Pope Benedict XVI often said that, in today’s skeptical and cynical world, the saints make a more persuasive case for the truth of Christianity than the most sophisticated arguments. One has to wonder, then, why the Working Document (
Instrumentum Laboris
, or IL) for October’s Synod on Synodality is virtually devoid of references to the saints, or to the Church’s heritage of holiness over two millennia, or to the holy ones who surround us in this third millennium of “journeying together” (a favorite synodal trope). Perhaps that has something to do with the IL’s seeming lack of interest in the goal of the Christian journey: eternal joy within the light and life of the Holy Trinity, in that never-ending celebration that Revelation 19 calls the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.