Every Synod is always a complex event; it is not easy to find its right shot even when one lives it closely. In fact the daily fragments of the interventions in the hall by the fathers of the Synod, or the vague echo of the group-works caused by friendly conversations, as well as the punctual, but without any reading-key, bulletins from the Vatican printing press, did not consent to see the true knots. Everything was mixed up: we were informed of secondary things, while the main ones were out of sight.

Almost 400 members of the synod were sitting on armchairs, in a semicircle cavea converging towards the table of presidency: this was the daily spectacle. Not even the fathers of the Synod found it easy to get an orientation towards the three weeks of listening and of work: more than 250 interventions in the hall, in various languages, without any order of themes and without the possibility of feed-backs or deepening. At half the day’s work, in the morning and afternoon, there was a short coffee break; every now and then there was a free day to be spent by running to ceremonies and informal meetings. For the opening of the debate there were two very lengthy reports on the preparation for the Synod and on the main theme brought to evidence. The persons who spoke were: the secretary general of the permanent secretariat, Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, and the special Secretary for the synod, Cardinal Marc Quellet, Archbishop of Quebec. After the debate there was another very lengthy report (in Latin!) by Quellet, who wanted to frame the thousand splinters of the interventions in a synthesis, which put them in and orderly organic, systematic and instructive content. They were very useful filters, which soon after being pronounced left the space to more speeches and reflections, in the group works and in the elaboration of the Message: all things chased one another in a hurry, to the disadvantage of a true assimilation.

There were also complicated meetings of twelve linguistic groups, where very much different experiences and sensitivities crossed one another, made one only by understanding the specific language. This, of course, facilitated the reciprocal auricular understanding, but surely not the convergence of sensitivity and pastoral orientations. In the groups they experienced the very much fatigued harmonisation to synthesise into "proposals", (propositiones) of few lines, the values and challenges considered to be more evident and urgent, conciliating very different mentalities and equally tenacious susceptibility. At the end 55 official propositiones came out; they were of different nature and length, were approved by electronic voting and then every signed file was handed over to the members of the synod. We have their Italian translation distributed by the people of the printing press. When we read them, we intuit the effort in making and mending the syntheses; some of them needed a refining of more courageous expressions, in others we can see the confused accumulation of elements, just not to displease anyone. They can be found in the website : www.lectiodivina.it.

Two more things deserve to be mentioned, besides these principal elements: the spontaneous intervention of Benedict XVI on 14^th October on the report between scientific exegesis and theological exegesis. This intervention was out of programme, but it left a very evident impact, so much as the propositiones refer to it explicitly, particularly propositiones 25-28. Secondly, the meditation by Bartholomew I, ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, during Vespers celebrated in the Sistine chapel on Saturday, 18^th October: propositio 37 speaks of it, bringing to memory that all "have tasted the beauty of the word of God, as read in the light of the Sacred Liturgy and of the Fathers, and it has been "a strongly contextualised reading for our time".

Without any doubt, this is a synthesis key of the synod’s complex work. Surely the starting sensation led to the choice of this theme, a theme that had been solicited by Cardinal C. M. Martini, a great exegete and master of the Lectio Divina. Unluckily he was absent from the synod because of his precarious health. The tonality could be exhortative or argumentative, of testimony or of omen, but surely many interventions were characterised by a unanimous consensus on the centrality and importance of the Word in the ecclesial and pastoral life.

We could say also that the North recognises a finding afresh of the Word through innovative experiences (such as Biblical catechesis and Lectio Divina); on the contrary, the countries crossed by the dictatorship of evil (communism, fundamentalism, nationalism, persecutions) witnessed to the strength that the Word had given and keeps on giving through those dark adversities; the South carried the awareness of a creativity that enriches the tradition and shows new models of listening and service to the Word. While, in a more prosaic way, some interventions –made by representative or responsible persons of apostolate sectors or even of Roman ministries- centred their speech on the importance of the Word in holiness, in the university world, in the world of enterprises, in the school, among indigenous populations, in the youth pastoral action, in the catechesis of the sacraments, in the most different and specific sectors of the one who spoke, we would not understand whether it was necessary to say things taken for granted, or whether the intervention aimed only at signalling a presence, to the benefit of the group or of the movement of reference. Otherwise why should they have come to Rome, spending money and time?

