What exactly is a Synod?

At lunch last Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI told Synodal Fathers that the Synod on the New Evangelization reminds him of the Road to Emmaus. He said:

Synodus means “shared walk”, “walking together”, and so the word synodus makes me think of the famous walk of the Lord with the two disciples who were going to Emmaus, who are to an extent an image of the agnostic world of today. Jesus, their hope, had died: the world was empty; it seemed that either God did not exist or had no interest in us. With this despair in their hearts, but still with a little flame of faith, they walk on. The Lord walks mysteriously beside them and helps them to better understand the mystery of God, His presence in history, His silent walking with us. In the end, at supper, when the words of the Lord and their listening have already lit up their hearts and illuminated their minds, they recognize Him at the meal and finally their hearts start to see. Thus in the Synod we are walking together with our contemporaries. We pray to the Lord that He may illuminate us, that He may light up our hearts so they may become prophetic, that He may illuminate our minds; and we pray that at supper, in the Eucharistic communion, we can really be open, see Him and thus also light up the world and give His light to this world of ours.

For more on the definition of “synod,” check out this site.