Praying with the Pope for Welcoming Parishes

Lizardis Aucedo/cathopic
Intention: We pray that parishes, placing communion at the centre, may increasingly become communities of faith, fraternity and welcome towards those most in need.
A Protestant friend of mine recently advised a struggling immigrant to South Africa to make contact with his local Catholic parish community. Having discovered that he was a Catholic from the DR Congo, she suggested that an obvious way to find a network of support and to become more integrated was through the local Catholic community.
When she told me this I breathed a prayer that the man would be welcomed in the parish, should he choose to take her advice. For we know that such a welcome is not always a given.
I suppose that it’s human nature, but many of us go to church for the comfort of the company of those who are like-minded and with whom we are familiar and at ease. We know that our duty is to reach beyond the bounds of our family, friends and neighbours, but this is a challenge for us at the best of times.
The saying “Charity begins at home” is true, but it can also be used to justify our natural tendency to remain firmly in our comfort zones.
Church is not a club
However, the fact is that the Church is not a club. Nor is communion a constant state of sweetness and light. It is no more that than a marriage is an eternal honeymoon. Communion is a goal towards which we will always strive in this life. Certainly, there will be times, those moments of consolation, when we experience an intense sense of unity in the diversity of the body of Christ. This may be at an ordinary Sunday Eucharist, or on a pilgrimage, at a diocesan event, or while standing in the middle of a crowd in a shopping mall. And we will give thanks for them when they come.
The daily grunt work
But these moments of fleeting transcendent experience of communion in the mystical body of Christ are given to us to keep us at it. They energise us and remind us of the goal at which we aim. They keep us doing the “grunt work” of building up a community of all too human humans — in our families, workplaces, communities and parishes — with the daily task of putting up with the shortcomings of others and our own.
To put it theologically, in the terms of the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner, they keep us self-consciously striving for self-transcendence. The moments of consolation are grace working on our dodgy nature and making it capable of things we oftentimes think impossible.
When we look around a diocese and ask ourselves if there is a parish that even approximates to the ideal Pope Francis proposes in this intention, we might be discouraged. Where are the communities of “faith, fraternity and welcome” held together by a deep sense of communion?
It is easy to blame the leadership, the poor parish priest who is struggling to cope and may be tired and in poor health. But we all are responsible for fostering parish life, and we should remind ourselves that every part of the body has its vital role.
We can recommit ourselves to the Lord through a recommitment to his body, the Church.
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