The Vineyard we Larborers work in

Praise the Lord! Hey guys; I hope everyone is having a blessed Advent season and that your all feeling pretty prepared for Christmas. Come Lord Jesus!

Last time I posted a blog I talked a little about the diversity and the universality of the Catholic Church of which we are so blessed to be a part of. I'd like to focus a little bit on one of the groups that comprise this big old family we like to call The Body of Christ, that being the American Catholic parish.

Being on the Green Bay team, I do more parish youth ministry as opposed to retreat ministry. Working with Kate Ruth at St. Elizabeth Anne Seton Parish in Green Bay I have learned a lot about the way a parish and its people actually work.

I became Catholic when my parents both converted from non-denominational Protestantism. Coming into the parish setting, I came from a little house church full of recent converts who lived as a really tight knit community. People were constantly praying for one another, discussing Scripture together, worshipping the  Lord sporadically throughout the day, and even so far as going into the street corners of down town Portland, Oregon to preach and talk with anyone who would listen. There is a word for this that my dad was recently telling me all about and that word is koinania. Its a Greek word and it means intimate fellowship.

In Acts 2:42 it says " They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." Now this passage is saying that the Christians of the early Church were doing four things as a community those being: being taught by the elders ergo the apostles, breaking of the bread which of course is the Eucharist, to prayer, and to fellowship or koinania.


When my dad was running this house church, which was full to bursting with this special kind of fellowship, he said that there was something...missing. As a Catholic I can see what he was feeling was an absence of the first two aspects of the Priesthood of the Faithful that being being taught by the apostles and most importantly the Eucharist.


Now I'm going to be honest with everyone I do not see a whole lot of fellowship within the Midwest Catholic parish. I mean look at the numbers only 30 percent of Americans who were raised Catholic are still practising. That's crazy! Another rather sobering number 10 percent of Protestants today are ex-Catholic and the majority of them left because "I just didn't feel God there." How can you not feel God?! He made you a tabernacle for His very Body and Blood every time you received Him in the Eucharist! I'll tell you why they don't feel anything, why they leave in search of a relationship with God that they didn't have in the Church of their youth. It is because today the Catholic Church, at least on a parish level, has let slip that intimate fellowship. We have lost koinania.


You guys as Catholic we have two thousand years of teaching! That is ridiculously awesome! Some of the greatest minds of the human race have plumbed the depths of God Almighty and the fruit of that can bring a man to tears it is so beautiful. On top of this the Sacraments that we regularly celebrate were instituted by Jesus Christ, the High Priest, King, and perfect victim Himself! We have so much potential to set the world on fire with the unquenchable flame that rested upon the heads of the apostles and Mary on Pentecost day! 
Brothers and sisters we have the tools; we have to use them! "Where two or three are gathered in my name there I am with them" Matthew 18:20. You guys Jesus said this because He wants us to be a body, a body infused with the eternal life of the Holy Spirit, the Breath of God! Just imagine if we as a community got together and prayed for one another before and after mass. How much more beautiful would the Wedding Feast be! I'm not saying the Eucharistic sacrifice would be any different. God is there as much as He possibly can be, but are we? If you looked to your left during the prayers of the Mass and you saw a guy who's prayers over you not even an hour before had lifted your spirits and helped you overcome some trial wouldn't that make you more engaged in the sacrifice? All I am trying to say is that the closer we draw together as a Body, a living, breathing, Holy Spirit-filled Body then I don't think the Church would be having the problems it has today. At least not in the terrible measure that they are happening. Christianity is not the religion of the individual. It is the life of all the faithful. We are all One Body in Christ and We Will Not Stand Alone. COME LORD JESUS!