The interventions which tried to focalise evident knots in the Biblical animation of the pastoral activity were more justifiable. The difficulty of narrating and stimulating the dialogue between the word of exegesis and that of Christian formation; the risk of fundamentalist and almost fanatic readings, the proliferation of spiritualistic readings without any concrete impact; the fleeing forward or at the side of movements and communities in their form of Biblical lection (sometimes selective and shut up in the group) as well as the persisting of ignorance not only of important Biblical themes, but also of the simplest things; the easiness of access and possession of the Bible in thousands of forms (from books up to the new media), not accompanied by a daily reading and a vital assimilation, and so on and so forth, made all of us to understand that there is plenty of work to be done. It is not only the matter of strengthening and reviving the Biblical pastoral action of the sectors, but more generally to point at the Biblical animation of the whole pastoral action.

The direct encounter with the Holy Scripture is surely today a mass phenomenon, yet the concrete deeds to make vital and not just cultural and fragmentary meeting, are to be inventoried, purified from improvisations and equivocations, focalising clearly the duty of becoming obedient listeners and interlocutors with God who speaks, as well as the ecclesial ministry realities, which are involved in it with their own specificity.

This is why it was suggested that the priests and the future priests may learn –from a living and daily contact with the Word and from the attendance in groups and living experiences- to exercise in the homily the art of "interpreting in a vital and performative way" the content and the appeals of the Word (prop. 31-32). Many complaints on the poverty and inadequacy of the homilies were heard in the hall: this is why the fathers of the Synod finished by suggesting the compilation of a specific Directory (prop. 15). However, this carries the risk of introducing a homologation of models that may be good for all the priests, starting from the Roman mentality, to the disadvantage of the inculturate authenticity and creativity of the homily.

Another field of experience on which there were various comments are the areas of frontiers: such as the ecumenical dialogue, or the dialogue with the Hebrews and the Muslims, with the followers of other religions and even with those who have no religious tradition at all. The concerning indications, which were collected in the propositiones, do not reveal any important newness: they were hopes, auspices and sensations of mutual enrichment more than true, new strategies (prop. 50-54). It would have been interesting to face the theme of frontier such as the value of Sacred Scriptures of other religious traditions, to recognise a non purely provisional value, but also constitutive of the same covenant of God with the people of the earth in Noah and in Abraham. In the report with the Hebrew reading of the Bible (for the Old testament) there were two exceptional interventions: one by the head Rabbi of Haifa Shear-Yashuv Cohen, and the other by Cardinal Albert Vanhoye, an ex exegete of the "Biblicum".

Even when they touched areas of new ecclesial interests: such as arts, communications, ecology, fundamentalism, the sects, translations, the family, women etc., it was difficult to find original perspectives, yet at the end the presence of these themes in the conclusions will serve as inspiration for the post-synod exhortation (See 39-48). On one side there is the confirmation of a progressive dilation of areas and applications; on the other they perceive the necessity of reflecting even better, catching favourable occasions, but also the challenge of using new criteria and not purely administrative approaches, to expand almost "flooding" in these sectors.

I think that we must pay attention to the creativity in languages and methods, in the evaluations and proposals. It is still too evident the sensation that they speak in such a way as if it were the matter of pushing ourselves up to those uncultivated lands: they do not discover the conviction that God is calling us, witnesses, "from there" to listen to Him, to recognise the language that he has already made to be born "there" and the paradigms of "obedience" already in action, before we even perceive it. In poor, but direct words, we are still too much clerical and presumptuous, moving close to new sectors and new kinds of areopagus with a tetragonal presumption that we can and must do everything that serves, without listening to the voice of God who already speaks to us from "there" and asks us to let him speak more and better, to the benefit of all men and women, including us. This attitude of a "welcoming" and not only "teaching" dialogue, was invoked also in the Synod, but it is not equally easy to translate it into reality.

Some difficult knots

One warm and also intricate knot is the nature itself of God’s Word, which will probably be untied by the post-synod exhortation.

There has been a too much precipitated shifting of vision, and we shall see how to find a convincing explanation. All the members hurried to say that the Bible is not the "Word of God", but its vehicle, because the Word of God precedes the Sacred Scripture and exceeds it, that is, it crosses its material limits. Thus, we must make clear the value of the "incarnation" datus: God who reveals himself and becomes "flesh" in a language, an expression, an expressive modality, kneaded with a specific culture, but also with efficacious mediation to the ultimate transcendence: What is the implication of accepting "the event of grace that happens again in the reading and in the listening to the sacred Scriptures, as proposition 97 says? On what conditions and attitudes can we truly enter the dynamism of auto-communication of the living God? Certainly, the mystery of the Word always transcends the sacred text, but in the text it manifests its genuine identity and in the reading of the text a specific contact of God with us is realised, since He speaks and listens to us, and we, too, speak after listening to Him.

