{"id":6412,"date":"2014-05-03T20:01:25","date_gmt":"2014-05-03T19:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/?p=6412"},"modified":"2014-05-03T20:01:25","modified_gmt":"2014-05-03T19:01:25","slug":"2nd-sunday-of-easter-27-04-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/?p=6412","title":{"rendered":"2nd Sunday of Easter (27.04.14)"},"content":{"rendered":"

2nd Sunday of Easter (27.04.14)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

The Beginning Is Actually The End<\/strong><\/p>\n

This earth has known only one perfect community namely, that of Jesus and Mary. By \u2018perfect community\u2019 is understood a gathering of humans unblemished by personal sin. With this in mind, how are we to read the Acts of the Apostles\u2019 extract for this 2nd Sunday of Easter (2: 42-47) traditionally called Low Sunday? The question can be extended to cover similar \u2018idealised\u2019 descriptions of early Jerusalem Christian life we find in chapters 1-5 of the Acts of the Apostles.<\/p>\n

Writers sometimes employ a type of poetic licence, a technique of creating a word-picture intended to encourage their readers to believe that the goal, to which the author is committed, already exists when, in truth, it remains \u2018under construction\u2019. It\u2019s called making \u2018the beginning sound like the end\u2019. Luke\u2019s depiction, in this Sunday\u2019s extract from Acts, carries the heading \u201cThe early Christian community\u201d. A more accurate labelling might be, \u201cThis is what I have the hope of you, one day, becoming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luke truly believes in the ideal community he depicts. He composed \u2018The Acts of the Apostles\u2019 about fifty years after Jesus\u2019 death and Resurrection; long after most of the originating Jerusalem Christian community had either been martyred or dispersed. Luke correctly believes that God would not have set us an unachievable ideal. That over two thousand years later Christians live their faith in the ideal, though it remains \u2018under construction\u2019, exemplifies God\u2019s grace enabling belief in Jesus of Nazareth.<\/p>\n

If you contrast St. Paul\u2019s first Letter to the Corinthians \u2013 also composed some 50 years after Jesus\u2019 death and Resurrection \u2013 you will find a very different picture of how that Christian community was behaving. Their progressive fragmentation as a community and from the \u2018Christian ideal\u2019 Paul had originally set before them caused Paul to write out of the personal anguish he felt for them. In 1 Corinthians, Paul is attempting to restore their focus. Paul wants them to discern their brothers and sisters in their Eucharistic community as being with them one body namely, The Body of Christ, more evident even than the elements of bread and wine! If I were to genuflect to the Blessed Sacrament and then trample on my brothers and sisters I am desecrating the Body of Christ.<\/p>\n

A memory search will likely enable readers of age to recall the long list and categorisation of sins we were taught in school. There were mortal sins we were obliged to confess before we could return to the Communion rail. No mention was ever made, as I recall, of the sin of failing to recognise and accept the person next to me in church as the Body of Christ. Yet, the implication of St. Paul\u2019s 1 Corinthians letter appears to put that sin at the top of his list! For him, such a failure is sufficiently serious to bar a person from the Lord\u2019s Supper.<\/p>\n

Among Scriptural scholars there is a belief that Luke, in the Acts extract, summarises an ideal of life in the early Christian community because Christians in the AD 80 period were having a problem recognising themselves, when gathered, as the Body of Christ.<\/p>\n

We would be seriously deceiving ourselves were we to believe that this Sunday\u2019s Acts of the Apostles extract represented our parish communities today. Moreover, Christendom\u2019s major divisions \u2013 Orthodox v Latin etc. \u2013 show the world that the Lord\u2019s intended communion of believers undoubtedly remains \u2018under construction\u2019.<\/p>\n

