Transitus and Feast of St Francis

This man who lived a life of voluntary poverty and continuous prayer seems streets away from our experience. However, he did not start his life in that way. He was the unofficial leader of the youth of Assisi in their pageants and street parties. His father wanted him to go into his business of providing clothes for the wealthy and took him on his journeys to buy fine material in France. Francis himself had ambitions to become a knight with dreams of conquest and winning a fine lady; he was immersed in the secular business of his time. The Lord acted in his life through the experience of defeat in battle, imprisonment, illness and a break with his father, to point him in the direction of living a Gospel life. He started this life by restoring tumble down churches but then discovered it was the human fabric of the church that he was to restore. Others joined him and he sent them out two by two to announce peace and preaching penance for the remission of sins. They would come back and reported what had happened. They spoke of both the successes and the failures and in conversation refined the way they were to conduct themselves in their circumstances and always in dialogue with the Word of God.

I think in simple terms that is what Pope Francis hopes for when he speaks about Synodality. The aim is a church in conversation with each other, trying to live as the Gospel suggests and each member sharing their understanding with the others.