Owuor Zachary Okech (11118T)
Who is Responsible for the Church’s
Charitable Activity?
The Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops, quoted by Pope
Benedict XVI in his Encyclical Letter, Deus
Caritas Est, explores more specifically the duty of charity as a
responsibility incumbent upon the whole Church, and upon each Bishop, as
successors of the Apostles, in the Diocese. It emphasizes that the exercise of
charity is an action of the Church as such, and that, like the ministry of Word
and Sacrament, it too has been an essential part of her mission from the very
beginning. The pontiff asserts that, today as in the past, the Church as God’s
family must be a place where help is given and received, and at the same time, a
place where people are also prepared to serve those outside her confines who
are in need of help.[1]
The Bishops, in the rite of
Episcopal ordination, promise expressly to be, in the Lords name, welcoming and
merciful to the poor and to all those in need of consolation and assistance.
(cf. Pontificale Romanum, De ordinatione
episcope, 43). However, they and their collaborators must not be inspired
by ideologies that are aimed at improving the world, but be guided by the faith
which works through love (cf. Gal 5:6). They must be persons moved by Christ’s
love, awakening within them a love of neighbor, since whoever loves Christ
loves the Church, and desires the Church to be increasingly the image and
instrument of love.
The personnel of the Church’s
charitable work must remember that the proper way of serving is not only about
the practical activity of giving property, but a deep personal sharing in the
needs and sufferings of others, that is, a sharing of one’s very self with
others. This leads to the frontiers of humility: a servant do not consider himself
superior to those that he or she serves, and being able to help others is no
merit or achievement of one’s own. This duty is a grace, and “We are useless
servants” (Lk 17:10).
The servants, however, cannot fully
resolve every problem. They need not to fall in contempt for human being’s
suffering or even accusing God for allowing poverty and failing to have
compassion for his creatures. When people claim to build a case against God in
defense of humanity, one wonders, on whom they can depend when human activity
proves powerless! In the final analysis, prayer, which is a means of drawing
ever new strength from Christ, is grossly important in the face of the activism
and the growing secularism of many Christians who are engaged in the Church’s charitable
work.
[1]
Benedict XIV, Encyclical Letter, Deus
Caritas Est, Nairobi, Paulines Publications Africa, 2005, 32-39.
Owuor Zachary Okech (11118T)
The Church Striving for Freedom
What
freedom is the Church striving for? We may ask this question in order to get
into the understanding of Avery Dulles concerning the meaning of freedom in the
Church as he presents in his work A
Church to Believe In. We understand quite clearly our civil freedom for
example, the freedom of thought and expression, freedom of assembly, freedom to
exercise one’s special talents and the freedom against secular rulers inscribed
in the Bill of Rights. However, the civil freedom is only analogically
applicable to the Church. Arguably, if there are misunderstandings or heretical
pursuance of the doctrines of faith, it is because we have not understood well
the freedom of the Church.
The
Church must strive for a freedom, which is not the same as the secular freedom
of the citizens, not only for Christians, but freedom for all. The Christian
freedom is “to relinquish self-assertion and to serve with generous love.”[1] The Church is and must be a place of freedom.
Its freedom is one in which “the members are being led from their weakness and
servitude toward that freedom for which Christ has made us free,” that is, the
total freedom. This is the goal of the Church. It embraces the body and the
spirit; the individual and the community.
The Church is a place par excellence where
Christ is at work, carrying on his liberating task. He is at work overcoming
all the forces that bind and enslave people, their inner dividedness, their
sinful attachments, and the lures of worldly illusions, the oppressive forces
of tyranny, confinement, sickness and death. Therefore, strengthened by the
Cross of Christ and the power of his resurrection, the Church must have the
courage to take upon itself the sufferings of the weak, the poor, the
bewildered, and the downtrodden.
St
Paul proclaims that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (cf. 2
Cor 3:17). In the Gospel according to John, Jesus promise the disciples, “If
you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the
truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn 8:32). The Church therefore, is
marvelously liberated when it intently concentrates its hopes on Christ and
ultimately on the promised Kingdom of God.
[1]
Dulles, Avery, A Church to Believe in:
Discipleship and the Dynamics of Freedom, New York, The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1982, 78 (66-79).
Owuor Zachary Okech (11118T)
The Family: a Vital Cell of the
Society and of the Church
Pope
Benedict XVI in his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation: Africa’s Commitment (Africae Munus) describes the family as
the “sanctuary of life” as well as “a vital cell of society and of the Church”[1] In
this short write-up, we will investigate briefly and generally the pontiff’s
concept of the family as a cell of the society and of the Church.
As
a vital cell of the society, the family is the best place for learning and for
applying what is learnt. We may ask: What are the basic teachings that members
of the family acquire in the family? The document explains that members learn
and apply culture especially of forgiveness, peace and reconciliation. They
learn to love, to respect and to know the face of God, in as much as they have
experienced the unconditional love, they have been respected and they have
received revelation from God through a father and a mother, who are “full of
attention in their regard”. Consequently, the fundamental elements of peace,
that are justice and love, prevail over violence in the family.
Moreover,
the service that the society expects of the family is “providing men and women
capable of building a social fabric of peace and harmony”. There are however, looming
threats that opt to dwindle the family against its objectives and goal. Such
are “the distortion of the very marriage and family, devaluation of maternity
and trivialization of abortion, easy divorce and the relativism of a new
ethics”. In our view, the Church is in a position to protect and defend the
family from these threats.
