Compassionate Imagination/Re-Existing/Hope: Embracing a Deliberate Turn to the Promptings of the Spirit for a Synodal Church

Abstract

Pope Francis invites the Church to turn to the peripheries of society as the loci of saturated vision and grace, if it is to embody the grace of synodality. This work makes a claim that a synodal church that turns to the peripheries of the world ought to embody three markers that exude the fullness of being church in the world. These include the praxes of compassionate imagination, re-existing as a Pentecost church, and being an embodiment of ritualized hope for all. A turn to the Spirit-centered gift of compassionate imagination is itself a deliberate embrace of the messiness of life where the beauty of the sound of God’s voice is heard and encountered. It involves an embrace of the summons of the Spirit that is found at the peripheries of the world and to embody abundant life for all in a manner that upends the dynamics of empire manipulations. To do this effectively, the Church ought to become an embodiment of hope in all its ways of being in the world. An embodiment of hope that is grounded in solidarity with others must necessarily entail the praxis of suspension of judgment.

1. Introduction

Whether in the secular or ecclesial contexts, we each live in an era of empire, an era that perpetuates the hegemonies of fear, hate, scarce imaginations, narratives that attempt to validate individualism and a culture of domination of those who have been reduced to the footnotes of existence. In fact, empires know how to control their subjects and define their modes of being in such a manner that they can be predictable. To exist in such a world, one must either be a conforming citizen or be considered an outcast. While one may be familiar with this picture in the secular context, due to the enduring histories of imperialism carried out by some secular powers in the history of human existence, the same can also be said of the religious context. Here, I am particularly conscious of the Roman Catholic Church that I am a member of. Too often, a form of rigid orthodoxy has become the litmus test for determining membership and good standing within the Church. This is because some in the Church have made themselves doctrinal police officers. They tend to frustrate vibrant and dynamic ways of thinking and articulating the faith.

In this work, I intend to make a case for a synodal ecclesiology that centers three markers: compassionate imagination, a theo-praxis of re-existing, and the liberating ability of the praxis of hope to open up new horizons for the Church to embrace as the Church seeks to make itself relevant to contemporary realities defining the world it works in. To do this effectively, I will center these three markers within the broader framework of a pneumatological turn that takes seriously a keen reading of the signs of the times. This pneumatological turn is intended to shed light on the pathologies of imperial ethos that are currently operating in the Church, while making a deliberate effort to argue for a synodal ethos that is rooted in a surplus vision.

2. A Church of Empire

The end of the Christian persecutions by the Roman Empire and the eventual embrace of Christians and their religious institutions by the Empire itself marked a sense of relief for the early church. However, it marked the beginnings of a grand cultural assimilation of an empire ethic by the Church. It is the nature of empires to embody a worldview that is of itself overbearing and intrusive. In fact, such a worldview embodies what Albert Memmi calls a “double illegitimacy” (Memmi 1967, p. 9). Empires occupy territories that they have no right to while also stripping the Indigenous people of their right to autonomy, unless it is an autonomy that is defined by the agenda of the empires themselves. In other words, autonomy is seen as a scarce reality that cannot be shared by all. Either empire has a monopoly over it or it is claimed by its victims. This framework tends to produce violence as its legitimate conclusion. Such violence can take many forms—psychological, intellectual, bodily, environmental, cultural, economic, political, linguistic, and epistemological.

The reason that agents of empires provide for their intrusion into territories they have no historical claim to is that the intention of empires is to cultivate a civilized culture in their victims. Such a culture is itself a direct transfer of the worldview, biases, and agenda of the cultural world of the empires in question. Whether it was the Roman Empire, the British Empire, or even the United States, the logic is always the same. Each of these geopolitical entities introduced their own visions of society to territories they annexed.

At this stage of this work, it is proper to offer a working understanding of empire and the type of ethic it produces. Empires are geopolitical systems that project into the world of the other, other being other territories, peoples, and cultures, its own positionality of cultural, economic, intellectual, religious, anthropological, and political superiorities. To maintain this aura of superiority, empires embrace an ethic of scarcity. An ethic of scarcity is a way of being in the world that attempts to legitimize the need for unhealthy competitions because of the argument that the resources that humans need are not enough to go around. Thus, the survival of the fittest becomes the proper way of existing. Morality is not grounded in the common good; rather, it is defined by how one manipulates others in order to have access to and control of resources. Such resources can be intellectual, economic, political power and agency, language proficiency, religious orthodoxy, cultural awareness, and memory of the past.1

Empires produce a particular type of citizenry, one whose members are taught to think, act, and see the world in a certain way that erases the nuances that make the actual world. The citizens are the foot soldiers for the system. A type of morality that refuses to acknowledge the greyness of human life is embraced as the right way of being in the world. Consequently, militarism, materialism, disregard for life, consumerism, innate desire to want to control and dominate others, as well as intellectual, moral, and hermeneutic dogmatism are the modus operandi that an empire ethic produces and legitimizes in the world for its citizens and those who fall within its orbit of influence. Again, at the core of an empire ethic is an embrace of a vision of scarcities. Scarcity of life, scarcity of resources, scarcity of identity, scarcity of knowledge, scarcity of memory, and even scarcity of imagination define how the citizens of empires are taught to see the world, especially those who have been otherized. This form of ethic that empires uphold fosters a relationality and the hermeneutic praxis of always defining the other in relation to the self through the lens of deficiency and lack. This is how a scarce vision of the human that the other embodies, in relation to the self, is validated. The subject always sees the other as a threat in relation to its success and operates with a sense of entitlement. The same is the case as it pertains to resources. Again, as noted earlier, resources are always defined as scarce, hence validating inhumane competitions that are enshrined in the rules guiding economic transactions both globally and locally. One can thus conclude that the political, social, and cultural norms of interaction are manipulated in order to legitimize this vision and praxis of scarcity.

Frantz Fanon captures this empire dynamic of erasing otherness due to the fact that it roots itself within the domain of scarcity and control as he critiques the role of the European powers in their colonial ventures into Africa. He writes: “So they were countering my irrationality with rationality, my rationality with the ‘true rationality’. I couldn’t hope to win. I tested my heredity. I did a complete checkup of my sickness. I wanted to be typically black—that was out of the question. I wanted to be white—that was a joke. And when I tried to claim my negritude intellectually as a concept, they snatched it away from me. They proved to me that my reasoning was nothing but a phase in the dialectic …” (Fanon 2008, p. 111).

