As we read and hear the Gospels proclaimed, Jesus, both human and divine, speaks to us for His Father. Jesus tells us that His Father is our Father, a Father Who loves us faithfully with merciful love, a Father Who promises us eternal life. Jesus teaches us that our lives and even our sufferings and deaths have meaning because if we live with faith, every new death (suffering or death) in our lives leads to a new resurrection (a new way of life.) God can and will always bring good things into our lives if we open our hearts and lives to Him. This is the unending promise of the Crucified.
If we live in a community and share our life stories, we are a "cloud of witnesses" to each other. We share the stories of our lives, our own individual Gospels, our narratives about how God is living and acting in our own ordinary lives. We can see in each other that the Gospel truths are Real! Weekly and even daily, as we visit before and after our Church services, or see each other in the neighborhood or at church functions, we can witness in each others' lives that God does provide: people find love, people heal from tragedies, and people can and do receive courage to live through and overcome tragedies and crises like divorces, sexual assaults, or opioid addictions.
We share each others' sorrows, often with tears. And sorrows shared are sorrows diminished. We share each others' joys - Marriages, Anniversaries, births and Baptisms, recoveries from illness, Birthdays - and a joy shared is a joy multiplied countless times. We share each others' prayers as we promise to pray for each other and realize how strengthened we feel just knowing that others are remembering us in prayer. We are sharing Jesus the Christ with each other, because each one of us bears Jesus the Christ in our souls and in our bodies. "Christ has no other hands or feet but ours," said the great St. Teresa of Avila.
A Christian community lives in solidarity because together they worship, they proclaim their creeds; they see and hear each other in prayer and enlighten each other's faith even as one candle lights another at the Easter Vigil. Holding hands during the Our Father, they can use their prayerful imaginations to hear their ancestors in faith pray the same words across the centuries. As they sing together, they can prayerfully imagine the reality that they are singing together with Christians across the globe and also with the angels and saints in Heaven, an unimaginably vast multitude all praising God together.
But also, if we live in a Christian community, we can witness how the Holy Spirit "deploys" each of us to use our special and unique gifts to reach out to others in various ministries. The Holy Spirit also increases our sensitivity to the needs of the world around us so that we can meet those needs as a community, and give a widening circle of people hope.
If you go to the website of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, you'll see a list of some familiar ministries: Bereavement ministry, St. Vincent de Paul, Faith-Sharing Groups, Christian Mothers, Hospital and Nursing Home Visitors, Knights of Columbus, Ladies of Charity, to name a few. But one unique ministry stands out: SAM: Substance Abuse Ministry. This ministry originated as a response to heroin addiction, then grew to encompass all substance abuses. This is a community which is sensitive and alive to the needs of their community and the larger community around them.
One of the greatest epidemics of our time is the opioid crisis. In "The Opioid Crisis Cannot Kill Our Hope," ("America" magazine, January 8, 2018), Lucas Briola gives us an in-depth portrait of this substance abuse crisis, and also gives us hope by sharing how two Catholic communities, one of them St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish (mentioned above), are ministering to those affected and giving them hope:
"Most of the roughly 64,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2016 involved opioids....Meanwhile, lobbying by the powerful pharmaceutical industry lobby has stymied national and state efforts to stem the flow of black-market prescriptions - even as people die, families are destroyed, and communities disintegrate.
"The metastatic advance of the opioid epidemic over the past few years has produced frenetic desperation on the ground. Instead of pursuing long-term preventive strategies like health education and community development, public officials and first responders are forced to focus on simply keeping people alive long enough - through numerous naloxone revivals - to enter recovery. Recovering addicts are then left to combat the stigma and specter of addiction for the rest of their lives.
"Jesus, we are told, 'saves.' Is this what salvation looks like in the face of the desperation and suffering epitomized by the opioid crisis? Hopelessness is one option. But it is not the Christian one.
"I find hope in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, a rural area where the overdose death toll just rose for the ninth consecutive year. There, after a series of listening sessions, Bishop Edward Malesic wrote a pastoral letter on the drug abuse crisis, 'From Death and Despair to Life and Hope.' The letter calls the Diocese of Greensburg 'to reach out in (Jesus') name to help those who are hurting' through prayer and education. Initiatives include a new bishop's advisory group composed of experts in the field, diocesan-sponsored educational sessions and prayer services, and preaching tools and intercessory prayers provided by the diocesan office of worship.
"I find hope in Carnegie, a blue-collar town in southwestern Pennsylvania, where St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish recently launched its HOPE Alliance ("Heroin Outreach, Prevention, and Education") The effort was spearheaded by the parish's pastor, the Rev. David Poecking, and a parishioner, Christine Simcic, who says she simply 'wanted to make a difference in the world.' The group will listen to the stories of those struggling with addiction and work to remove stigma, build relationships to improve social capital in the community, introduce pastoral counseling for afflicted families, and host workshops for both naloxone training and awareness raising."
In many inner city parishes, A.A., N.A., as well as other groups using the 12 Step Program to combat other addictions, such as Gamblers Anonymous or Nicotine Anonymous, use rooms on parish property for their meetings. Can this happen in suburban parishes as well? So much depends on the parish membership's attitude about their Christ-given mission.
A Christian community's mission is to share its Gospel stories with one another, not only the Gospels of Jesus, but our own unique Gospels - our own stories of joy, sorrow, crisis, and challenge, and then share our prayers. In this way, we give each other additional joy, healing and hope, by giving each other in our own selves Jesus the Christ as well as recognizing Christ in each other. Thus it's imperative that each Christian community needs to ask itself regularly: whose stories are we listening to? Whose ordinary-life Gospel narratives are we listening to? Are we only listening to the sanitized faith stories of our homogeneous population? Or, like Jesus, are we reaching out to the broken, despairing, and stigmatized members of our faith communities and our wider neighborhoods?
Of course, each community is only as open to the broken as it is aware of its members' own brokenness. How do we treat our divorced members? Those who have endured sexual abuse? Those who endure hate and prejudice because of their color or their disability or because they are gay, lesbian, bisexual,or trans-sexual? Those who struggle with mental illness or gambling or substance abuse? Are we really aware of our members' deepest, most private, most hurtful stories? Or, do they hide them away, hide them in the dark, because they are afraid that their "Christian" community cannot understand or accept them? If they hide them away, they hide them from the Light of Christ Who liberates us and saves us, Who is alive and present and active in His Body the Church.
Christianity is an "established religion." Each branch has its own hierarchy of administration and its own rules and beliefs. Each branch speaks of its membership having a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ." But - Christianity is also a lifestyle, a following in the footsteps of Jesus during which we imitate his lifestyle of simplicity, reaching out to the broken, and welcoming all with unconditional love. Jesus often said that those only paying lip service to beliefs, only knowing how to say "Lord, Lord," only talking the talk, would not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. We also - and that includes Christian communities - have to walk the walk. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Teach the ignorant. Comfort the sorrowing. Touch the leper. After all, if we REALLY believe that Jesus Saves, don't we want to offer His healing love especially to those who need Him most? Fr. Richard Rohr pricks our communities' consciences: