The Family and the Church – The Cup of Community

Opening thoughts and basis for discussion

We all have a cup that we must lift up that carries within itself our pains, sorrows, frustrations, happiness, and joy. Whether our glass is half full or half empty we all have a cup that we must live with and lift up.

When we lift our cup together we encourage and create community. “Community is a fellowship of people who do not hide their joys and sorrows but make them visible to all in a gesture of hope.” Pg.63 Community is a fellowship of little people who together make God visible in the world.

The Eucharist is the sacred mystery that creates all things new again. It transforms our whole life into one with Christ and one another.

Do not “Do it Yourself!” Do whatever you are planning to do with someone else.

Lifting Our Life Together with All

Life is full of ups and downs, joys and sorrows – but we do not need to live them alone. On the contrary we should be living them together! We want to lift our cups together and celebrate the truth that the wounds of our individual lives become sources of healing when we live them as part of a fellowship of love.

Lifting up the cup is an invitation to affirm and celebrate life together. We are not created to be separate from one another, we are individual parts of the one body of Christ.

1 Corinthians 12
“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.”

When we are fully able to embrace our own lives, we discover that what we claim we also to want to proclaim. We are too often inclined to keep out lives hidden. How can we be part of the one body of Christ if we do not completely embrace our lives and embrace the lives of those around us and together lift our cups which in essence forms the community, the one body of Christ.

The Cup of Blessings

We too often look around us to see and become fearful of the immense suffering of humanity. Why don’t we look around and see that this suffering has been created by the fall of humanity and completely turned around and saved by Christ on the cross.
Humanity has experienced the ultimate joy, that is the incarnation of the Word, God manifested in the flesh, born as none other than a baby. The nativity impacts us when we allow that joy of the birth of Christ to enter into ourselves and make it manifest in our daily lives.
The Eucharist is that sacred mystery through which what we lived as a curse we no live as a blessing.

Conclusion

Do not “Do it Yourself!” Do whatever you are planning to do with someone else.

We need community! A community in which confession and celebration are always together and constantly in our hearts. We must constantly remind ourselves that there is UNITY in community. We are all part of the one mosaic of the body. The body of which Christ is the head. We are the individual parts of the body that are held together by our willingness to lift our cups, with all their imperfections, so that one community may be formed as the image of Christ on earth.