EBOOK ALSO AVAILABLE

The generally acknowledged collapse of the traditional modes by which the Christian Churches, both in the East and the West, proclaim the Gospel and are present within and to the contemporary world might be a providential opportunity allowing the core of the Church’s faith, or what she lives by, to become more clearly manifest.

When Pope Francis today emphasizes the essentially synodal quality of the Church, he broadens our understanding of synodality to the life from which it emerges, that is, the divine communion that has been given to us as a gift. The Church is born of communion (the koinōnia of the Holy Trinity); it creates communion (the koinōnia of the Christian community); and it attracts people to com­munion and widens its reach (mission). Synodality becomes the way, the style, and the articulation of living in the Church that reflects God’s gift to us. It is our continual search for concrete means to express communion, to open ourselves to living and sharing it more and more, as we walk together toward its fullness. For this reason, synodality needs to be led back again and again to the horizon of Trinitarian koinōnia. Alone, we can neither generate nor live this spiritual unity. 

Precisely our contemporary context calls for a renewed awareness of synodality and of the ways that the word “synod”, which belongs to ancient Christian tradition, has been expressed with varying emphases in differing ecclesial traditions, both in the East and in the West.

The book aims to contribute to this awareness, underlining that even such diversity becomes richness within a dynamism of communion, which is also made up of encounters and personal friendships between members of different Churches.

ebook, Ecclesiology, English, Synod, Synodality, Trinity