One would think that such a process of erasure of the other’s claim to self-legitimization would be easily condemned by anyone who can think logically. The ability of empires to legitimize themselves in the psyches of the citizenry they produce is derived from their fetishization of legal systems that project their ambitions as the logic behind their consciousness of the law. In this case, the law is never neutral, even though empires claim to uphold the supremacy of the law. To test such a logic, one has to ask, can empires ever allow for legal systems that challenge their claims to occupation of the territories they have set their gaze on? The answer is no. On this point, James H. Cone offers a critique of how the United States of America, as an empire, upholds a biased legal system that perpetuates its own grand agenda of producing a hierarchy of beings which tends to legitimize structural racism. “In American law and custom the dark skin carried the presumption of degradation and slavery” (Cone 1992, p. 20). In the context of the United States, the motif of law justifies the perpetuation of violence against those it has judged to embody otherness. It also produced the limits of being that is intentionally inconsistent in its embodiment of personhood. These two identity markers created by the law to define otherized persons reveal conflicting paradoxes. As Cone notes, “the concept of property negated the idea of personhood. To be a person is to be in control of one’s destiny, to set certain concrete limitations on the movement of self and of other selves in relation to self. It is to be free—to work or not to work, to laugh and cry, to make love, to eat and sleep at the close of the day. All this implies a measure of power to make others recognize one’s humanity” (Cone 1992, p. 21). The law did not locate an ontological personhood in otherized bodies. Or better stated, it did not recognize the need to protect the right to personhood in such bodies. When it did affirm the personhood of such bodies, it was only as a tool to serve the purpose of profit on the part of the supposed white owners of such bodies. In other words, personhood was simply a utilitarian tool used for the exploitation of otherized bodies.

A point worth exploring here is the link between the law and power. In the American context, the law was never intended to be neutral and to protect all interests, including those whose bodies have been otherized. In fact, the law is intended to produce a hierarchy of beings that instantiate the performative rituals of power. One who possesses power has more claim to the interpretation and protective rights inherent in the law. In this case, it was the white slave owners. To be ‘recognized,’ one has to lay claim to power as ascribed by the law. In other words, the law serves as the tool for a biased ritual of recognition, a ritual that plays out in the claim to power over the right to own property, even when the property is itself another human being. Those human beings whom the law has refused to ascribe the claim to power cannot fall within the protective sphere of the law. Consequently, they are intended to be ‘unrecognized.’ Recognition, in the American context, is the pathway to a claim to personhood and freedom; one that is not intended for those humans who have been otherized (Cone 1992, p. 21). This cyclic style of reasoning that the law produces in the public spaces occupied by those who are ‘recognized’ and ‘unrecognized’ is grounded in an uncritical acceptance of the notion of sovereignty produced by modernity. The narrative on sovereignty that modernity produces fails to match the praxis of reality itself. While self-representation, self-consciousness, and autonomy are considered to constitute the ontology of the human person, in reality, a hierarchy of being human that is grounded in racial bias, classism, genderism, sexism, and many systems perpetuating collective phobias is given legitimacy by the structure of governance that the state upholds through the implementation of the law (Mbembe 2019, pp. 67–68).

With the above understanding of how empires legitimize the othering of their victims, it is proper to offer a critical engagement with the mechanism of empire dynamics between the Roman Empire and the Christian church. The Edict of Milan enacted by Emperors Constantine I and Licinius on February 313 gave the Christian church the legal protections of the Roman Empire (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 2019). Such protections came with responsibilities. The Christian church cannot uphold policies that threaten the existence of the Roman Empire itself. Andrew Garnett has shed light on the complex realities defining the relationship the early Christians had with the Roman Army (The American Institute of Roman Culture 2021). The fact that Christianity was given imperial protection, and eventually accepted as the official religion of the Roman Empire, accounted for a response of full acceptance of the worldview of the Empire by the early church. After all, the Empire was and still is seen as a tool for evangelization. The marriage of Scriptures and the sword becomes a marriage that makes evangelization an easy task for the early church. This is particularly true due to the fact that the Codex Theodosianus XVI.1.2, which was part of the decree signed by Emperor Theodosius I on February 27, 380, making Christianity the religion of the Empire, specifically forbids the practice of other religions, especially religions defined as paganism within the Empire itself (von Hellfeld 2009).

With the decree of Theodosius I, the Christian church becomes an extension of the Roman Empire. Rather than continue the praxis of accommodation as it understood itself within the Roman Empire, when the Christian apologists were eager to make the case that Christianity is not an enemy of the Empire and should thus be accommodated, the Christian church now sees itself as the enforcer of religious purity within the Empire. One can argue that, over time, this positionality that is backed by the military force of the Empire begins to reshape the approach of the Church to issues and those it sees itself to be in opposition. For example, the Council of Jerusalem embraced a pragmatic response to the issues causing division in the early church as it pertains to Jews and Gentiles on the issue of circumcision as a prerequisite for becoming a Christian. However, after the integration of Christianity into the Empire, one notices a different approach that is rooted in non-tolerance. For example, in 1302 C.E., one finds Pope Boniface VIII issuing the papal bull, Unam Sanctam that “required the complete submission of all people, including kings, to the authority and dictates of the pope. As the Church was understood as holding the keys to heaven and hell, and the pope was head of the Church, failure to comply threatened salvation” (Mark 2019). Again, one notices immediately, as Joshua J. Mark has noted, that, over time, the Catholic Church, especially during the Middle Ages, “developed and retained its power by encouraging the innate human fear of death and the Church’s vision of itself as the only path to salvation from hell” (Mark).

Vestiges of the mindset and logic of empire have not left the Church. Persecution and the use of different forms of violence have been employed against those the Church thinks are against its vision of how God ought to work in the world. Whether it is the persecution of the Cathars in 1209 or the promulgations of the anathemas decreed on followers of Protestantism by the Council of Trent (1545–1563) or even the censorship of theological views by the Roman Curia against theologians who dare to explore new ways of addressing theological or ecclesial issues affecting the lives of Christians in contemporary era, the logic of control and the demand for complete obedience under the will of the one who has absolute authority has become the norm. Just as Theodosius I demanded absolute obedience and acceptance of Christianity from all imperial citizens, so has the leadership structure of the Church demanded absolute obedience. Joseph Ratzinger, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued the document Donum Veritatis, where he required of theologians and the members of the Church to offer an assent of the will and faith to magisterial teachings (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith 1990, pp. 22–23). This threatens the praxis of discernment that is rooted in the sensus fidelium.

