Monday, March 27, 2017

 

CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING: Call to Family, Community and Participation

As Catholics, we go to God together. We’re all in this together. God’s family extends beyond time and space, and we’re called as individuals to participate in that family, both in the daily realities in which we find ourselves and in that eternal reality to which God calls us. Our participation matters, whether it’s buying a homeless man a sandwich, spending time with our parents or supporting just and fair social systems.

That’s why the saints are so important: women and men who have gone before us who shine the light so that we can see, who relate to us in their humanity and call us beyond ourselves in their examples of holiness. Some of these men and women walked with Christ himself; others lived years later; still others we know from our own lives. This is what it means to be in community—to be a part of God’s community: that we look to one another for support, for prayer, for inspiration and motivation along the journey, because we’re all just pilgrims on the road.

And that’s why we go out into the world; that’s why we build the Reign of God on earth. We should never grow tired of hearing St. Teresa of Calcutta’s words: “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” We are called to be saints today; we are called to holiness. And we are called to go to God together. So, as members of a community that stretches far beyond ourselves, we go out to our brothers and sisters to be for them what Christ and the saints are for us.