As I have shared with you, I believe that when members of a Christian community truly understand that they are Called to Holiness, the community becomes vibrant.  One might ask: What makes a parish or community vibrant? People who truly believe in the Good News given to us by God through Jesus Christ and who demonstrate this belief by their involvement in the parish community and their willingness to pray. When God calls us to Holiness, He typically calls us to be a part of a community, that is a group of people who share the same vision of life and see the value and necessity of being a part of the Body of Christ extended in time, a part of the Church.  

While it is true that you don’t have to belong to a Church in order to pray to God or to be a good person, for some reason God chose to establish a Church. An essential part of our spiritual growth is directly connected to our involvement in a spiritual community. There is value to communal prayer. A spiritual community – the Church – is a place where we can learn how to unconditionally love others. We need to be a part of the Church. Why? Because God shared this reality with us through His Son. His Son Jesus brought people together and got them to see the importance of authentic relationships and living in community. God obviously had a reason for allowing the Church to develop through Jesus’ efforts.

Learning to live peacefully in community with others and develop a common vision of life, is the way that God planned humans should live.

I say this because that is what Jesus did. The problem often is that people chose to join a community and not be active or fail to learn the lesson of how to live in community. For example, we know that there will always be disagreements when people live in community. The challenge is to learn how to work out the disagreements and not damage the community by walking away.

When we profess to be a member of a Christian community, it is essential that we understand that we have a responsibility to take our membership as seriously as possible and, to the best of our ability, support the community in any way that we can and be convinced that our spiritual growth can only be achieved within the context of the spiritual community.

Jesus chose to live and work in a community. A vibrant community supports its members in their efforts to live a Christian life.                          Χριστός Ανέστη!