Just as empires use the law to defend their own existence and worldview, the Church has also cultivated the culture of silencing opinions, especially when such opinions open up new hermeneutical loci that the Church has not taken control of. For example, Pope John Paul II had to offer a definitive response to the question of ordination of women while theologians and scholars were busy working on retrieving the rich praxis of ordination and ministries that involved women in the Church (John Paul II 1994). The logic for such a decision is that the pope can teach definitively in his magisterial role. Again, the collective discernment of the Church that is coded in the sensus fidelium, and which also includes all of the baptized, is not always affirmed in such a logic.2

Empires create peripheries. Such peripheries legitimize the logic of wanting to belong and being given validation of identity. For example, the Roman Empire created a hierarchy of belonging—citizens and non-citizens. Under these broad categories, there were still subcategories of belonging which accorded certain privileges (Hope 2011). Furthermore, the privileges of the protection of the state are defined by the levels of belonging that the state itself produces. Thus, in the case of the Roman Empire, Pax Romana existed within the boundaries of the Empire, and who benefited from it, and to what extent were determined by the logic and worldview the Empire embraced as its own. Thus, it is not surprising for the Empire to regard those who lived outside of its boundaries as barbarians or uncivilized. Empires, while producing peripheries, intentionally moralize such peripheries to ensure that their otherness is itself a source of inferiority and an embodiment of scarcity.

One can argue that the Church, in its mirroring of an empire ethic, has also embraced the culture of producing peripheries and instantiating a hierarchy of belonging. While the argument can be made that baptism accords all Christians a place in the Church, being in the Church does not always mean the same thing as having the same voice or being heard and seen in a manner that mediates healthy agency. Nakashima Brock states this well when she argues that feminist analysis helps to shed light on how Christianity has embodied the biases inherent in a culture of patriarchy. Such a culture has tended to regard women as persons who embody existential lacks, such as a lack of full rationality, and embodied agency to define their own destinies (Nakashima Brock 2008, p. 2).

Even the language and vision of the Church as it perceives that which is outside of its boundaries has often reflected a sense of negation. It is on this note that one has to appreciate the approach of the Pastoral Constitution, Gaudium et Spes, as it attempts to shift from a negative vision of the world—the church’s peripheries—to one of hopeful possibilities (Second Vatican Council 1965, # 1). This shift in perspective has not always resulted in a full embrace of the hopeful possibilities that the peripheries mediate for the Church to have a healthy vision of itself and its mission in the world.

3. A New Horizon for a Pneumatological Turn for a Pentecost Church

The Second Vatican Council made a deliberate stance by insisting that the authentic way of being church is to be a church that is always open to reform—ecclesia reformanda est. To be a church that is always conscious of the need to reform itself is to be conscious of the fact that the Church always stands the risk of being a hegemonic institution that perpetuates visions of scarcity, paranoia towards all that is unfamiliar, and doctrinal positionalities that perpetuate erasures of otherness. By visions of scarcity, I mean a form of engagement with the world that fails to see the multiple opportunities for lifegiving encounters that are mediated by the other, even when the other is antagonistic towards the Church. One sees this pathology of scarcity fully at play in the history of the Church from the Council of Trent until the Second Vatican Council (Overberg 2018, pp. 1–2). Theologies of negation towards other ecclesial traditions were referenced as the litmus test of correct orthodoxy (Pius XI 1928). The Church was seen as being under attack by forces within and without. Consequently, rather than allow for an embrace of openness to curiosity to be the correct way to respond to the promptings of the Spirit, rigidity, incestuous appeal to rigid hermeneutic biases for what is correct teaching, correct authority, and correct expressions of ecclesiality became the order of the day. Thanks to the visionary stance of Pope John XXIII, who insisted that a healthy church must be one that is not afraid of its own shadows and one that is willing to encounter all while trusting that the Spirit is in the driver’s seat of the Church, the praxis of reopening the Church to the world has begun. It has been over half a century since John XXIII reminded all that the Church, at its core, is the tool by which the Spirit encounters the world (John XXIII 1961, ## 2–6).

In contemporary times, a new summons is being made by Pope Francis to all the members of the Church to take seriously the praxis of discernment as a tool to respond adequately to the social, economic, political, ecological, religious, and ideological issues shaping the world and the Church (Watkins 2022). In doing this, Francis has called for an embrace of synodality as a proper approach to ecclesial discernment (Gomes 2021a), reminding all that synodality is a turn to the Spirit who invites all to embrace fearlessness and the messiness of ecclesial reform even when that messiness is outside of the control of those who have been accustomed to predictability and control (Wooden 2023). Interestingly, Francis reminds all that synodality is not just an administrative form of church governance; rather, it is the way that the Church becomes fully a Pentecost church (Mares 2023). This is very insightful. At the core of the Pentecost experience is the loss of human control and a turn to the radicality of encountering difference in all its manifestations, whether in localities of existence, language, experience, knowledge, gender, sexual orientations, and so on. The Pentecost experience is not about making sense of it all. Rather, it is all about the journey inherent in the encounters. The Spirit is the one who gives all the messiness its meaning as the Spirit sees fit. On the part of the disciples of Christ, their response to it all is to say yes to the opportunities to encounter. Francis continues to make the case for the Church to become a church that is radically oriented towards the Pentecost phenomenon (Francis 2021a).

To be a Pentecost church is to be a church that is constantly in renewal in a manner that allows for it to mediate life for all. Pentecost is about abundance and diversity. As noted in Acts of the Apostles, “Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans? Then how does each of us hear them in his [or her] own native language? We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God” (Bible 1998, Acts. 2: 7–11). The Pentecost event from which the Church derives its origins points to the fact that the Church ought to be existentially and ontologically oriented towards the embrace of all persons in such a manner that peripheries and marginalities are rejected. It is also a summons for the Church to reject a hierarchy of being as produced by empires, which tends to preference a scarcity mindset. In doing this, the Church consciously orients itself towards a surplus mindset that sees hopeful possibilities in places where empires may prefer to see scarcity.

On another note, Francis has gone further by stating categorically that the summons of the Christian message for all in the Church is all about embracing the pneumatological gift of compassionate imagination (Bordoni 2019). Compassionate imagination is about being intentional at centering the common good always in the content of what is being imagined as the possibility of how to be faithful disciples of God in church and world. Francis locates compassion within the domain of memory. A good memory that is itself God’s gift of grace to the Church invites the members of the Church to turn to compassion towards those in need of life whether within or outside the Church (Gomes 2020). With Francis’ reasoning, one can conclude that compassionate imagination, as a way of being church, allows for the praxis of re-existing in a manner that breaks down the structures of the center so that the peripheries become the locus of authentic lifegiving encounters. In his words, “The church is called to come out of herself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographically, but also the existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents and of all misery” (Wooden 2018). By coming out of itself, the Church must make a deliberate turn to the praxis of hope that allows for the birthing forth of a future that opens up in the horizon of encounters with all that is unfamiliar. This deliberate turn to hope allows for a journey of encounters which make present the memory of love that Christ has given to those who follow God. Hence, Francis speaks of hope as a summons to embrace “togetherness” in a manner that allows the Church to be relevant for our times (Francis 2021b). Here, Francis is making a link between the vision of the Second Vatican Council and the pastoral renewal that the Council mandated for the entire Church. Again, this is not possible unless the Church roots itself in the Spirit and allows itself to become a Pentecost church that is saturated with messiness and unpredictability. By messiness and unpredictability, I mean the Church ought to allow itself to be led by the Spirit even in situations where the signs of the times go against the familiar logic of doing things.

