By common opinion the United Kingdom is one of the most secularized countries in Europe and the world. Many famous atheists seem to be British. The estimated number of Christians makes us a religious minority in this country. On the other hand this secular environment and the active attack against Christianity have made believers more aware of their beliefs and more keenly involved in their local parishes.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s first reading tells us about four elements necessary in building a Christian community. Let\u2019s listen to it again: \u2018The whole community remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers\u2019<\/em>. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles shows us that the first Christian communities didn\u2019t consist of perfect, unstained and nice members. Misunderstandings, arguments and resentments were so common that Saint Paul had to cope with those problems in all his letters.<\/p>\n There is just one perfect community \u2013 the community of saints in heaven. Every other one consists of people who want to be better. And only a community can help us to gain perfection. Sometimes it gives us support in our troubles; sometimes it makes us confront our self-image. Once, when I was a student in the seminary my colleague expressed a very unpleasant opinion about me. I was furious! Just to calm down I went out into the seminary garden for a walk. I started saying my rosary and suddenly I realised he had been right. He\u2019d challenged my self-image and I\u2019d felt humiliated; but as a result I looked at myself more truthfully. So living in the seminarian community wasn\u2019t always nice and easy; but I can\u2019t overrate the importance of it in shaping me as a self-conscience and a self-aware person.<\/p>\n President John F. Kennedy at the beginning of his office said: \u2018And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country\u2019<\/em>. This deeply evangelically shaped approach we can \u2013 and I think we should \u2013 apply to our local communities: families and parish. Don\u2019t ask what your parish can do for you \u2013 ask what you can do for your parish.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By common opinion the United Kingdom is one of the most secularized countries in Europe and the world. Many famous atheists seem to be British. The estimated number of Christians makes us a religious minority in this country. On the other hand this secular environment and the active attack against Christianity have made believers more aware of their beliefs and more keenly involved in their local parishes. Today\u2019s first reading tells us about four elements necessary in building a Christian community. Let\u2019s listen to it again: \u2018The whole community remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers\u2019. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles shows us that the first Christian communities didn\u2019t consist of perfect, unstained and nice members. Misunderstandings, arguments and resentments were so common that Saint Paul had to cope with those problems in all his letters. There is just one perfect community \u2013 the community of saints in heaven. Every other one consists of people who want to be better. And only a community can help us to gain perfection. Sometimes it gives us support in our troubles; sometimes it makes us confront our self-image. Once, when I was a student in the seminary my colleague expressed a very unpleasant opinion about me. I was furious! Just to calm down I went out into the seminary garden for a walk. I started saying my rosary and suddenly I realised he had been right. He\u2019d challenged my self-image and I\u2019d felt humiliated; but as a result I looked at myself more truthfully. So living in the seminarian community wasn\u2019t always nice and easy; but I can\u2019t overrate the importance of it in shaping me as a self-conscience and a self-aware person. President John F. Kennedy at the beginning of his office said: \u2018And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country\u2019. This deeply evangelically shaped approach we can \u2013 and I think we should \u2013 apply to our local communities: families and parish. Don\u2019t ask what your parish can do for you \u2013 ask what you can do for your parish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon","category-year-a"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}