As
a vital cell of the Church, the family is the best setting where all members
evangelize and are evangelized. The Church expects parents through the witness
of their lives, and by virtue of their ministry of educating, to be the first
heralds of the Gospel for their children. They are not only to be “begetters” of
their bodily life, but also of their spiritual life_ that flows from the Cross
and the Resurrection of Christ. Each member of the family is thus called to
become a “radiant witness” of the radical new life brought by Christ, as well
as a participant in the Eucharist, which reveals its power, transforms life and
gives it its full meaning, in the privileged spheres of the love between man
and woman, openness to life and the raising of children.
This
papal exhortation, therefore, helps one to understand the Church’s aim from the
standpoint of the family unit. The family becomes an integral aspect of the
Church, and from the family set-up emanates the wider view of the vision of the
Church in its totality, which we may say is to bring all to God in one great
family.
[1]
Benedict XVI, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Africae Munus, Nairobi, Paulines, 2011, 42-46.
Owuor
Zachary Okech (11118T)
The Church’s Unity in Diversity
Hans Kung in his book, The Church, asks the question, “Can it
be denied that there is not one Church but many?”[1] As
a matter of facts, the division between the churches is felt in many parts of
the world. There are symptoms of disunity and mutual rivalry of Christian
churches. Among these is the failure of the Christian mission to certain parts
of the world. There exist both inward and outward competitions, confrontations,
conflicts and alienations between churches.
The profound, striking and even
deep-rooted differences between the individual churches ought to be “swallowed
up by the certainty that all are one in the unity of the Church of Christ”.
Christ has not only reconciled God and human being, he has also removed all
opposition between persons; he is the basis of his Church’s unity. God, who is
the foundation of the Church’s existence, wills and decrees that the Church
should be one, incontrovertibly one. The Church springs from one saving event
and from one message, and so should be one community of disciples, witnesses
and ministers. Every local Church is therefore in its own way the ecclesia, the
people of God, a creation of the Holy Spirit and the body of Christ.
Kung then asks: “can the multiplicity be a bad
thing in itself?” To begin, he reflects that the differences do not mean a
division in the Church. What brings division is “hostile confrontation”. It is
not the differences in themselves that are harmful, but only “excluding and
exclusive differences”. For example, disregarding other churches as legitimate
forms of the one Church, and seeing other churches as distortion of the Church
of Christ. Differences such as belonging to a hostile confession in creeds and
broken unity of faith, baptism and communal meal are divisive and make Church
fellowship impossible.
As a matter of principles, the
unity of the Church should not be sought only outside the local gathering of
the community; it involves a multiplicity of churches, since this local church
cannot be unique. The unity presupposes a common life shared by all the local
churches. The one Church manifests itself in a multiplicity of local churches.
The multiplicity of churches come from the result, which should not be denied,
of their different origins or specific situations, languages, history, customs
and traditions, way of life and thought, and their structures.
Precisely then, we cannot fully
describe the unity of the Church without considering its rich diversity. The
co-existence of different Churches does not, therefore, in itself jeopardize
the unity of the Church. The Church is really and positively one Church, one people
of God, one body of Christ and one spiritual creation (cf. Rom 12:3-8).
Owuor
Zachary Okech (11118T)
The People of God: Striving to be One,
Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church
The
Church is on a journey towards its heavenly end. Upon its earthly pilgrimage,
the Church is fundamentally one, holy, catholic and apostolic. Thanks to
Francis A. Sullivan who has deciphered the reasons for these properties of the
Church, in his The Church We Believe in. [1] He
grants that these are the indefectible gifts that are given as well as tasks to
be achieved, and that each is both the object of our faith and a test of our
faith. He however, laments that manifest in the Church are still, divisions,
occasions of sin and their consequences, diminishing Christian communities, and
certain discontinuities with the Church the New Testament describes.
As the people of God the Church must be one
because of the oneness of God, the Triune God. The Gospel of St John gives the
reason for Jesus’ death, and consequently for the establishment of his Church: “To
gather into one the children who are scattered abroad” (cf. Jn 11:52). The Church
therefore must strive to overcome divisions and to achieve full communion.
Similarly, the people of God must be holy
because of the holiness of God. Being “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, God’s
own people”, the Church must be “a holy nation” (cf. 1Pet 2:3). Indefectibly
holy, the Church can therefore never give up the struggle against its own
sinfulness, or give up the practice of penance and purification.
The
people of God must also be catholic or universal people, because God’s salvific
will embraces all humanity. Paul writes: “God our Savior desires all men to be
saved and to come to the Knowledge of the Truth” (cf. 1 Tim 2:3-4). Because of
its catholicity the Church must strive to become present and rooted in every
place where the Gospel is still unknown or undesired.
As
the people of God, the apostolic mission of the Church comes ultimately from
God the Father. St John writes: “As the Father sent me so I send you” (Jn
20:21). The Church must therefore examine itself constantly to see whether it
is being wholly faithful to the message and the mission it has inherited from
the apostles.
What
is therefore the task of the Church in our world? The Church, more than ever,
has to insistently strive to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic. By this
assertion, we do not deny that the church is presently one, holy, catholic and
apostolic; we ascertain rather that the Church has not yet reached its absolute
perfection and is only on pilgrimage towards the ultimate Kingdom of God. It
has therefore to strive to bring itself wholly to this ultimate Kingdom of God.
[1]
F., Sullivan, The Church we believe in: One,
Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, Ireland: Gill and Macmillan Ltd., 1988, 210-224.
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