A Pentecost church is itself defined by three pastoral markers—compassionate imagination; re-existing as a way of being church for our times; and a church saturated with hope. Before expounding on each of these, it is proper to state that when one reads closely the Acts of the Apostles and the unfolding identity markers of the early church, one sees at play these three markers. First, compassionate imagination is at the heart of the definition of ministries, especially those of the diaconate (Acts 6: 1–7). Second, to re-exist is to constantly discern how and in what ways is the Spirit calling the Church to be fully an instrument of grace in the world. One finds this expressed in the debates over the acceptance of Gentiles into the Christian community and the eventual decisions made by the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15: 1–33). Third, to be a church that is saturated with hope is to embrace discipleship in a manner that allows one to reject boundaries and identity markers that produce centers and peripheries. Again, one finds this fully at play in the early church. After the decisions have been made at the Council of Jerusalem, the missionary commitment of the followers of Christ is broadened to include the Gentile world (Acts 15: 36–41). On that note, it is proper to engage these three markers of a Pentecost church in detail and show how they are relevant for our times.

4. The Contours of Compassionate Imagination for a Pentecost Church

A turn to the Spirit-centered gift of compassionate imagination is itself a deliberate embrace of the messiness of life where the beauty of the sound of God’s voice is heard and encountered. God is always encountered in the unfamiliar. This statement may sound as an exaggeration. But that is not the case. One may ask, cannot one encounter God in the familiar? Encounter is rooted in freedom. Unlike knowing, which is itself grounded in control, and sometimes can be a tool for manipulation, encounter is oriented towards freedom. Encounter is about entering into a relationship that is iconic—saturated with surplus of meaning, that exudes freedom and the refusal to be controlled. Thus, even the familiar, like one’s family, can only become a source of encounter when the impossibility of absolute knowing is realized. In other words, within the familiar lays the unfamiliar in order for the possibility of encounter to be realized.

The imagination is the vehicle that leads one to the locus of such an encounter. Too often, when we think of the gift of imagination, we tend to rush to the false conclusion that its content is defined solely by either the pathologies of past experiences holding one captive in the present or of a future that is defined solely by fantasy. Imagination is the pathway for birthing forth something new which transcends the totalization of knowing. In other words, the content of imagination is never something that is retrieved from the past completely. It is the enacting of that which evokes surprise in the one imagining because it allows for new visions, new realities, and new thought processes to play out. Imagination, when it is oriented towards the Spirit that gives meaning to life, is itself compassionate. It is compassionate because it allows for an existential solidarity with others through the affects. The affects are themselves meant to be messy, and it is in their messiness that God’s harmony and meaning-making play themselves out. How is compassionate imagination different or similar to discernment, one may be prompted to ask? In response to this question, I argue that compassionate imagination is a type of discernment that evokes a bias for compassion that is grounded in the refusal to pass judgment, because all parties involved in the praxis of imagination are recipients of the pneumatological grace of solidarity that leads to wholeness. Also, compassionate imagination is a communal praxis that creates authentic communities of life which instantiate new ways of being in the world in a manner that is grounded in a vision of togetherness. Francis alludes to this notion of togetherness in his weekly Wednesday audience, on 22 September 2021, as he reflected on his journey to Hungary and Slovakia:

Dear brothers and sisters, this hope, this hope of the Gospel that I was able to see in the journey, can only be realized and made concrete if it is expressed in another word: together. Hope never disappoints, hope goes not alone, but together. In Budapest and Slovakia, we found ourselves together with the different rites of the Catholic Church, together with our brothers and sisters of other Christian denominations, together with our Jewish brothers and sisters, together with the believers of other religions, together with the weakest. This is the path, because the future will be one of hope if we are together, not alone: this is important.

(Francis 2021b)

If there is one quality that best defines how God operates and encounters the world God has created, it is that of compassionate imagination. Through compassionate imagination, God brings about creation and consequently enters into a relationship of solidarity, which is God’s prototype of togetherness that Francis alludes to. God’s goodness which God speaks into creation becomes a testament to God’s solidarity with creation. It is also the possibility for creation to spark into existence its own imaginative abilities as a means of responding to God’s invitation to be part of the creative process that God has started. A point worth raising here is that solidarity as a communal praxis is the locus of imagination. Imagination is never an individualistic project. Just like the content of thought is produced through one’s interactions with otherness—otherness being one’s surroundings and other beings as well—so is imagination. The content of imagination never arises from an insular venture. Rather, it is from the existential solidarity with otherness that one derives what is imagined. In other words, to imagine is to be in dialogue and in communion with otherness. On the part of God, the trinitarian existence of God effects a communal orientation that allows for divine imagination to bring about creation. Consequently, on the part of humans, especially of the Church, the fellowship of life that is enacted through the praxis of encounters with otherness allows for the fruition of imagination that leads to the common good. Running quickly through the lanes of history, when one gets to the Pentecost event, one sees that the founding of the Church by the Spirit is itself rooted in divine-communal imagination. The Church, as the vehicle of God’s grace in and through the world, is itself an embodiment of God’s compassionate imagination. It is compassionate because when it is fully oriented towards its source of being and renewal—the Spirit—it becomes a vehicle of solidarity with all, especially those whose lives have been rendered invisible by the structures of marginality and erasure in our world.

The correct orientation to the Spirit is found in the expression of church through the praxis of synodality. Where hierarchism breeds colonialities of power that diminish lives and tend to erase otherness, synodality breeds a culture of acceptance, respect, humility, and curiosity to wonder and imagine new ways of being—a culture of ongoing reform. Francis states this well when he thinks through his vision of synodality, “The Pentecost experience is all about messiness. Yet, it is at the heart of such messiness that God ushers in both the harmony of solidarity and the possibility to dream of a future that is possible” (Wooden 2023). To be synodal is to embrace compassionate imagination as a tangible praxis of living. How is this the case? Synodality draws one into the space of encounter where differences are negotiated, held in reverence, and choosing to walk in harmony that bears fruit in the vision and praxis of the common good.

