VIRTUES OF COMMUNITY LIFE PART 1 (FATHER’S FAITH NOTES: NOVEMBER 28, 2021)

During this sacred season, I would like to offer a series of reflections on the virtues of community life: mutual love, respect, and support. This topic is one that seems more important than ever as the cumulative stress-level in our culture is at a high point. So much in the world seems to model and promote mutual suspicion, criticism, and judgment – the exact opposites of the values I list above.

While that may be true in the world around us, it concerns me even more deeply when I see those same elements brought into the Church, the household of God, because we should be different. In today’s reading from the 1st Letter of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, St. Paul writes, “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all,” and, “as you received from us how you should conduct yourselves to please God and as you are conducting yourselves you do so even more.”

These words reflect St. Paul’s concern that, while the members of the Church in Thessalonica knew how they should behave towards one another, they were not always conducting them- selves accordingly. He reminds them, and us, that our conduct is not only a matter of pleasing other people but of pleasing God. When we are tempted to judge, criticize, or condemn, we often think of whether we are right, or justified in our opinion, grievance, or feeling. Instead, we might ask ourselves, “Is this way of speaking, writing, or thinking pleasing to God?” That might give a very different result.

This Advent, may we renew our resolve to please God in our words and deeds, especially to- wards one another in the household of God, so that our witness to Christ’s coming may shine for all the world to see.

Have a blessed week,

Fr. Michael