By Most Rev Prakash Mallavarapu
Archbishop of Visakhapatnam
Journeying together, committed to a common mission, is the inspiring and challenging invitation of the Church placed before us by the Synod 2021-2023. Response to this fresh invitation should come from the local Church and we are the Church – as individual believers, as families, institutions, the institutional works, in the apostolate we are engaged, etc. How can we be a Community in the pattern of the Apostolic Church where “communion, participation, and mission” were the striking features of this “Early Church?” With the Mission entrusted as the main task of the entire Church, it is important that there is a “way” to be and to live, as individual believers and as a Community of believers. This way of being the Church, the People of God, should come for the ongoing review and reflection guided by the Spirit of God.
We must ‘be’ and ‘look at’ the Church, more as a Community and less as an institution:
A two-fold dynamics is at work, we know, in the Church:
- Personal sphere wherein there is the daily effort to think and act as believers in Jesus Christ and as baptized members of the Church, the People of God. There is that relationship with the Trinitarian God, who created us, saved us (saving us!) through His Only Begotten Son, the Incarnate Son of God. We are blessed with the gift of the Holy Spirit to live and act in communion with God. In this journey we are not alone. We have our fellow Christians and others who are yet to know and believe Jesus Christ!
- The second dynamics at work is in the sphere of the hierarchical communion. From the Apostolic times onwards there is this hierarchical communion: the Apostles, their collaborators – presbyters and deacons, the elders in the community, and the rest of the baptized members! Over the centuries, this hierarchical character has led the Church to evolve into a well organized structure and like an institution with well defined and atriculated laws and rules to govern its existence and day to day functioning. Of course, there is that tension in trying to be a “Community” and also be a “well established institution.”
To remain a Community journeying together while functioning daily within the framework of an institution, with structures and laws, rules and regulations to regulate, is the real challenge to being a Church where “Communion, Participation, and Mission” are harmoniously present and are at work!!. Unless we are vigilant and are clear about our priorities, there is the danger of ending up in being a formal institutional set up and not as a “Community journeying together” in “Communion, Participation and Mission. The Synod 2021-2023 is inviting us to see the present situation of the Church by listening to the voices of the living members of the Church living in a parish, a diocese, region, nation, and continent!
Church is like a living organism and it is always in a given space and time:
In this living Church there is a movement, an onward movement. In this onward movement, the Synod 2021-2023 is reminding us that Communion, Participation and Mission have to become lived realities in the day to day life of the Church.
This triad being the characteristic of the Synodal Church that is visualized, it is a call to look back to the Church of the apostolic times and to the Church in the early centuries of its history. Identified as the followers of “the Way,” life of the Apostolic Church tangibly manifested these three; Communion, Participation, and Mission.
Led by Saint Peter and other apostles, the newly formed Community professing faith in Jesus Christ as the Messiah and Saviour, lived in communion with the God and with the fellow believers. The people believing in Jesus as the Christ, the anointed one, saviour and Lord, are inter-related and inter-twined because of Jesus Christ who is the common source of Christian identity which every baptized member receives in Him. There is at work in all the members a power from within drawn from Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
There is visibility, there has to be this visibility, to what is silently at work in the individual believing members and in the whole of the faith community. That is the consequence or the fruit of the grace and power at work coming from the Father, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the life of the Church at macro and micro level this essential truth of the living Church has to be seen, recognized, nurtured and nourished in every member and in the entire community. It is actually the lived faith of the community being manifested, Sensus fidei!
Tomorrow: Understanding The Hierarchical Communion in the Church