At this time of our collective history, when empire ethic of erasure, which is a way of being in the world that validates scarce imaginations, scarce modes of being human, scarce praxes of encounter, and scarce worldviews, plays out as the modus operandi, the Church is being invited by the Spirit to make a deliberate choice by turning to and walking on the pathway of synodality as solidarity with those who experience erasures and marginalities both in the Church and in society. In doing so, the Church ought to work actively at reclaiming the divine innocence that all humans were given by God when each person first entered this created world of God. Such innocence is rooted always in a vision of surplus—surplus of encounters; surplus of generosity; surplus of kindness towards others; surplus of the praxis of forgiveness; and surplus of transformative justice. This innocence is also a marker of the created order when God saw that all that God has created is good (Gen. 1:31). Goodness is an expression of divine innocence because it orients one to radically encounter all without cultivating the vice of negative judgment. In fact, it is all about the praxis of suspension of judgment and an embrace of wonder and the praxis of imagining possibilities of the good life for all.

Even though empire ethic has taught fallen humanity to abandon the vision of surplus, the mission of a synodal church is to help spark in all its members and those it encounters in the world an embrace of divine solidarity. When the Church embraces its calling to be an embodiment of compassionate imagination, it would necessarily carry out its mission of offering the gift of visions of surplus to all it encounters. A vision of surplus orients one towards a way of being in the world that sees possibilities, opportunities, and hope in all that one encounters. A surplus vision is rooted in solidarity with others and embracing the fact that one’s success is rooted in the success of others as well. When the Church takes seriously its call to discipleship in Christ, it will be able to foster this vision of surplus in its members and those it encounters where people and communities tend to experience marginalities and erasures. Why is this the case? Simply stated, it is in those places that God has made God’s home in order to encounter humans just as they are, because it is as just as they are that God fell in love with them. God is a God of surplus or abundant life. Consequently, fidelity to God or to the incarnate Christ, as is the case with the Church, orients one towards a vision of surplus. In fact, the Spirit of Pentecost is a Spirit that leads all persons into the domain of the unfamiliar so that they can let go of their biases and desire to have power. The origin of the Church is rooted in the experience of the unfamiliar—where language was previously a source of division and an identity marker, it is upended and becomes a source of encounter, understanding, and communion.

The embrace of the praxis of compassionate imagination calls for an ecclesiology of recognition and not of erasure. For too long, the Church has operated with the vision of scarcity. Perhaps it is time to take seriously the spirit of the Second Vatican Council that stated categorically that there are multiple images of being church (Second Vatican Council 1964). If compassionate imagination is a pneumatological orientation, then abundance and creative insights must necessarily be the proper way of embodying this pneumatological gift and summons that the Church is obligated to embrace as an instrument of the Spirit. To do this effectively, I argue that an ecclesiology of recognition ought to be rooted in the praxis of seeing the Church as a community that takes seriously the ritual of having an epistemic empty chair—reserved for the not-yet-articulated idea or teaching; the social issue the Church has not yet fully understood and one that needs careful deliberation and discernment; the person or community whose ways of life the Church has not yet fully understood; the theological perspective that is alien to what the Church currently upholds; and the stranger who is the epiphany of Christ not yet encountered—in all the spaces it functions. This ecclesiology of recognition is rooted in the praxis of suspension of judgment, and a radical turn to the Spirit who makes what is illogical logical, who sanctifies all, and who is the source of life and direction for the Church. The praxis of suspension of judgment is rooted in the view that one cannot absolutely know the other because otherness is always defined by mystery. To speak in absolute terms in relation to the other is to reduce the other simply to the perception one has deduced from the encounter with the other. The Church, as an institution of God’s grace, and a community that is oriented towards the mysterious God, in whose mystery all of creation partakes, becomes fully an instrument of divine invitation to all of humanity when it embraces the praxis of suspension of judgment in its dealing with society. When the Church makes moral decisions or statements, through the praxis of suspension of judgment, it orients itself towards the virtues of understanding, compassion, kindness, and solidarity.

Again, the ability to imagine compassionately is a gift that comes from God and never from the Church. I should restate that again. To imagine compassionately in a manner that fosters hope and life is never something that we can do on our own without divine assistance. Not all imaginations come from God. Some are from the devil. To imagine in a manner that fosters memories of hate and vengeance is to move away from how God invites us to be. That is what the devil does through the machinations of the hegemony of an empire ethic. Michael J. Iafrate states this well when he called attention to the problem of the idolatry of dangerous memory that the United States uses to perpetuate the hegemony of hate, imperialism, and unhinged capitalist greed in the world (Iafrate n.d.).

An embrace of compassionate imagination, as a marker of the Church, is rooted in a radical understanding of all the conditions that have led one or communities into the spaces of erasure, marginality, and peripheral existence. Such an understanding is not intended to legitimize hate or a vengeful response to those structures or persons who create, defend, and perpetuate the conditions. Rather, it is meant to help the Church see the radical endurance of the goodness that God proclaimed into humanity. Compassionate imagination is God’s invitation to each of us to encounter each other as creatures capable of transcending the allurements of evil and power that diminish human flourishing. It is also the proper way of being church in fidelity to the Spirit. This does not mean that one or the Church ought to agree with or validate the structures of evil themselves. No! Compassionate imagination is a prophetic response to hegemonic ways of being in the world. It is a purposeful way of saying that erasures and marginalities will not have the last word in God’s world. It is a way of shedding light on the hidden nature of colonialities of erasure playing out in the world, and even in some parts of the Church that need enduring reform. It is a stance of freedom even when the body, society, or church is itself held captive by the structures of subjugation and oppression.

When the Church embraces compassionate imagination, as a way of being church in the world, it chooses to re-member the tapestries of the lives of those that the hegemonies of death and erasure have attempted to destroy. This is also true for the Church when it deliberately locates itself at the peripheries of society. When the Church locates itself at the peripheries of society, it reclaims the memory of Pentecost; a memory that is itself a summons to embrace all that God has created as the media of God’s grace for the Church. When the Church joins its voice with those at the peripheries to tell their stories of resistance, joy, tears, resilience, abandonment, neglect, forgottenness, hope, laughter, and all the paradoxes that play out in the world they inhabit, both the Church and those at the peripheries bring to bear a new logic of life that transcends the fineries of empires and power. Theirs is truly the logic of the Spirit. They embody a form of existential polyphony which is truly a Pentecost experience. Also, the Church becomes a Pentecost church that lives, speaks, prays, and believes in a polyphonic manner—lex orandi lex credendi (the law of praying is the law of believing); lex vivendi lex credendi (the law of living is the law of believing). This positionality of the Church, by locating itself at the peripheries, is a prophetic witness that reminds those living at the centers of society to abandon the structures and systems that produce marginalities and peripheries in the world. It is a reminder that the true meaning of life can only be attained by deconstructing the binary world of center–periphery.

