01/11/2025
When Synodality Fails to Listen
A Reflection on the Wound of Exclusion
There are moments in the Church when silence doesn’t mean peace. It’s the silence that follows after someone has spoken, and no one cared to listen. The silence of those who once hoped to belong — now sitting at the edge, wondering if communion was meant for them too.
We often hear about synodality, about walking together. We speak of participation, co-responsibility, and inclusion. But if we look closely, we realize that sometimes those very words echo in the halls of power more than in the spaces of friendship. Sometimes, the loudest advocates of synodality are the first to forget what it feels like to be ignored.
The Gospel and the Contradiction
The Gospels are full of Jesus’ small gestures — looking, touching, listening. He never built walls between people; He crossed them. And yet, we, who proclaim His name, sometimes build invisible fences around our hearts. When we start to select whom to listen to, or whose voice we can live without, synodality becomes a theory rather than a testimony.
The pain of being rejected — especially by those who preach about communion — is not imagined. It’s a wound that seeps into the spirit. It can break one’s sense of belonging, even one’s sanity. I’ve seen how the loneliness of the disregarded turns into silence, and silence into despair. Mental health, yes. But also a sickness of the soul — the ache of being unseen in the very Church that preaches mutual respect.
The Fragile Church and Her Needed Conversion
The Church is holy, but her members are not flawless. We speak of the Body of Christ, yet some members numb the pain of others. We conduct listening sessions but sometimes without ears. We hold dialogues but without hearts.
True listening is more than a task; it’s an act of reverence. To accompany is not to stand beside with folded arms but to kneel — to see the other from below, not from above.
If we are serious about synodality, it must begin in the quiet rooms of relationship: the priest who humbly listens to his brother, the superior who bends before a wounded sister, the bishop who walks not in front but among his people.
When the Church Learns to Kneel
Christ bent down to wash feet — that’s the Church’s blueprint. A listening Church is a kneeling Church. It does not tower above the weak; it stoops to touch their weariness. Synodality cannot be born from pride, only from compassion.
And maybe this is our moment of grace — to stop explaining synodality and start living it. To recognize that the real proof of communion is not in documents or assemblies, but in how gently we treat one another.
Hope from the Margins
The wounds of rejection are not the end of faith. They may, in fact, be the soil where renewal grows. From the margins, God continues to whisper: “You are still part of this journey.” Those who have been ignored are often the ones who carry the clearest echo of Christ’s tenderness.
One day, when the Church has learned again to listen — not out of protocol but out of love — perhaps the rejected will be the first to rise and say, “Now, I feel the Church truly walks with me.”
And that day, we can finally say that synodality has stopped being a slogan and has become what it was always meant to be — a way of love.