Most of us will be familiar with the \u2018Doubting Thomas\u2019 part of the Gospel for this Sunday (John 29:19-31). Yet again, it\u2019s a label that has passed into common usage though many will have no idea of its origin! How cruel and unloving it is to confine and condemn a person to one moment\/episode in their life. Which of us likes being reminded of our past failures? \u2018Doubting Thomas\u2019 became \u2018Believing Thomas\u2019 through the Risen Christ but that seems to have escaped history\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

John\u2019s Gospel tells of a seven-day interval between Thomas\u2019 declaration and Jesus\u2019 second appearance. We have no knowledge of what may have transpired in those days. Wouldn\u2019t that community-in-hiding, that still embryonic \u2018body of Christ\u2019, have prayed\/interceded for their member in distress? Being a Baptised member of that Body of Christ that is the Church on earth calls for constant involvement. There is no place for spectators. St. Paul teaches that those who do not work (read: \u2018intercessionary prayer and behaviour in word and deed\u2019) should not eat (read: \u2018be Eucharistic participants\u2019).<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the First Reading and Gospel of this Low Sunday, we see what we are called to become here on earth (Acts). The process of becoming is strewn with difficulties as instanced in the Gospel. Thankfully we are Sacramentally linked with brothers and sisters who willingly share our journey as do we, theirs.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s illuminative that each recent Pope, from John XXlll to Francis, has encouraged the new \u2018communities\u2019 within the Eucharistic Assembly that have grown since the Second Vatican Council.<\/p>\n

Some are well known, such as Opus Dei, Spanish by foundation, but now worldwide. Perhaps less well recognised is The Community of Sant\u2018Egidio, an Italian foundation officially recognized by the\u00a0Catholic Church<\/a>. It has 50,000 members in more than 70 countries and lists as its main activities: prayer, witnessing to Jesus Christ, caring for the poor, ecumenism and dialogue with non-believers.<\/p>\n

Another new growth within the Church is \u2018Communion and Liberation\u2019 founded in 1954 in Italy. \u2018CL\u2019 sets out to deepen member\u2019s Christian formation enabling them to be co-workers within the Church\u2019s mission to society. Pope Benedict declared that \u2018CL\u2019 offers a profound way of life living the Christian faith through spontaneity and freedom that permit new and prophetic, apostolic and missionary achievements.<\/p>\n

Another Pope-endorsed development is The Neocatechumenal Way, founded in\u00a0Madrid<\/a>\u00a0in 1964 by two Catholic laypeople,\u00a0Kiko Arg\u00fcello<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Carmen Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a>, It is known colloquially as \u2018The Way\u2019 and is a community within the\u00a0Catholic Church<\/a>\u00a0dedicated to the Christian formation of adults based on the\u00a0catechumenate<\/a>\u00a0of the early Church preparing\u00a0converts<\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0paganism<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0baptism<\/a>. \u2018The Way\u2019 also provides post-baptismal formation for adults who are already members of the Church, especially those whose post-Baptismal formation was either curtailed or non-existent. It runs 100 seminaries in various countries and is responsible for hundreds of families who have volunteered to become missionary units living in different cities around the World in small,\u00a0parish<\/a>-based communities of between 20-50 people. In 2007 there were around 40,000 such communities throughout the World, with an estimated million members.<\/p>\n

These three examples, among others, demonstrate how, as some of the Religious Orders of yesteryear are disappearing, new ways for Catholics, single and married, to live as religious communities are appearing. These new communities don\u2019t live in cloistered seclusion, as did the religious communities of yesteryear. They choose to be involved in the world and be neighbours to the most needy in the world, whatever their need. Today\u2019s First Reading from Acts remains valid as a poetically licenced word-picture of our objective, still under construction. Today\u2019s Gospel shows how there will always be difficulties but we should never give up on working to become the Eucharistic Body of Christ.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2nd Sunday of Easter (27.04.14) The Beginning Is Actually The End This earth has known only one perfect community namely, that of Jesus and Mary. By \u2018perfect community\u2019 is understood a gathering of humans unblemished by personal sin. With this … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archdiocese-of-liverpool"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6413,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6412\/revisions\/6413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}