Last August, I celebrated the monthly mass for the TV production team of ABS-CBN—a regular gathering to mark the birthdays of team members and their individual intentions.
The monthly celebration is a real moment of community.
Recently I also began to celebrate the regular 12:15 p.m. mass in the ABS-CBN chapel.
One day, I did not have time to take my vestments off after mass and quickly rode the elevator with employees from the 12th floor to the lobby.
In that short ride, two employees asked where I came from. (It isn’t a normal sight for a priest to walk around an office complex in Mass vestments.)
When I told them where I celebrated mass, they asked whether I could also say mass in their departments as well.
I felt their palpable excitement when I said, “Of course.”
One of the best parts of my mission as chaplain in ABS-CBN is to smile at people, so my “trip” around the compound is an apostolate of smiling.
I notice an extra glow in the smiles and greetings of the employees I meet along the way.
Must be the vestments, although I am also convinced there is genuine joy to see a priest in their midst.
I take no credit for this, though. My mentor and close friend in the Society of Jesus, Fr. Catalino G. Arevalo, SJ, said people come to us because of our friendship with the Lord.
If this is what attracts people to a priest, then one of the key missions of a priest is to build community.
Building a community is a major theme in this Sunday’s liturgy, especially in the Gospel. It is clear that this community is built around Christ and we gather in His name.
One of the expressions of our Christian faith is building a community of faith, hope and love that is rooted and grounded in Christ.
Not only is it an important expression, it is intrinsic to living out our Christian faith and vocation.
A few days ago, I shared the elevator experience during a meeting in ABS-CBN. The incident soon stalled the supposed agenda as a proposal to build a spiritual community in ABS-CBN was floated so the organization would be more faithful and be more inspired in its mission.
This brings us to another characteristic of a Christian community—one that must nurture the sense of meaning and mission in its members.
The other day, I had a spiritual conversation with the head of a multinational company.
He was appointed to the top post of the parent company recently and wanted to deepen his spiritual life so he can do his job with a sense of meaning and mission.
It became clear to him that part of his mission now is to show through leadership his personal relationship with the present, faithful and caring God.
He realized that part of this mission is to build a community that would nurture an intent among members to better live out their individual missions aligned to the company’s mission.
It was a graced conversation, one of our best in recent months.
It affirmed in very concrete ways the movement of God’s spirit in this person’s life.
As I drove home from this conversation, I had another graced moment.
As I had shared in previous articles, I left the Jesuits to work with public schools and create a spiritual community.
Noting this, I realized that the work or singular mission was about building a caring community rooted and grounded in love, in the love of Christ and in Christ himself.
It made my mission become clearer and simpler. It also humbled me and brought me to a moment of solitude: “Be still and know that I am God.”
They say a tree mirrors its root system. This is a good image of the mirroring in our life: our community is rooted in Christ.
To be grounded in Christ is to make Christ our “reality check” factor. When we say someone is grounded, we admire that he is in touch with reality.
When Ignatius was recuperating from a second operation to fix his knee—for vanity purposes more than health reasons—there were only two books in the Castle of Loyola, so he ended up reading both: “The Lives of the Saints” and “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas A’Kempis. These had a strong influence on his journey.
In the early part of his post-conversion journey, Ignatius had a very elementary way of realizing how Christ lived his life and how the saints imitated Christ.
Ignatius eventually became a graced person who experienced a profound “sensus Christi”—“to live is Christ.”
In Ignatian spirituality, to be grounded in the love and person of Christ is “finding God in all things” and finding all things in God.
How can we not desire and aspire for such a community? How can we not build such a community rooted and grounded in the love of Christ?
Postscript: Human love is “raw,” filled with much desire and passion.
If it remains on the human level, it can be “dangerous.” It can go haywire and lead us to the death of sin.
More next week on the life-giving love of the Cross and the Resurrection.