city.
Synodality may be a far-off word, but it envisions the nearness so central to Christianity, for in “Christ Jesus you who once were far off have become near by the blood of Christ” (Eph 2:13). Parishes are one of those places of synodal nearness to Christ. What we need in pastors, new and old, is the commitment to live that mission to and with us as we seek to draw all people nearer to Christ.
