BUILDING BECs THROUGH SHARED RESPONSIBILITY

Every parish in Peninsular Malaysia is struggling to build and revive the Basic Ecclesial Communities (BEC) in both urban and rural areas.  In our parish our BECs are doing quite well relatively speaking, but we can still do a little more. I make every effort to be present at the BECCOT meetings (BEC Coordinating Team) every first Wednesday of the month. The BECCOT team is working hand in hand with the BEC leaders by animating the monthly meetings and solving issues that arise at the BEC level.  The team also assists and trains the BEC leaders and revives the leaders’ roles by giving them formations especially on leadership quality.

Some leaders are happy and joyfully serve their BECs without qualms even though they have been serving in their BECs for a number of years.  At large many leaders are not too happy about serving in their BECs and are just waiting to hand over their batons or tasks to someone else.  Some members are not willing to give it a try to take up the leadership role by giving excuses such as: fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of uncertainty, fear of responsibility, fear of making mistakes, lack of confidence, lack of time and so forth.

When we don't eliminate a life of excuses, we hold ourselves back from recognising opportunities and discovering our talents, skills and potential. We paralyze ourselves from growing in our spiritual life and this prevents us from moving forward in all areas of our lives!  If we don't challenge ourselves to reach new heights, we will never really know what we are capable of.  Opportunities lie hidden in front of us and in every corner of our lives - so it’s best that we don’t crack our heads by constantly finding reasons to make excuses.

What I request from the BEC leaders and the BEC core teams is that they bear the burden of leadership and responsibility and to genuinely care for one another in their respective BECs.  You are not alone working in the vineyard of the Lord, “For you are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s farm, God’s building,” (1 Cor 3:9).  You need to first and foremost focus on your spirituality and making efforts to increase your faith life.  In the long run, these will grow your personal strength and expand the scope of your ministry in the BECs. In fact, your BEC members will gain their trust in you and they perceive you guiding them well.

I suggest that you develop your leadership quality by sharing your responsibilities with your core teams as well as members of your BECs. If you are willing to let others share in your responsibilities, encourage the caring for one another and to make decisions, (even if you think they do things a bit differently from you), perhaps this kind of shared leadership will attract your BEC members and new leaders will be in the making!

On my part, I too look around for leaders and volunteers from the BECs and also among the weekend congregation who can really do the work of serving and caring for one another in the life of the Church, without having been given a title. Every now and then I do try to identify potential leaders and pray to the Lord that He will provide individuals to come forward to render service to the Church.

Basic Ecclesial Community (BEC) is not another ministry or organisation but it is the Church at the grassroots.  The members are considered as a new way of “being Church”.  Every ordinary Catholic is called to be disciples of hope and to actively participate in the life and mission of the Church and to live in the spirit of the Gospel.

BUILD MY CHURCH!

“… on this rock I will build My Church…” (MT 16:18)

The Gospel tells us that the nature of the Church is a family, fellowship, Body of Christ and people of God. Our priorities are to build relationships with one another and to live together in peace and harmony.

We are living in a world where more and more people are saying that the Church is not no longer important. Each of us needs to be committed to Church attendance and participation. We need to be committed to our Church growth.

The Church is made up of people that Jesus loves. For a body to function properly it needs all parts and likewise the Church needs all its members to be united in diversity. God gives us the gift of faith and along with it the responsibility to spread his Gospel. We must take this responsibility seriously. We need to make sure that the good news is shared with the lost, least and the last.

DRAW CLOSER TO GOD THROUGH WORSHIP IN CHURCH

These couple of months I have noticed the attendance for our weekend Masses dwindling.  I don't know about other churches but I tend to be too obsessed with this troubling thought. I try my best making my homilies and celebrations interesting so that you may stay connected when you come for Mass. Some of our parishioners don't feel that it is important to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation.

Church attendance is important. We attend Church to meet with God. God is worthy of our worship.  As Catholics, Church is a place where we can all come together to worship. It reminds me of one of the hymns, which goes, “Enter His gate with thanksgiving in our hearts…” (cf. Psalm 100:4). Every time when we enter our Church doors we come with thanksgiving in our hearts and we sing praises to God.

We come to Church to be part of our Church and to be one with Jesus. We submit ourselves to Him and draw life from Him. We gather in the Church where the Word

of God is faithfully proclaimed and the Sacrament of the Eucharist is celebrated reverently for us. Our gathering in the Church for weekly worship will encourage us, strengthen us and nourish us.  We listen and learn from Jesus, Mary and Joseph in order for us to grow spiritually.

It is very important that Catholic families should start to form their children in faith while they are still young. We attend our Sunday Masses or any other spiritual formations in Church to enhance our spiritual and psychological growth. Our participation in the sacrament, prayers and formation each week will deepen our belief and our faith in the “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one Church,” (cf. Eph 4: 5).

