Day 7: Community VS. Individual

Read: Acts 2: 42-47 Mt. 9: 14-17

"They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers. All who believed were together and had all things in common... Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes. They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart, praising God and enjoying favor with all the people. And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42-47)

Many folks have suggested to me (depending on their personalities) that we're alternatively too COLD at Mass or too TOUCHY-FEELY.

The former were rather unhappy in the days when people attended Mass and kept to themselves during the Liturgy. For those folks, Church was a very impersonal hour on Sundays. And if people didn't find themselves particularly moved by high liturgy, they really suffered. A large number of these folks tried to find some kind of fellowship in the basement after Holy Mass for the Sunday donuts or through the Altar and Rosary society, The Knights, The Women's guild... but Mass was not a place for fellowship per se for these folks. This left a lot of the more emotive people cold... and expressionless.

The latter folks were content before, and tend to be nostalgic for the good old Catholic days... whatever that may mean to them. The current emphasis on simplicity, churches that could second as Civic Center halls, greeting each other, hand holding at the Our Father, the encouragement in active congregational participation and in extra-ordinary ministries by various lay people, leaves them not only cold... but some quite mortified!

However your parish is, think about how Jesus would like it to be. How is the CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY best expressed? What can we do to strike a BALANCE?

Psalm 133:1 "How good it is, how pleasant, where the people dwell as one!"