Telling one’s stories is itself an act of courage. Consequently, compassionate imagination is an embrace of the virtue of courage. It involves an existential tenacity in the face of the idol of hopelessness that an empire ethic produces. The refusal to be silenced, the refusal to be obliterated, the refusal to be erased; these are all manifestations of how the Spirit makes itself present in the world through those who embody these ways of being. This is exactly what Francis invites the Church to embody; a church that goes to the peripheries and makes the stories of the marginalized its own stories (Gomes 2021b). Francis insists that the Church’s pastors must live out the gospel in a manner that allows them to “smell like the sheep they are called to minister to” (Gomes 2021b). Francis is being faithful to the injunction of the Second Vatican Council that reminded the members of the Church of their calling to be in solidarity with all in the world (Second Vatican Council 1965). This stance of Francis is an invitation for the Church’s pastors to center compassionate imagination in their calling to ignite and introduce the spark of life that comes from the Spirit into their respective ecclesial communities. I would argue also that it is a mandate for all believers in Christ because it comes from the reception of the gift of baptism. To embody the gift of theosis (divinization) is to embody compassionate imagination that births forth life for all, including oneself, because, through this, one is oriented towards God. Such an orientation bears the responsibility of caring for others.

5. Becoming a Church That Re-Exists: Towards a Vision of Synodality

Compassionate imagination evokes a praxis of re-existing in a manner that invalidates the logic of empire. Empires teach their citizens to live in a world of either/or. You either live prosperously or you choose to die, or at best be killed off (Mbembe 2019, pp. 122–23). The valuation of life is defined by how much one possesses. Not having material possessions at the expense of the other is considered to be a life of weakness in the world of empires. The state machinery serves the purpose of perpetuating the culture of death. Achille Mbembe sheds light on this phenomenon when he critiques the realities of statehood in post-colonial Africa. As Mbembe notes: the neoliberal state is meant to diminish life and make credible the culture of death as a tool for validating exploitation (Mbembe 2019, pp. 114–15). Empires create and perpetuate colonialities of subjugation and servitude. They produce a monologic mode of reasoning that allows the citizens they produce to think and behave in a certain manner. In fact, they perpetuate a false peace that its cultivated citizens vie for and want to embrace so that they can be accorded the platitudes of belonging. In vying for a place of belonging and acceptance in the world that empires produce, their cultivated citizens fail to ask the fundamental question, who is being robbed of their dignities and resources by the structures they have embraced as moral and just, and which produce in such citizens the addiction of materialism and consumerism? Unfortunately, such a question never arises unless the citizens allow themselves to experience the world of the peripheries where a different logic operates, and where the Spirit gifts one with the gift of radical awareness that is grounded in compassionate imagination—being aware of multiple ways of being and how one can embody those ways, including their inherent paradoxes, without leaping into the domain of judgment and condemnation. This existential space of the peripheries is where the gift of re-existing is fully experienced.

What is re-existing? It is an eschatological gift of re-birth; like a form of embodied anamnesis, which affirms the past memory of life, the present realities of life, and the new eucharistic life that nothing in the past or the present can account for. If it is simply a return to the old way of living, then nothing eschatological can be said of it. If it is simply about the current conditions of one’s life, then nothing hopeful can be found in it. Re-existing is itself an orientation and a praxis that allows one to ground oneself in the virtuous praxis of hope, resilience, and positivity even when one is faced with difficulties. It is a deliberate refusal to give up and to insist that no situation is permanent. God will make things better when one actively uses one’s agency to work towards a better world. This orientation and praxis that re-existing entails is a gift because it comes from the Spirit who renews all, including structures of marginality and empire that hold people’s imaginations captive. One who embraces compassionate imagination and chooses to re-exist in a manner that defies an empire ethic has chosen to affirm the logic of the Spirit. The logic of the Spirit is like the stubborn grass that refuses to be killed off even when pesticides have been applied to it. Yes, the stem of the grass may die off, but the resilient roots continue to hold on to life, and over time, they develop new stems. Such is the way the Church is called to re-exist. A re-existing church is a church that always births forth new ways of responding to the signs of the times.

One can even say that to re-exist is how the gift of theosis becomes a ritual praxis in the lives of those who embrace such a way of being in the world. It is how the Church can embody the gift of theosis as it sustains and nurtures its members. Being a member of the Church that is enacted through baptism cannot be reduced to simply carrying a membership card. Rather, it is a praxis of life and endurance. It is resiliency in the face of the structures of evil and marginality in the world.

The Church can become an empire or even embrace an empire ethic of domination when it fails to take seriously the pneumatological turn to constant reform that is grounded in the ritual of reading the signs of the times. Francis is very much aware of this fact; hence, he insists that the constant reform of the Church can be found in the lives of the saints. As he notes, each saintly person is “a plan of the Father to reflect and incarnate, at a specific moment in history, an aspect of the Gospel” (Mares 2022). The lives of the saints teach the Church how to be authentic disciples of Christ. They serve as a prophetic response to the misuse of power in the Church, especially when the cult of power takes over the praxis of encounter. By this I mean that, sometimes, the understanding of magisterial authority in the Church tends to reflect the personal flaws of those who lay claim to such power. The turn to the saintly ones in the Church as a guide for a proper response to the signs of the times means that a broader approach to, and the understanding of, magisterium ought to be embraced; one that reflects the praxis of holiness as the authentic source of leadership and discipleship. Furthermore, when aspects of the Church’s life become instruments that produce evil and marginality, a turn to re-existing by its members through their embodiment of sensus fidelium helps to foster the praxis and culture of hope, justice, and life for all. The saints always live at the peripheries, and it is from there that they summon the Church to become the true bride of Christ through their own simple lives that are always lived in solidarity with the marginalized ones of our world. This is at the heart of what Francis is inviting the Church to embody and embrace through a synodal positionality. Synodality makes the Church constantly re-exist in such a manner that it does not get fixated on the familiar, and all that makes it comfortable and have control—a narcissistic approach to being in the world.

