I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church....

In his audience in St. Peter's Square (Rome) last Wednesday (Oct. 9) Francis Pope spoke of the catholicity of the Church: «In the Creed, we profess that the Church is “catholic”; in other words, she is universal. We can understand this catholicity in three ways. First, the Church is catholic because she proclaims the apostolic faith in its entirety; she is the place where we meet Christ in his sacraments and receive the spiritual gifts needed to grow in holiness together with our brothers and sisters. The Church is also catholic because her communion embraces the whole human race, and she is sent to bring to the entire world the joy of salvation and the truth of the Gospel. Finally, the Church is catholic because she reconciles the wonderful diversity of God’s gifts to build up his People in unity and harmony. Let us ask the Lord to make us more catholic – to enable us, like a great family, to grow together in faith and love, to draw others to Jesus in the communion of the Church, and to welcome the gifts and contributions of everyone, in order to create a joyful symphony of praise to God for his goodness, his grace, and his redemptive love». And I thought, after reading this, that would be good for this weekend we do a little extra prayer asking God to help us be truly Catholic, may our parish be open to all and may we receive everybody with joy: rich and poor, beggars and businessmen, good and bad, everyone! We have to be very conscious that we are not the owners of the parish, the owner of the parish is our Lord, and we are just administrators, good stewards. The things that we will be organizing in the future should be, in the first place, for the glory of God, and then for the salvation of souls and the pastoral benefit of everyone. Before we do anything, we must ask: is this for the glory of God? Is this for the benefit of souls? Am I not acting capriciously? What am I looking for with this, my own glory, or the glory of God? My brother, my sister, we come to church on the weekend to have a real, deep conversation with the Lord, to receive his body and blood, to ask forgiveness for our sins, to worship God through the liturgy. If these are not the main reasons for our presence in San Francesco di Paola Sunday after Sunday… then we are wasting our time miserably! Let us reflect this weekend on the ideas proposed to us by our beloved Holy Father, and let us ask God to help us to purify our intention. Let us ask for the grace to see our parish community not as a religious service agency (it is not!), but as a place of personal encounter with Jesus, a place alive and vibrant, a place where we can find the Church, which is One, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman ■ Fr. Agustin