A Message from your Pastor

July 31-August 1, 2010

Dear Friends,

In the story of Christianity, there have always been folks who believed that they could be Christians without a church community. It is probably to challenge this notion that some of the first Christian writings were instructions about how Christians live and work together. The early epistles of St. Paul were addressed to church communities, not to individuals. They taught about a life together, not a Christian life lived alone. Our independent spirits can sometimes prompt us to believe that we can find salvation alone, but in the Christian experience that is not possible.

You cannot tell the story of God without telling the story of Israel. You cannot tell the story of Jesus without telling the story of his followers. When we say the creed at Sunday Mass, it is not an accident that after we profess what we believe in God, we follow it with a profession of a belief in a church—"we believe in One, Holy Catholic, and Apostolic Church." God has entrusted his presence to a community; a community that is renewed with each generation. God’s story is not simply told by this community, but it is embodied in the community through its actions formed by worship and morals. It is only through this church that any of us have learned what God wills for the world and for us. More than that, the community itself becomes the place where God dwells. As St. Paul teaches in those first years following Jesus’ return to heaven, “Now you are Christ's body, and individually parts of it.” While members within the church can be unfaithful, God remains faithful. God does not let that failure overwhelm the church. God remains faithful and creates and sustains the church from one generation to the next.

When Jesus announces the Kingdom of God and when we announce the Kingdom of God today, it is addressed to a people not to individuals. Even the end result of the Kingdom, the goal of the Kingdom is the gathering of the people of God into union with God. The heavenly goal is not aloneness it is togetherness. To think that we would find total aloneness in the after-life is more of a vision of hell than of heaven; aloneness is being separated from God and from others—away from love. Each time the church gathers for Eucharist we are anticipating the heavenly banquet—people gathered around their God and, not only gathered, but finding intimate union with God in the Eucharistic feast. Once again, not an experience done alone, but done together.

Perhaps one of the reasons that people have struggled with the truth of the necessity of being a part of the church is that we, who are active in the church, do not always live the reality of who we are. In our second reading for this Sunday, St. Paul beautifully teaches us about the profound reality of how we are to be the church:

“Brothers and sisters: If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory. Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly: Immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry. Stop lying to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all.”

Perhaps, if we lived more fully what we believe and lived with the freedom Paul encourages in the reading, then others would see in us the truth of God’s presence in the church. They would have in our parish a living example of God gathering a people and transforming them into his very body.

Peace,

Fr. Damian