There is no excuse on Sundays. Often we hear that “Sunday is my only day to sleep in.” Church no longer holds the priority in our lives. We are too occupied with our daily schedule. When weekend comes we would like to go for vacation or away from the town just to get some relaxation. One of the greatest advantages we Catholics have in KL city is having Churches nearby – within 20 minutes drive!  It will be most pleasing to God that we fulfill our Sunday obligation before we entangle ourselves with other agendas during the weekend. God will be happy when we come to Church and worship Him. When Jesus sees His Church attendance is full and His Church is growing in numbers, surely He will be rejoicing in Heaven as He rewards us with His overflowing love.

Today’s culture is changing where we have become very individualistic. Both Church attendance and fellowship with communities are equally important. The Holy Spirit leads us to unity with the Body of Christ, which is the Church. “Without Jesus Christ, there can be no Church; and without the Church, we cannot stay united with Jesus.” We need to bring ourselves closer to Jesus and to reach out to the people in the community. It is for our own good that Jesus wants us to have fellowship with one another. The more we develop our friendship in the Church, the more we want to be together.  We are to be disciples of Christ.  We need each other to grow up in the faith of Christ, to learn to serve, to love one another, to exercise our spiritual gifts, and to practice forgiveness.

GREAT IS YOUR FAITH!

The story of the Canaanite woman (MT 15:21-28) with the demon possesses her daughter, but allows nothing to suffocate her faith. She has within her the courage and boldness which nourishes and strengthens her faith.

When she comes up to Jesus in a loud voice pleads with him to heal her daughter. Jesus first ignores the woman. This woman was fearless. She was rejected three times. Each reject made her stronger. She would not give up.

We realise that sometimes Jesus does say “No” to our prayers. There are those times when we are not making the right request. There are times when the request is right but the timing is off.

The Canaanite woman kept asking until Jesus granted her request. It is her persistence that caused Jesus to say that she was a woman of great faith. Such a faith changes our lives, leaves an impact on the people around us, and transforms the world.

 “O woman, great is your faith!”

UPCOMING FAITH FORMATION AND EVENTS

We had a lot of formation programmes, activities and events in our parish over the last couple of months. I would like to thank the organising committees, ministries and also the participants for attending. It shows your seriousness and eagerness to grow spiritually. I feel great when you take every effort to organise and attend all these events. Our parish is always moving ahead and for the coming months we have lined up a few other enriching formation programmes and exciting projects and events.

Our Parish Retreat for the year 2017 will be held on 22 – 24 September in our Church. The parish retreat working committee has already made the necessary arrangements on registration and other logistics. We shall bring the heart of the Divine Retreat Centre right to our door steps. Two great distinguished speakers from Divine Retreat Centre (DRC), Potta, India, Rev Fr Jacob Arimpur, VC., (Assistant Director of the Centre) will be presenting in English whereas Rev Fr Arun Louis, VC., will be presenting for the Tamil section. We are anticipating at least 700 to 800 participants for both languages. This retreat is solely for our parishioners but if the registration is poor in response by end of August then we shall open up to other neighbouring parishes. My dear parishioners please do not wait till the last minute.

Our Parish Pastoral Assembly (PPA) will be scheduled on 27 October (Saturday) from 2.00pm to 5.00pm. The Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur led by Rev Monsignor Mitchel Anthony will be coordinating this assembly for this year at our Formation Hall. He will be explaining about the eight “clusters” and the 5-year direction (2018-2022) of the Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur. The eight clusters are the areas of concern: BEC, Unity, Integral Human Development, Family Life, Formation, Inter-Religious Dialogue, Youth and Social Communication. As we know our parish will be accomplishing our three-year journey (2015-2017) and we shall be moving ahead with the KL Archdiocese Pastoral Structures for the next 5 years towards 2022 on Integrated Evangelization.

The Holy Father, Pope Francis has declared November 19^th, 2017 (33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time) as the First World Day of the Poor with the theme:  “Let us love, not with words but with deeds.” We are going to form an organizing committee for the above event with five main ministries in our parish – Parish Integral Human Development Ministry (PIHDM), BECCOT, Catechetical Ministry, Youth Ministry and Fund Raising Committee.  We will be expecting at least 1500 - 2000 people to join us in this event. There will be some stage shows entertainment, games, raffle draw, carnival and jumble sale (items like clothes and electrical goods from RM1-2 for the poor people to purchase). During the months of September and October we will be selling raffle draw tickets for the refurbishing of our community hall.

On December 3^rd, the Eagle’s Wing will be celebrating the 10^th anniversary of their Ministry in Sentul, and International Day for the Differently-Abled (IDD). This ministry consists of all the differently abled people from Petaling Jaya and Kuala Lumpur. Archbishop Julian Leow will be celebrating the IDD Mass in our parish together with our community. Immediately after Mass there will be some activities such as games, entertainment, sales of handicrafts and t-shirts.

In the month of December we shall continue with our annual programme and campaign on distributing school uniforms for the 300 school children who come from the low income families and provision of groceries for our regular adoptees. This year we may organise it in a low-key manner compared to last year’s Christmas Get Together.

All the above formations and events will help us to strategise our parish goal by strengthening our faith community with the greater focus on the Eucharist. We encourage the faithful to give life to one another and to follow in the way of Christ and His Church. May you and your families continue to enjoy God’s abundant blessings in our parish.