The theme of this Synod, “I am making all things new”, are words of the Risen Christ taken from the Book of Revelation (21:5). They were spoken into a world wracked by the old demons of brutal power and bitter persecution. They embodied a divine promise which brought new hope in the midst of what seemed hopeless. Here and elsewhere in the New Testament Jesus speaks not of the newness of this world, a novelty which fades quickly and gives way to decay and death, but of the newness of God which never fades and leads to life without limit. It is ultimately the newness of Easter which the Lord promises and which we seek in this Synod not just for ourselves but for the Archdiocese as a whole.
This is the newness of which he speaks in the Gospel we have heard: new wine in new skins. Jesus will refer to new wine again at the Last Supper: “I shall not drink wine again until the day I drink the new wine with you in the kingdom of my Father” (Matt 26:29). On Calvary they will offer him sour wine mixed with gall which he refuses to drink (Matt 27:34). He awaits the new wine of Easter when, rising from the dead, he finally enters of the kingdom of God and calls his disciples to enter with him and drink the new wine of the kingdom. The Risen Lord stands among us now and calls us, his disciples, to drink with him the new wine of Easter. But that new wine will have to be in the new skins of the sacrifice, the death which alone leads to the resurrection. Without the new skins of the Cross, the new wine will be lost, and we will not enter the kingdom of the Father; we will not come to the feast of life.
We understand this because we are what St Paul calls “stewards of the mysteries of God”. The feast can be shared only by those who go with Christ through darkness into light, through death into life, as we do on this synodal journey. To see this, we need, as Paul says, to judge with the judgement of God, not the judgement of this world. This has many implications, but one of them is that a Synod such as this is not a parliament where power prevails by the vote of a majority. That would be putting new wine into old wine skins; all would be lost. What we are doing is something much more mysterious. It is of God.
“The Lord is my judge”, says Paul; and we are to judge with the Lord’s own judgement. But the Spirit alone enables us to judge as Christ judges, which is why we cry out as we begin this assembly, “Come Holy Spirit”. Without the Spirit moving among us and within us we are left with nothing but politics and its play of power; and if that is all there is in this Synod or in the life of the Church, then we are not the Body of Christ but an old corpse.
For the cellar of the Church to be properly stocked for the feast we need wine both new and old. Jesus speaks of the new wine of the kingdom but he agrees that the old is better, as long as it has not turned sour. The newness of Christ can take root in the Church in every age only if we never cease to gather up the Spirit-inspired traditions of faith and holiness as we seek to do in this Synod. The dynamic of renewal in the Church is always “back to the future”, a clear example of which is the Second Vatican Council.
At the Council, the bishops were led by the Spirit deep into an experience of what was called “le retour aux sources”, the return to the sources. It was only by looking back, chiefly to Scripture and the Church Fathers, that the Council could look forward prophetically as it did; and we are no different in this Synod. We listen to voices of the past as we look to the future of the Church in a world that has changed and is changing in a way the Church cannot ignore if we are to proclaim the Gospel to people now.
To return to the sources in the midst of all the flux is to go back to listen anew to the word of God, keeping in mind, as the Council did, that Jesus is the Word made flesh, and that if in Scripture and tradition we hear his voice, it is because he is the living Word beyond which God has nothing more to say. “In the beginning was the Word”, the Gospel of John begins; in the end there will be only the Word when all else falls silent before him; and as we journey from beginning to end, especially in this Synod, there is only the Word beyond all our words. His voice will sound in this assembly, and our God-given task is to listen to what he says, and to do so for the sake of the whole Archdiocese which is spiritually gathered with us here.
To listen to him will require a willingness to listen to each other; it will demand a quality of inner silence in which other voices fall silent; it will require the attentiveness which only humble prayer can give; it will mean that we will perhaps have to loosen our grip on cherished convictions and firmly held points of view – not abandon them but simply loosen our grip in order to listen to a voice other than our own.
Each of you has been called to this assembly, not just by the Archdiocese but by the Risen Christ himself, calling you into his newness. It was he who said through the prophet Isaiah in words foreshadowing the theme of this Synod: “See, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert” (43:19). These are old words but they are forever new with the newness of Easter which can never suffer decay or death, because “Christ, once raised from the dead, cannot die again” (Rom 6:9). He is forever new – even at the heart of a Church which can seem at times old and weary, and even in the life of each of us who sit with him at the feast of life and drink wine both new and old in the kingdom of our Father. Amen.