Charity begins at home. 

 

That’s an old saying which means that we don’t have to go around the country or across the ocean to fulfill Christ’s commandment in Matthew 22:39 that “You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  We can do what He commands right here in the parish with those we see every Sunday, or who sit next to us in the pews.  We don’t just have to help strangers or those different from us.  We can help those we know and those who are like us.  Indeed, those nearest to us is where our initial emphasis should be placed in building a culture of life—that’s the model of the early Christian communities.

 

And that idea is one that is resisted by American society, which is a culture of death.  In the name of “progress”, “rights”, and “freedom”, we are broken into isolated, and oftentimes, scared, individuals.  The ties to family, extended family, friends, and other natural groups are fractured by a culture created by those who serve the father of lies and neither know nor love the Son of God.  So, as you walk around the parish, you’ll see a lot of hurt or lonely people who may appear well-off, but who need love and help just as much as those in Africa or Louisiana. 

 

As a parish, we are a community, a society, which is bound together by the Roman Catholic Faith and hence a shared heritage.  In the Roman Catholic view of things, society exists to encourage and build virtue (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1895) and to allow exchange between persons so that they may develop as human beings, and achieve their ultimate goal in this life—being with God (or, beatitude) in the next. 

 

If we are to build a culture of life that values human life and excludes such things as abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, contraception, extra-marital sex, immodesty, greed and more, then we must first create a culture.  That culture must be one in which entertainment, social interaction, parish governance, the liturgy, and economics, all cooperate in teaching and reinforcing the values which the Roman Catholic Faith has always taught are proper and necessary for a good life on earth and that are necessary for beatitude.

 

The parish is an essential building block in the Church, and in society at large.  With the parish, we can spiritually and materially help each other on the way to heaven.  But that means we have to love ourselves first and accept our commonality while building on it.

 

Let’s not allow in any more the lies and false values of the dominant culture which surrounds us.  Let’s realize the value of this great gift, the Roman Catholic Faith.  Let’s accept who we are, and not be ashamed of it.  Let’s look out for each other in accordance with the Faith.  Let’s look around at those in the parish and start building a culture of life here.  Because, after all…

 

Charity begins at home.