Interestingly, re-existing through compassionate imagination is itself illogical in the sense that it goes against the grain of the logic of empire. It involves a negation of the logic of empire for being in the world. By this, I mean living in a manner that allows for surprise to become the mode of being in a world where structures of evil demand predictability from individuals or communities. It entails understanding the fact that no one can be known exhaustively. Thus, the unknown can sometimes be a graced reservoir of goodness even when all that one knows of the other is defined by evil. Stated differently, the evil other is also the bearer of goodness through the side of them that is not yet known. To encounter this mysterious other in a manner that affirms their transcendence, one has to constantly make room for kindness, hospitality, and reverence. The following question best explains the point that I am making here: How can one make sense of one’s life when everything around one speaks and affirms the logic of a meaningless life? In response to the question, one must make a deliberate turn to the Spirit. True logic is that which oppressive systems have defined as illogical. This is because it is rooted in a Spirit-centered existence. It entails living in and through the Spirit to allow for new ways of seeing and encountering others, God, and oneself. This is the orientation that is at the heart of a synodal church. Since synodality is all about hearing all voices and encountering all bodies while embodying the praxis of suspension of judgment, a Spirit-centered logic becomes the correct way of seeing and responding to the signs of the times. It is about going against the grain. Where empire ethic teaches one to abandon the peripheries, an embrace of a synodal culture prompts the Church to encounter the peripheries and make its home there. Where materialism and power are ways that empires use to define how life ought to play out, synodality is a deliberate turn to simplicity, sharing, and solidarity in order to enact a culture that fosters the common good. Where empires advocate violence as a way of addressing difference, synodality is a turn to and an embrace of difference as a pathway for fostering enduring peace.

Empire ethic holds the imagination captive of the citizens it produces. When this happens, the questions of such citizens are those of entitlement that also create social hierarchies of being. This is particularly true of the question posed by Nathaniel to Philip when he was told of the ministry of Jesus—“Can anything come out of Nazareth” (Bible 1998, John 1:46). For him, Nazareth embodies marginalities and not-belonging. It is a place without lobbying powers, and one who lives there cannot have any serious career ambition. Perhaps it is important to read the motive of Nazareth into Francis’ vision of synodality. Francis has constantly called attention to the evil of clericalism and its expression of careerism that defines how some pastors in the Church see their roles (Catholic News Service 2013). Unlike this culture of a hierarchy of importance, a synodal way of being church helps to cultivate the mindset and the praxis of re-existing that allow the Church to be a living Nazareth. Just as the empire mentality of Nathaniel prevented him from seeing the goodness of God emanating from Nazareth, by becoming a living Nazareth, a synodal church can become the illogical response to the logic of empire and marginalities playing out in the world. The salvation promised by the risen Christ through the mediative role of the Spirit can be realized through the inherent virtue of surprise present in a synodal church. This is because Nazareth embodies such a virtue of surprise. Again, it is important that this virtue of surprise be embodied by a synodal church as a legitimate and deliberate response to the predictive vice of control that an empire ethic tends to embody.

Re-existing entails an embrace of conversion. On the part of the Church, it involves a deliberate turn away from stale identity markers and ways of doing things that no longer address the realities defining people’s lives, especially the lives of those the Church is called to minister. Too often, we think of conversion as something that orients us to a type of truth that derives its validity from a logical argument. But this is how we tend to get it all wrong. Conversion is rooted in God’s invitation to us to encounter a “God-beyond-reason” (Aihiokhai 2023a). It is an invitation to embrace the apophatic side of God that is beyond the totalization of our human consciousness. It is from that hidden side of God that God invites the Church to reorient itself away from the logic of the head to the illogicality of encounter that is found in the heart so that it can enter into a relationship with God, itself, and the world. This illogicality that is found in conversion is exactly how Mary of Magdala came to encounter the risen Christ. The Jesus she knew was the man from Nazareth who was her friend. However, when the risen Christ called her by her name, she thought the relationship was going to be business as usual; one that plays out through the cognitive powers of the mind. Hence, she wanted to cling to the risen Christ. Nonetheless, the new way of being that the risen Christ invites her to embrace meant that she needed to learn how to live differently, in a manner that her heart was going to be the center of encounter with the risen Christ (John 20:16). Similarly, the conversion of Paul ought to be seen through this lens of turning around and embracing the counter logic of the gospel. The familiar logic that Saul knew before his encounter with the risen Christ on his way to Damascus was that anyone who claimed to be God was committing blasphemy and needed to be cut off from the community of the Covenant People. Yet, after that transformative encounter, he experienced a different awareness of God—a God that transcends the domain of the known and the logical. In fact, Saul’s old sight had to go so that he could see the risen Christ with a new vision (Acts. 9: 1–19). Similarly, a synodal church can begin to see in a new way when it takes seriously the lives of the saintly ones who live at the peripheries of the world. Their lives ought to spark the following question in the Church: how can the Church be a church of the peripheries by emulating the virtues embodied by its saintly members?

Furthermore, those who re-exist live the enduring life of God that plays out in Nazareth. Nazareth is not just a witness of truth to Jerusalem or Rome. In our times, I would add Washington, D.C., London, Berlin, Paris, Abuja, Beijing, Pretoria, Kinshasa, Nairobi, Moscow, Brussels, Addis Ababa, and other centers of power where an empire ethic is fully at work. Nazareth is life itself. It is how God invites the Church to embrace new ways of being in the world so that evil will never have the last word, and the radicality of hope will endure.

6. Synodality as Embodiment of Hope for the Church

Compassionate imagination fosters a lifestyle of hope. Hope is the virtue that links the linearity of our chronos existence with the presence of God’s kairos time. By reclaiming the Church’s memories through the rituals of re-membering, the Church becomes aware of the enduring tapestry of beauty that defines its life over time (past). This tapestry makes it become more aware of what is happening to it in the nowness of its existence. In this way, it becomes anchored to the presence of God, which is a presence of divine invitation to it to not give up in the face of present trials (present). This anchoring that God initiates in its life allows it to imagine a future that is not abstract or rooted in fantasy. It is a future of continuum; one that makes the tapestry of God’s beauty that runs through its past existence into its present realities and then leading it into a brighter dawn of the future (future). These three markers that find their authentic realization in the ritual of compassionate imagining are only possible when the Church embraces a life that is grounded in enduring hope. Without hope, one cannot re-exist. This is because to re-exist is to allow oneself to embrace a new way of being in the world, and without re-existing, one cannot be compassionate. This is because re-existing is itself a form of being in solidarity with all, especially those who have been silenced or erased by systems of marginality. Simply stated, hope is what makes everything make sense. However, hope is itself a praxis. It is not just a feeling or an idea. It is a way of living and being in the world. It involves an orientation and a positionality that preferences surplus imagination and surplus generosity over the idolatry of scarcity. It involves saying yes to resilient ways of being in the face of the violence of erasure. It involves the positionality of justice for all as against the idolatry of narcissistic orientation of greed. It involves radical forgiveness while calling out and calling in those who perpetuate evil. Hope is the platform on which one stands and lives one’s life in such a manner that one can thus see the new horizon of life and acceptance that God invites all to be part of.

