“Iron is made finer by iron, man is refined by another”
Proverbs 27: 17
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “family”?
Mother? Father? Brother? Sister? Maybe your aunt? How many of you thought of the person sitting next to you at mass? Or the person behind you, in line, heading towards receiving the Eucharist? What about the person you shared your stories with during your last Friday C.O.S.D.U. gathering?
I believe I won’t be the only one who knows how important it is to have a family. God Himself could have chosen to be a simple, singular God free from complexity. And He is a singular God, but He is also a Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – by choice. Pope John Paul II said, “God, in His deepest mystery, is not a solitude, but a family, since He has in Himself, fatherhood, sonship, and the essence of the family, which is love.” If even God modeled Himself as a family, it is rather clear that He was revealing to us the significance of being a family – of community life. Before Jesus set out to do His work, he first called disciples, and they did everything together. They were His family.
“Think of the love that the Father has lavished on us, by letting us be called God’s children;
and that is what we are”
1 John 3:1
I don’t know about you, but despite all these, I often forget (perhaps a little too often) that we are brothers and sisters in Christ. The evidence of this profound significance is obvious when Peter wrote to the Corinthians, “Just as a human body, though it is made up of many parts, is a single unit because all these parts, though many, make one body” (1 Corinthians 12:12). And he continues to say, “The eye cannot say to the hand ‘I do not need you’, nor can the head say to the feet, ‘I do not need you’.” (1 Corinthians 12:21). So, brothers and sisters in Christ, as a family, we need each other. Jesus did not teach us to care only for ourselves, to care only for our own faith, but to love one another.
“Let us be concerned for one another then, to stir a response in love and good works”
Hebrews 10:24
How do we do that? We make sure we catch up with each other, challenge each other about our faiths, gather to share the Word, and so on. What we often forget is that the lives we lead are also a sharing; that the blessings that we’ve received are an affirmation. When I am burdened by my own Cross(es) (and rest assured, there have been aplenty), I have always found that someone’s unique story of faith renews my strength and lifts me up. When I find that I do not have it in me to believe that our God is a caring and loving God, your knowledge and experience of God's promise to love with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3) can lead me to believe in such a God again. When I feel so lonely amidst the crowd, the solidarity in God that you have experienced can help me come into the still Presence of the Lord. We need each other.
Therefore, I am inviting you - COSDUan or ex-COSDUan, priest or nun, student or working adult - to send in your two cents about the times when God has shown His everlasting love and mercy to you, or when His miracles astounded you so much you were left in wonder. Or you could also write about the little things: when you saw the loving innocence in a child or hearing the sounds of God's laughter in the wind. Everything that affirmed your faith and will help affirm that of mine and of our family.
So send your writing in to the COSDU email (cosdu.melbuni@gmail.com) and it will be posted on the blog*.
Whether you want to have it posted with your name as the author, or you would like to adopt a pen name, or remain anonymous, it’s up to your discretion.
Thanks, brothers and sisters. We look forward to seeing what you have to share!
“My beloveds, let us love one another then, since love comes from God, and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God… we love, because He loved us first”
1 John 4: 7; 19
*Article approval and publication will be subject to editor’s discretion.
