We are a Holy People

During this Year of Faith, we will blog reflections and stories to accompany you on your faith journey.
 
“…like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” - 1 Peter 2:5
 
RENEW International ministers in a very poor, very large parish in Honduras. When I visited the RENEW small communities there, the leaders proudly showed me a chapel they had been building, one stone at a time, for six years. There were three-foot high walls surrounding a small altar, folding chairs, and a family of chickens. The church seemed devoid of God’s presence; it was more like ruins than a new church rising.
 
When I returned for Sunday Mass, the chapel was transformed, filled with children dancing; people dressed in their Sunday best, clapping and singing; and a joyful Franciscan friar powerfully preaching the word. The people gathered in that church were the stained-glass windows reflecting God’s goodness, beauty, and holiness.
 
I realized the stone church was being built, but the spiritual house was already raised, made of a holy people offering prayers for their own good and the good of the whole Church.
 
The gifts we offer are holy
In the new edition of the Roman Missal, there is a slight change to the people’s prayer before the Preparation of the Gifts. When we say “for our good and the good of all his holy Church,” the word “holy" echoes the description of the Church in the Creed.
 
The addition of “holy” is an important recognition of the status of God’s people in the Church. The gifts we offer are holy because they are both the work of God and the work of human hands. The Lord hears our prayers and accepts the offering of our spiritual sacrifice, and the whole Church benefits from our collective prayer.
 
We make up the holy Church
When we focus on Church as a building, we limit God’s presence to the confines of four walls and make a distinction between the spiritual and the secular.
 
In the New Testament, the Greek word for Church is ekklesia, “a called-out people or holy assembly.” Vatican II recaptured the dynamic, biblical understanding of Church as the “body of Christ”—united in the Eucharist, not in stones.
 
At Mass, as a holy assembly, we offer our spiritual sacrifice of praise and glory of God’s name and go forth, impelled by the Spirit to become what we have celebrated and received—the body of Christ.
 
Suggestions for Prayer:
- How does the sacrament of the Eucharist empower me to live a life of faith and love?
- As you pray the words “for the good of all his holy Church,” pray that we the Church will reflect more clearly the presence and holiness of God.
 
Reprinted with permission from Living with Christ. For more information or to subscribe, visit www.livingwithchrist.us or call 1-800-214-3386.
 
Sr. Terry is the Executive Director of RENEW International and a Dominican Sister from Blauvelt, NY.