The Cycle Synodal Spirituality has a new resource to accompany the reflection on how to live and walk as a Church. It is the second subsidy, titled “Synodal spirituality: soul of the ecclesial walk”, prepared by the Continental Reception Team of the Synod and published in August 2026.
The material proposes to look at synodality from a dimension that is essential to make it life: spirituality. The reflection suggests that walking together does not depend solely on methods, processes, or structures, as it requires an inner disposition capable of opening up to God, to others, and to the mission.
Sister Daniela Cannavina, a member of the Continental Reception Team of the Synod, is the compiler of the texts that make up the subsidy and develops the reflection that articulates the material. Capuchin Religious of Mother Rubatto, she is a professor in Religious Sciences, a bachelor, a graduate, and a doctor in Theology. She is also part of the Team of Theologians of the Latin American Confederation of Religious.
Spirituality, a condition for walking together
“Synodality cannot be understood or lived without a spirituality that animates and nurtures it from within,” the subsidy points out. From this perspective, cultivating a synodal spirituality allows the shared path to generate life and to be expressed in reconciled relationships, mutual listening, and a mission assumed in a communal way.
This proposal also leads to recovering the communal dimension of faith. The material questions a Christian experience too centered on the singular: my faith, my vocation, my discernment, and proposes rediscovering the strength of the “we” as one of the conversions that synodality proposes.
In this sense, following Jesus is never presented as an individual path. Faith gathers, configures, and sends people along with others. Hence, the subsidy reminds us that every vocation is also a calling: a personal invitation that incorporates each believer into a people and invites them to walk alongside others.
Five inner shifts
The subsidy presents as a contribution five inner shifts that can help to understand the transformations required for a synodal spirituality. The first proposes moving from the ideal of harmony understood as uniformity to the ability to inhabit conflict and recognize tensions as spaces where the Spirit can also act. The second invites moving from a formal participation to a existential involvement, in which participating means allowing oneself to be affected and permitting the process itself to transform those who are part of it.
The third movement recovers the silence as a necessary spiritual space, where words can settle and make way for a deeper listening. The fourth proposes learning to accept ambiguity and the processes that are still unfinished, while the fifth suggests moving from self-referentiality to interdependence, recognizing that the Church is also understood in dialogue with history, cultures, and the cries of the world.
These shifts, the text notes, are only possible when people learn to be led by the Spirit amidst the social, cultural, religious, and personal fractures that traverse reality. The Spirit does not promote relationships based on domination or competition, but proposes bonds of freedom that allow for the recognition and embrace of differences.
Listening as a form of love
The listening takes a central place in the proposal. The subsidy states that, in a synodal spirituality, listening is not simply a technique or a tool to facilitate participatory processes. It becomes a way to relate to others and to welcome their lives.
“Listening is no longer just attending to what the other says, but embracing their life, recognizing their dignity and opening up to the possibility that God may gift Himself to us through His word.”, the document states. This attitude includes listening to the Word of God, but also the cry of humanity, the groaning of creation, and the voices of those who live on the peripheries of history. The exercise of this listening can transform the way of living faith. The reflection points out that it fosters humility, patience, freedom, and availability, by recognizing that no one possesses all the truth and that the Spirit can also manifest through the experience, intuition, and words of other people.
Diversity appears, in this context, as a richness for ecclesial life. Charisms, ministries, cultures, generations, and different sensitivities can cease to be perceived as threats to be recognized as contributions that the Spirit weaves together for the common good.“Communion does not arise from uniformity nor from thinking the same way.”, the subsidy asserts, it arises from being gathered by the same Spirit, capable of harmonizing differences without erasing the uniqueness of each person.
Spirituality that uninstalls.
The material also presents synodality as a process that invites a review of certainties and established ways of living faith.The path is not completely mapped out in advance, the reflection suggests, as it is revealed while communities learn to trust in the action of the Spirit.
The subsidy recovers the contribution of Rafael Luciani and Serena Noceti, who describe synodal spirituality as an exercise of “displacement.”: to step out of one's own assumptions and habits to welcome the perspective of the other, open up to other places and discover new possibilities.
This displacement is presented as a true spiritual conversion. It does not imply abandoning one's own identity, but allowing the Spirit to widen the heart and help to see reality with new eyes, recognizing that God can also surprise in experiences and paths that were not foreseen. The reflection ultimately brings this proposal to Jesus and his way of inhabiting the world. From there, it presents synodal spirituality as a participation in the same Spirit of Jesus, which questions the logics of power, protagonism and dominance and leads towards an evangelization of humble service, closeness and dedication.
Resource to continue making a path
The subsidy concludes by presenting synodal spirituality as a “mystique of communion”, born from the encounter with Jesus and nourished by the listening of the Spirit. Where people listen to each other, allow themselves to be mutually transformed and seek together the will of God, the Church can recognize itself as a people that walks united and sent into the world.
With this second material, the Synodal Spirituality Cycle provides a tool for personal, communal, and formative reflection. Its pages invite us to look at synodality beyond its organizational dimensions and to recognize the attitudes and inner conversions that make it a reality.
“Synodal spirituality: soul of the ecclesial journey” is now available for download and constitutes an invitation to pause, listen, and allow oneself to be transformed by the Spirit.
The second subsidy is available on the synodal process site of Celam
here: https://repositorio.celam.org/files/original/3613/Espiritualidad_Sinodal.pdf
You can also visit the website https://sinodo.celam.org/ where you will find materials, courses, and more information about the synodal process in Latin America and the Caribbean
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