2. New horizons for affirming identities and strengthening relations in communion

2.1. The Church of communion: mutual relations and exchange of gifts

The ecclesiology of communion is opening up to us a new view of our identities and relationships. We see how no form of life and ministry in the Church is self-sufficient, how no form can be defined only in relation to itself. An intrinsic part of the definition of each form of life and ministry is its correlation to the other forms of Christian life and ministry. It is the Spirit who grants each one his or her gift, and all the gifts are for the building up of the Body of Christ (Eph 4: 4-11) ¹⁹. It is the Bishop’s task to actively promote the consecrated life in its various forms; to care for their fidelity to the Gospel and charism, to entrust and confirm them in the apostolic mission; to accept, correct, guide and co-ordinate pastoral activity; to respect and defend the institutes’ just autonomy of life and government²⁰.

The Synod on the ministry of Bishops is, first of all, a Synod that focuses our attention on the global reality of the whole Church and of the particular Churches, of which they are – by sacramental grace and charism – the Pastors, Teachers and Priests. Their vocation is expressed first and foremost as a “ministry” or “service” to the Christian community, the Body of Christ, the Spouse of the Lord, Temple of the Spirit. The Instrumentum Laboris presents the Bishops not only as Pastors of the particular Churches, but also as having collegial responsibility for the whole Church.

Furthermore, the episcopal ordained ministry is one and indivisible, as St. Cyprian said²¹. In the same way that the same ministry appears and emerges in all the Bishops, so too the Church is one and in each particular Church the same mystery emerges and is expressed.

This is the stamp of the correlation between the various forms of Christian life and the diverse forms of ministries and services. The unity of the Church and the unity of the ordained ministry require communion and an exchange of gifts. The Spirit is Communion. No one can, and no one should, claim as his own a gift given in common; no one can or should claim a monopoly on a reality that, although it is in him and is acting in him, is shared by many other persons at this tie and in the past. Although the mystery of the Church is one, all the particular Churches that express it could not do so unless they were in communion with the others that express it too.

The ecclesiology of communion calls for a great emphasis of the reciprocal relations and exchange of gifts. The Trinitarian logic of the affirmation of the other rather than one’s own self-affirmation is what will truly make the Church appear in the world as an “Ecclesia Trinitatis.”

In the exchange of gifts the protagonist is the Spirit, who is the one who raises them up and gives them mutuality for the common good. In it we also find Mary, image of the Church and Mother of all the vocations in it. Mary continues to give the Church a Pentecost experience of the Spirit. The same Spirit who came upon her to make her the mother of the Word descended upon her to place her at the centre of fraternal communion. The Spirit causes the Church to be reborn in Mary and around the figure of Mary the community of believers is unified. We cannot overlook Mary’s motherly influence in our relations within the Church.