From this derives the exigency of a better theological explanation of the diffused expression, which states that the Bible is a "sacrament" of the Word of God: this is revealed first of all in the liturgy, a theme on which the Instrumentum Laboris has made evident corrections (no 34), compared to the reticence of the Lineamenta. The proposition no. 7 says, "The Eucharist is a hermeneutic principle of the Sacred Scripture, just as the Sacred Scripture illumines and explains the Eucharistic mystery". But the other sacraments also, could be re-called to the same line. The experience of the lectio Divina itself –even if the synod at the end wanted to orient in a new manner this experience, by placing it as an experience within the general prayerful reading of the Word (See prop. 22)- has its peculiarity, which is not to be reduced to a "pious exercise", just because of this "sacramental" nature of the Word, that displays there its dynamis of illumination and appeal to conversion, much before and more than our own efforts of making a prayerful reflection on it. This had been clearly said by the conclusion of the Instrumentum Laboris with a very efficacious sentence, "It is not man that can penetrate the Word of God, but only the Word can conquer and convert him, by making him to discover its richness and its secrets, as well as by opening horizons of sense, proposals of freedom and of of full human maturation" (no. 59).

The relation between technical-scientific exegesis and the faith of the Church will need also a better focalisation, not to the disadvantage of the scientific researches, but also not without a serious and binding relation with the lived faith. The intervention of the Pope on 14^th October were poured into 4 propositiones (nos. 25-28), to indicate that the assembly had felt the duty of finding a balance between the church-centred compression and, therefore, also the ministry of the theologians at the service of believing faith and pastoral action, and the necessity of guaranteeing, to the research and to the exegetic studies, the most ample horizon and the opportune freedom, without the unavoidable censorship , which anticipates eventual corrections from the authorities. Perhaps, the same sound tonality, used against the risk of a scientific exegesis not enough in syntony with the rhythm of the pastoral action, would and should be used also against the spreading of a spiritualist and narcissist reading, which depreciates the word of God to a tisane or balm for badly digested anguishes. Complaints against this were heard also in the Synod, though they have left only as subtle allusions in the propositiones, while the other worry caused plenty of rumour.

The last knot, which is still unloosened, but which has left its traces here and there in the final Messaggio as well as in the propositions, is the theme of the hermeneutic, starting from the eyes and the tears of the poor. While the Lineamenta and the Instrumentum Laboris had taken a happy expression from the text of the Pontifical, Biblical commission in 1993 on the interpretation of the Bible in the Church (IV. C.3) about the originality and intuition of the reading of the poor, now, in the final results, the poor as protagonists in the new existential, and not only academic, hermeneutic are mentioned with far off sympathy, but without too much insistence (Messaggio no. 13; prop. 11). Could we not include also the women among the poor, in the sense of marginalised and voiceless persons in the church and in society? There is a specific proposition concerning them, but it is surprisingly brief (prop. 17), despite the pressure of women participants for an adequate enrichment. A barring resistance was put to action with the surprise and frustration of many women who, actually, are exegetes and experts of the Word, as well as animators of communities. The fact, then, of hoping that the instituted ministry of lectorate be conferred to them –a thing that they are already doing- looks like a not too elegant make-weight. Some other more meaningful hints can be found also elsewhere, though they have been put there with prudence, to avoid its being too showy.(prop. 20 and 30). We hope that, in the elaboration of the post-synod exhortation, the Pope may have more freedom and audacity than those shown by the synod. We hope that he may recuperate these new protagonists without if and without but, for an authentic evangelical and prophetic face of the church-communion.

This has not been an eluding Synod at all and many participants have attested that the climate was good, with a healthy reciprocal respect. Perhaps the speeches and perspectives were too much generic –with the exception of some points which we have mentioned- due to the fact that those who participated and spoke were not so much great masters of the Word and exegesis, as many persons who had just a normal and administrative familiarity with the Word. The true masters who were there –and they were among the experts, who were strangely considered as adiutores, therefore not authorised to speak in the hall –had to do simply a daily synthetic scheme of the themes, to forward their notes to the official chairmen. Of course, they could speak in the various linguistic groups, but even in them one or the other "important person" prevailed and had the last word, even if they were not competent ofthe theme.

Anyhow, we are left with the inspirational beauty of the final Messaggio, which is there to prove that familiarity with the Word can furnish symbols and communicative art much richer than what we usually think of, provided the Word is kept in the heart and becomes sapientia, namely "tasty science", tasty knowledge and right feeling.