Disciples are learners. They follow and listen to the teacher/rabbi/Master. This discipleship is the role of those early followers of Jesus. Touched by what they heard and saw in him, the disciples walked and talked with him and grew to understand what he was all about – his message and his mission. They also developed a relationship of great trust with him. This trust is what we often call faith. Over time their faith evolved. The more they came to know Jesus, the more he came to mean for them.
Very quickly, these disciples and subsequent generations came to see Jesus as, the messiah for whom Israel had been waiting and whom God promised through generations of prophets. But the disciples we meet in the Gospels gradually came to discover Jesus was even more than was promised. This awareness grew in the disciples with Jesus’s death and resurrection. He became for them, the anointed one, the Christ.
In Paul’s letters to the various communities of Christians that emerged after the resurrection, Jesus through his death and resurrection becomes the Christ, the anointed one and his significance grows beyond Israel to the salvation of all, the whole of humanity and creation. We can see the breadth of this vision in his letter to the Ephesian community of Christians (Eph.1:3-14). The faith growing in this community is to recognize that our redemption comes through the death and resurrection of Jesus as the Christ.
This core of our faith as stated by Paul reaches beyond our community to all humanity and all creation. As Paul expresses it: With all wisdom and insight God has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fulness of time, to gather all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth (cf. Eph 1:3-14). Paul expressed this same vision of Jesus as the Christ for all in letters to other communities as well, eg. Philippians (Phil.2:5-11).
At the center of our faith, we begin to recognize what we call the Paschal Mystery - the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. Our Baptism incorporates us into this mystery. By it we live as Jesus the Christ in the midst of our world. It is what we celebrate together every time we gather at the table of the Eucharist and it is ultimately what we are called to as disciples, to live and share as the Good News for all peoples.
Our Church is called then to an openness and outreach that is the task of all disciples. As Pope Francis took on his leadership role as Pope in our Catholic community in 2013, he openly expressed this vision in an Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”). A key piece of what he presented was this openness to all, no matter who they are or what their condition. He puts it this way: The salvation which God has wrought, and the Church joyfully proclaims, is for everyone. God has found a way to unite himself to every human being in every age. He has chosen to call them together as a people and not as isolated individuals (E.G.113).
Our Baptism immerses each of us in the sharing of this universal call for all peoples. Francis would say that fundamentally this is in how we show mercy. There are to be no limits or barriers thrown up to how we share this Good News. We as a Church, a Christian community are all to be missionary disciples with this Good News (E.G. 120)
Currently we are, as a Church, in the midst of a global synod. It involves every baptized member (laity, religious and clergy). We are all learning through this synod how we can have a voice in who we are, and how we can walk together as missionary disciple in our world, doing so for the sake of all humanity. It is not easy to be a “listening” community that really does listen to all voices.
Openness to the gift of the Spirit in our common baptism is what can make it possible. In the instructions to the first session of the Synod in October 2023, Baptism was recognized as the key to what is being a synodal Church: A synodal Church is founded on the recognition of a common dignity deriving from Baptism, which makes all who receive it sons and daughters of God, members of the family of God, and therefore brothers and sisters in Christ, inhabited by the one Spirit and sent to fulfill a common mission (“Instrumentum Laboris” [Instructions for the Work] 20).
Can we see ourselves as part of this Church and ready for the mission
of sharing the Good News freely, openly and with joy to all,
no matter who they are or what their condition?