Sub-Topic: Building a Church that is truly a faith community immersed in the lives of her people.
A Church who is immersed in the lives of her people creates a faith community where parishioners feel welcomed and have a sense of belonging in their parish. In this community of believers’ people has faith in God and confidence in his brothers and sisters in the community. Members experiences that the parish is their home away from home. They are involved in the ministries and the liturgical and worship life of the community is vibrant and meaningful to them.
This is the challenge for the local Churches today, to build a faith community immersed in the lives of her people. To build a parish in touch with the needs of the people, a parish who empowers the faithful to become active members, and invigorate them to be true witnesses of Christ in and outside the parish.
The Church who involved the members and makes them feel that they are one with the mission and programs of the parish eventually builds the Church as a community of believers. This community who are spiritually nourished, and who developed genuine care and love for the Church because they recognize their belongingness will become aware also of the need and the importance of building and renovating the structure of the Church as a house and temple of God.
Building the Church of Christ begins by building community who understand the condition and aspiration of the people. If the need arises to improve the physical structure of the parish, the parishioners who recognize that this is needed to support the Church as the mystical Body of Christ will want to share their gifts and do their part to become involved even in the parish programs and ministries.
Word of God
1Corinthians 12: 22 – 26
Indeed, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are all the more necessary, and those parts of the body that we consider less honorable we surround with greater honor, and our less presentable parts are treated with greater propriety, whereas our more presentable parts do not need this. But God has so constructed the body as to give greater honor to a part that is without it, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the same concern for one another. If [one] part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.
Values / Attitude
Belongingness Generosity Active Participation
Compassion Doctrine
Christ Jesus “gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own” (Titus 2:14, CCC 802).
Being the Church means being the community of God, a leaven for all especially the lost and marginalized, a Church who seeks those who feel alienated, and encourages them to realize and believe that they are part of God’s people.
Moral
The Church who is immersed in the lives of the people is ruled by the law of love.
The New Law is called a law of love because it makes us act out of the love infused by the Holy Spirit, rather than from fear; a law of grace, because it confers the strength of grace to act, by means of faith and the sacraments; a law of freedom, because it sets us free from the ritual and juridical observances of the Old Law, inclines us to act spontaneously by the prompting of charity and, finally, lets us pass from the condition of a servant who “does not know what his master is doing” to that of a friend of Christ – “For all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” – or even to the status of son and heir. (CCC 1972)
Worship
In the New Covenant, prayer is the living relationship of the children of God with their Father who is good beyond measure, with his Son Jesus Christ and with the Holy Spirit (CCC 2565).
Prayer is the life of a Church who desires to build the mystical body of Christ. All pastoral activities and initiatives to build up the Church and reconcile all members to God to make them a true community of believers can be materialized only with sincere prayer.
Faith Response
Affirmation / Conviction
# Simbahan na may pakialam
# Ako ay bahagi ng Simbahan
# Church of the poor
# Church for the poor
Action / Commitment
1. What program
can we initiate to involve the non-active parishioner?
2. How can we make the marginalized
and those in the periphery feel that they belong to the Church?
3. What can I contribute to the
building of a Church who is immersed in the lives of the people?
Celebration / Prayer
God of Justice,
open our eyes
to see you in the face of the poor.
Open our ears
to hear you in the cries of the exploited.
Open our mouths
to defend you in the public squares
as well as in private deeds.
Remind us that what we do
to the least ones,
we do to you.
Amen.