Hope is ritualized through the praxis of mercy towards others. The motif of mercy is central to the pontificate of Francis. Several times, he has alluded to this praxis of being church. As he notes, “the Church is called to be a witness of mercy to all” (Gomes 2021c). Reminding the Church of the centrality of the praxis of mercy, Francis argues that mercy is not just a feeling, it is a way of living and acting in the world that is grounded in solidarity with all, especially those in need of support (Francis 2016, ## 19–20).

A Pentecost church is the embodiment of hope. It stands as a witness to the enduring presence of God in the world, even in the face of the evils perpetuated by the coloniality of marginalities carried out by the powerful against the innocent. At the heart of Francis’ vision of a synodal church is the motif of hope that is meant to saturate the lives of its members. When Francis insists that the Church should embrace the praxis of mercy and hope in its relations with its members and society, he is intentionally being faithful to the commitment made by the Second Vatican Council through its conciliar declaration, Gaudium et Spes. The bold statement of the Council was that the Church should embody sources of new life for all, especially those who experience anxieties, marginalities, and all forms of social, psychological, historical, cultural, and ecological oppressions.

One would think that Francis’ call to the entire Church to embody the virtues of hope and mercy towards those it ministers, especially those who are in situations that prevent them from being actively involved in the sacramental life of the Church, in this case, divorced Catholics who are currently unable to receive the Eucharist, would be joyfully embraced by all its members. Unfortunately, this is not the case (Winters 2015). For example, Cardinal Raymond Burke has publicly declared that the traditional stance of the Church on divorce makes it impossible for the Church to do otherwise (Burke 2015). Burke and others who have voiced, and continue to voice, their critique of Francis’ vision of how to be a church of hope and mercy tend to espouse an ecclesiological vision that sees the Church’s role in history through a scarce understanding of what hope and mercy mean. For them, a church that is grounded in a vision of hope and mercy is one that embodies a linear movement through history. After all, the eschaton is the goal, and it is to be realized at the end of times as though it were a linear telos. In response to their critique of Francis’ vision for the Church, I argue that a rereading of the theological virtue of hope is again needed for our times in order to see how it encapsulates a different orientation of understanding how God’s enduring grace works in the kairos moments of history. The Pentecost church is oriented towards the Spirit who renews all, including time itself. In this pneumatological turn, there is no past, present, or future. Rather, all are experienced in the nowness of God’s gift of hope that opens up the past and empties it into the present and the future. It also opens up the present and empties it into the past and future. The same occurs, as well, with regard to the future. This is not something strange to the Christian imagination. In the Eucharistic celebration, the Spirit brings this about when the community offers the prayer of epiclesis that is grounded in the belief that the enduring word of God can never fail the Church.

A synodal church makes relevant the grace of God that runs through history by addressing the memories of trauma trapped in the bodies and psyches of communities. Just as the traumas run through the bodies and psyches of persons and communities, so does the grace of hope serve as a medicine to address these traumas and psyches. This is not just how to be a church that responds to the signs of the times; rather, it is how the Church is a church of the signs of the times. Again, this is exactly what was captured in Gaudium et Spes by the Second Vatican Council.

Let me again make a deliberate critique of such views that tend to uphold a fossilized notion of tradition as a critique of the call for reform being advocated by Francis. Being a church of hope is to take seriously the fact that if hope is a praxis, a way of being in the world, and an embodiment of memory and imagination, then a synodal church cannot but be a church that is constantly reforming. Praxis that is not about the pruning of traditions, memories, insights, and rituals will always lead to staleness and death. Being a living church means that the Church is constantly aware of its surroundings and is responding to the needs, desires, aspirations, hopes, and imaginations of not just its members but those who are its neighbors in a manner that allows for all to experience abundant life. Pruning of ecclesial traditions entails taking seriously the fact that there is always a dual movement in the Church as a teaching church. A church that teaches is also a church that listens, learns, and receives. While the magisterium teaches, the content of what is taught and how it is taught is shaped by careful discernment by reading the signs of the times through its relationship with the world and its own members. Also, a church that listens, learns, and receives must also embody a pneumatological spirit of discernment that allows it to hear, see, feel, and experience God’s goodness operating in the world and its own members; even in those who are themselves said to be defined by immorality. In their immoralities, the stubborn grace of God continues to find its home in them. That stubborn grace is the link and voice of God inviting the Church to learn, listen, and receive what it is being taught at that time of human history. Consequently, a synodal church is a church that is ever alive and open to the spark of new ways of being in the world. This is what an orientation towards hope can do for the Church. Without hope, the Church cannot birth forth new ways of being and adequately address the realities faced by its members and neighbors. The gift of Pentecost is a gift intended to make hope the center of what and how to be church in any historical epoch.

7. Conclusions

In today’s world, new questions arise that demand responses that reflect a culture of deep listening, keen observation, and an embrace of the praxis of suspension of judgment. Some of these questions include the following: How are the members of the Church compassionately imagining their lives or the lives of their communities? How does their embrace of compassionate imagination allow them to re-exist in such a manner that makes their re-existence become a testament to God’s counterlogic in comparison to the logic of empire? How does the praxis of hope allow them to imagine a future that is beyond the binaries of good and evil, rich and poor, love and hate, and so on? How does the praxis of hope allow them to embrace new frontiers of life for all to feel welcomed while old structures of marginalization and oppression in the world and the Church are invalidated and abandoned? In response to these questions, one has to take seriously the teachings of Francis to the Church for it to embrace a new wave of evangelization (Francis 2013). However, this new type of evangelization cannot be like the past ones that produced and sometimes validated cultural and political colonialism. It must be decolonial in all its expressions.

A decolonial approach to evangelization can help to deconstruct all dynamics of power at the center, while moving the focus to the peripheries where the content of the gospel is encountered and experienced; and where the missionary becomes not only a proclaimer but a listener as well. At the peripheries, the missionary is tasked with the responsibility of finding the holy in all that one has been taught in the past to be profane. One is called to see the risen Christ in the unfamiliar faces of the members of the communities who reside at the peripheries. One is summoned by the Spirit to become a member of the Pentecost church where no one language, no one hermeneutic tradition, no one logic, no one perspective, no one ritual, and no one theology can define the experience of God being realized at the peripheries. In fact, in such a place, the correct approach to being church is to embody a polyphonic worldview where all are welcomed, affirmed, and supported.

Finally, a Pentecost church is a church that constantly reflects in its memories, body, and structures the bonds of solidarity with all who live at each epoch. This approach demands that such a church ought to be a listening and caring one in such a manner that allows for it to fully become the medium of the grace of compassion, life that is resilient, and hope that allows for new possibilities to arise for all. Simply stated, embracing this type of existential grace in the world is how God sparks in the Church the curiosity to wonder and be a creative source of life for all, especially for those who are not yet present at the table of fellowship.