Acts 4
Today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles gives an interesting account of the earliest Christians. It writes that “no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.” How do we regard a religious group living like this in our times? They are labeled as separatists, fundamentalists, cultists, and even communists. And often, they are ridiculed as unreasonable, unrealistic, strange, and insane. Also, they are criticized as anti-social, outdated, and exclusive. Most times these people are deemed as odd and impossible to understand. Apparently, the ancient societies were not very different in making judgments on the earliest Christians who were living a communal life as shown in the Acts. During the first centuries, Christians were misunderstood, mistreated, and persecuted.
In our times, it is almost exclusively limited to religious nuns and monks to live a community life. So, you might think this community life of Christians is a very special vocation only a small number of Christians can enjoy. However, as we have seen in the Acts of the Apostles, this way of life was the original Christian lifestyle. And it originated from Jesus and his disciples’ community life. The Christian community life is very much biblical and a divine institution since it was established by Christ himself. The Church was meant to be a community that shares life, not an assembly that gathers on a regular basis.
If our parish communities are mere Sunday assemblies of Christians, we miss a critical element of Christian faith. Our faith was given through a community and developed within a community. All Christian experiences presume a community life and are destined for it.
