Vincent Kundukulam
One of the strong metaphors used by the Second Vatican Council to explain the salvific mediation of Church in the world is People of God. According to Lumen Gentium Church is the instrument of salvation for all. She is sent into the world as the light and salt of the earth (LG 9). And from the numbers 16 and 17 of the same document, we learn that the concept people of God includes not only the baptized but also the entire humanity, irrespective of caste and creed. If so, the question arises: Would the synodal process of Church be complete without including other faiths in this initiative?
The Lumen Gentium speaks of the Church neither as an institution nor as a privileged community but as an assembly of women and men who are called and given assistance to accomplish God’s salvific design. God’s saving design is eschatological, in the sense that, everything is to be consummated in Christ before the end of time.
The eschatological dimension of the people of God, as J. Hoffmann comments, places the Church in the role of Israelites who were elected for the salvation of whole world. But the Jews turned out to be a self-contained group. The symbol, people of God, invites Church to become the messianic people who would actualize God’s kingdom in history. To become the messianic community means Church has to become the servant of the general history of salvation, living in neighborhood with others.
The synodal frame of inter-religious ministry has roots in Jesus’s life. Jesus was living like a pilgrim. He served people in villages and towns without discriminating anyone (Lk 8, 1). The mission which Jesus entrusted to his disciples consisted in journeying together with people of nations in love (Jn 15, 22). And he promised assistance (Mt 28, 20) to his disciples in their mission of unifying the whole humanity under the heavenly Father.
If Church, as an instrument of salvation, embraces the entire humanity with all its diversities in faith and culture, the day has come for the Church to define its identity and mission not merely by listening to the voices of those who are inside the visible Church but also to the aspiration of those who are outside the Church because it is for them, she exists; it is only together with them she can achieve the reconciliation of whole humanity.
The argument that consultation with the representatives of various religions and cultures must be the starting point and foundation of synodality is not at all revolutionary because there exists in Church a famous dictum from the first millennium: “Quod omnes tangit ab omnibus tractari debet” (what concerns all, needs to be debated by all). In the address of Pope Francis just stated above, he said the following: “we might be able to hear the cry of the people and listen to the people until we breath the will to which God calls us.”
If the crux of the synodality exists in listening, dialoguing, discerning and harmonizing, and if the method of synodality demands that each person lowers herself/ himself in order to serve his sisters and brothers, then there is no other way than to place the invisible Church as the pioneer of synodal process.
kundu1962@gmail.com
