Servant community of the world

Jan 05, 2018

BECs are to have a greater commitment in justice with the social reality of the area.

-- they challenge the egoistical and consumeristic roots of society.
-- they are centres for human development and promotion.
-- they have become dynamic forces for liberation and development.
-- they have produced in many sectors of the People of God an integral liberation and an important starting point in the building of a new society.
-- stimulate the BEC … so that they can be more generously leaven in the masses, the commitment to transform the world.
-- commitment to the family, to one’s work, in the neighhourhood, in the local community is emphasised.
-- Where one lives with a different attitude with regard to material wealth.
-- where efforts are made in different forms of organisation and participative structures, capable of blazing new trails towards a more human type of society.
-- avoidance of being caught between political polarisation or by ideologies of the day.

Vatican Council II, especially in Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes, restates in new terms the Church — World relation. The Church is understood as the People of God, in service to the world, within the world. The evangelical perspective of being leaven, integrated into the whole, is reaffirmed. Penetrating society, not by virtue of size but rather, by the dynamic force that it contains — the leaven is always less than the flour in terms of quantity but its power is such that it is capable of transforming it.

The Church defines itself as the one who takes on the thirst for justice and liberation of the poor; as the one who ought to create alternatives where it is easier to establish an objective relationship of justice and fraternity. Annoucing, denouncing and convoking all Christians and persons of goodwill to commit themselves to the process of liberation which means concretely creating more fellowship and participation, not only at the personal level but also at the level of the social - economic and political structures, helping the people to be the protagonists of their present and forgers of their future.

This new concept and relation between the Church and the world is translated into ecclesial (Church) practice with specific conditions such as the need:

-- to perceive the drama of the people;
-- to discover not only the necessity of the poor for integral liberation but also their historical capacity to bring it about;
-- to esteem their religiosity, integrating it and purifying it from its ambiguities, that is, creating the Church from the response of the faith of the people;
-- to reveal the liberating dimension of Jesus (preach what he preached and act how he acted).

The BEC as the grassroot cell of the Church ought to recognise the responsibility of being questioned by God in the events of history and called to answer that challenge. That means to say that concretely, the men and women who make up the BEC ought to be attentive as a whole to the events that take place in the world, the city, the neighbourhood, analysing them in order to discern what is behind the different facts, the human aspirations, the profound sentiments, to be the efforts of the men and women of today. In faith, the Church knows these events are challenges for her. History is not left to the whim of the moment but, rather, the Spirit of the risen Jesus is there, and the Kingdom of God is already beginning in that reality. Besides, the God of Jesus Christ, which the Church recognises and serves, is a historic God: it is in history that He revealed himself, it is in history that his son, Jesus Christ took flesh and it is through history that He continues speaking to his People.

Source: Basic Ecclesial Community: Church from the Roots By Jose Marians and Team, (National Biblical Catechetical and Liturgical Centre, Bangalore, India)