April 29, 2016 Friday, 5th Week of Easter
1st Reading: Acts 15:22–31 Gospel: Jn 15:12–17
Jesus said to his disciples, “This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you. There is no greater love than this, to give one’s life for one’s friends; and you are my friends if you do what I command you.
“I shall not call you servants any more, because servants do not know what their master is about.
Instead I have called you friends, since I have made known to you everything I learned from my Father.
“You did not choose me; it was I who chose you and sent you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.
And everything you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. “This is my command, that you love one another.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life Experience)
Throughout history the Church expresses herself in many different ways. These various expressions do not indicate any indecisiveness or fickle-mindedness on the part of the Church. They highlight the particular constitutive elements of life in the Church, which according to St. Luke are three, namely, kyregma, koinonia and litourgia.
Kyregma is fidelity to the teachings of the Apostles; Koinonia is communion (cf. Acts 2:44ff.), while Litourgia is the breaking of the bread (cf. Acts 2:42). At the heart of these three elements is communion which Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI refers to in his Encyclical “Deus Caritas Est” as “love that gives no room for a poverty that denies anyone what is needed for a dignified life”.
We do remember how, at the turn of the millennium, the Church shifted to BEC (Basic Ecclesial Communities) as its new way of being Church. BEC revisited the old structure of the Church where “all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:44-5).
At the practical level BEC attempted to group parishes into small cells of believers that gather weekly to read the Word, reflect on it vis-à-vis human experience, draw out plans to concretize realizations, and pray together as a community. This weekly activity empowered many BEC cells to come up with income-generating projects to help one another live decently.
The implementation of BEC had its own story of abuses. In an effort to hasten the clustering of their parishes into small BEC cells, some parish priests denied the sacraments to non-BEC members. If problems like this cannot be addressed at macro level, the Church must shift to other efficient ways of expression.
But by whatsoever means the Church finds appropriate to express herself, she must never veer away from love. —Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com.
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