Saturday 21 September 2024
St Matthew
Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-13. Their message goes out through all the earth – Psalm 18(19):2-5. Matthew 9:9-13.
We are all to come to unity
If one wanted to select a reading on living the Gospel in diverse communities, there are few better than our first reading. ‘Bear with one another charitably’ could be chiselled over the doorways of every parish church, office and meeting room, not to mention our schools and other settings. One of the great virtues of Catholic community life is that we are made to work and worship with people unlike ourselves. In many parishes you’ll find as mixed a bunch of people as anywhere else. I am always concerned by efforts to segregate parishes along lines of liturgical preferences, clerical personalities or musical styles. It is easy to self-select into one-dimensional congregations. These things, along with a failure to really integrate new Australians into parish communities, often undermine both the challenge and beauty of the real unity for which our Church is named.
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