People outside the Catholic Church sometimes imagine it as made up of identical people believing identical things and living in identical places where all is done in the same way; The Church like a world-wide brand of butter, the same in all its parts and everywhere that it is eaten.
There is certainly a truth behind this view. Catholics say the same Creed, share the same faith and patterns of worship, and share the same hope. But they experience these things differently in different places. Catholic communities are not the same.
As a Catholic priest I have certainly found this so. My main work is not in a parish but in Catholic organisations. As a result, I celebrate the sacraments and engage with different communities. They certainly differ from one another. The most common and frequent is within the community of priests with whom I live. There we celebrate the Eucharist as part of our weekday routine. It expresses the shared life of the community. It is special in a simple, everyday way.
LAO CATHOLIC COMMUNITY
For 40 years I have also celebrated a monthly Mass with the Lao Catholic community. I have been part of it since its members, recently arrived refugees, first met in Melbourne. The Mass is celebrated in a mixture of Lao and English, is usually held in a home, and is followed by a dinner to which people bring food. The Mass is focused on the concerns of the community and includes prayer for birthdays, sicknesses, anniversaries, distant relatives, family and travel. The mixture of formality and informality echoes the Lao culture, and places the Eucharist at the living heart of community life.
A world away from that is my regular Mass at the Immigration Detention Centre; a cheerless place where people are unwillingly held. Here four or five people join the Mass, some Catholic and some not, some devout and some not, some familiar with Christian faith and some not, but all seeking strength to survive and cope in such a harsh environment. They welcome the space in which they can let down their guard and smile. The Mass is held in a recreation room, seated on benches around a table, with a focus on how the Gospel speaks to hard lives. This Mass, and the more organised Masses in prisons, are precious to me. Jesus would have wanted to be there and share the company of people who are doing it hard.
DIFFERENT NEEDS
In parishes people are ideally a community who meet. Here they meet in search of the community of which they have been deprived.
Quite different again is a regular Mass with a small Catholic community in a former housing commission area. Its members fix on the theme of the Mass from the Sunday readings, and lead a reflection on it. Afterwards we gather for a cuppa around the table that served as the altar. The community is composed of people who live in the area, speak its direct language, and serves their needs. As Pope Francis would say, it smells of the sheep.
Finally, there is the local parish church where I attend Mass if I am free from other commitments. Few people live locally, and the community – in which most of us might be classified as elderly – keep the parish going with singing and necessary organisation. The parishioners gather around for a cuppa afterwards. The conversation usually turns to the welfare of mutual friends and to the current issues in Church and nation, including the football results.
HOPE OF LIFE AND LOVE
These very different communities bring together people with different experiences and levels of connection with Christian faith and the Catholic community. The ‘feel’ and detail of each of these celebrations are distinctive, but each is characterised by seriousness, reflection on Jesus’ story and continuing presence in the community, and is driven by the sometimes desperate hope to find meaningful life and love. Through each community and in each person the Spirit has space to spark faith, unite people in hope, and to encourage generous love,
One of my favourite images of the Church is that of a map. Not like the maps in my childhood Atlas, in which whole countries were coloured red because they were part of the British Empire. I have in mind the online weather bureau map which indicates in different colours the intensity of rain falling on each place. Sometimes the map is predominantly green, dotted with blue, red and yellow spots that point to very heavy rain in small areas.
GOD’S GRACE
The map of the Catholic Church often resembles that of a country in drought, longing for the soaking rain of God’s grace. The map is mostly cloudless. Brightly coloured spots, however, mark the often unlikely and unnoticed places where God’s grace touches hearts in Catholic communities in unpredictable ways.
If we want to read the weather in the Catholic Church, we must attend to the colouring of the whole map that tells us of the prevailing conditions across the Church. We must attend also to the small, coloured dots that indicate the local weather. This double gaze opens us to gratitude for both the distinctive communities that make up the Church and for Christ’s calling and presence that hold them together.
This article appears in the spring 2024 edition of Madonna magazine. Madonna spring 2024, with the theme ‘Living the Gospel in diverse communities’, will be distributed to subscribers this month. In the edition, Fr Andrew writes about some of the Catholic communities he’s been involved with. There’s more great articles available in the edition – subscribe here to read them all.