2. What is the difference
between prayer & worship?
Prayer Worship
– Anyplace, anywhere – In a consecrated
– Alone or with others place
– For personal – Community activity
intentions – To glorify God
– We offer a living
sacrifice
3. It is very important that we know the
difference between prayer and worship.
Sunday Mass is not just to pray alone,
anywhere, but to worship God with the
People of God.
Sunday Mass is to offer a living sacrifice:
Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. Jesus is
the presider and also the Living Sacrifice
being offered.
In Sunday Mass, we also offer ourselves to
God in exchange for Jesus who offered
himself to save us from our sins.
4. What does it mean to be a
community?
What is the difference
between a community and a
crowd?
5. What does it mean to live a
Eucharistic Life?
To live like the Bread of the
Eucharist is to become bread,
willing to be broken and be
shared.
6. We become what we eat.
As Christians, are we living like
bread for others?
Like the bread, do we live a life
willing to be broken and be shared
for others.
7. A Eucharistic Community is a
loving, caring, sharing
community.
There is no room for
selfishness in a Eucharistic
Community.
8. This is our problem in the
Philippines.
We are a Christian country but we
are not living a Eucharistic
community.
There is so much corruption in the
government and private sector.
Corruption is greed and selfishness.
9. Religiosity is different from
spirituality.
A person can be very religious but
not necessarily spiritual.
Spirituality is living in the life of the
Holy Spirit.
10. Called to Holiness:
Lay Spirituality
Universal Call to Holiness
Only God is Holy
Without God, no one can be holy.
We can only be holy if we have God in
our life.
And to accept God is to turn away
from sin.
We cannot serve God and stay in sin.
11. What is Lay Spirituality?
To live in the Spirit as lay persons.
To sanctify the family, the
neighborhood and the workplace.
As lay, your church is your family,
your neighborhood and your
workplace, where you are being
formed and transformed.
12. Lay spirituality is not only
a life of doing but
a life of being.
Living in the Spirit is to live a
life of love because God is
love.
13. John 21:15-19
Three time, Jesus asked, “Peter,
do you love me?”
Three time, Peter answered, “Yes,
Lord, I love you.”
To love as Jesus loves is the love
of a person willing to offer his life
for his friends.
What kind of love do we give to
Jesus?
14. What kind of love do we have for
Jesus?
In Greek, they have 3 kinds of love:
Filial – love for family & friends
Eros – passionate love for a spouse
Agape – unconditional love; loving
estrangers and even our enemies.
16. Love is the summary of the
commandments of God.
The Greatest Commandment:
“Love the Lord, your God, with
all your heart, with all you soul,
with all your mind, and with all
your strength. And love your
neighbor as yourself.”
17. Love is the core
message of the
Holy Scriptures.
The Holy Scripture is the story
of God’s love for his people.
It is the story of how God went
out of his way to show his love
for his people.
18. God is love.
The Kingdom of God is the
Kingdom of Love.
To love God is to know
God.
19. You cannot know God and
not love. [1 John 4:8]
If you say you love God and
yet you do not know how to
love, you are a liar. [1 John
4:19-21]
20. The love of God is…
Not just a love based on
feelings, but a committed love.
Feelings are passing and
momentary. Feelings will pass
away. Feelings do not last.
A committed love is a love that
endures.
21. God’s universal call to
humanity is the call to love.
We have one common vocation:
to love.
God loved us first.
To love in return is the only way
to respond to the love of God.
22. Love is our way to
holiness.
It is love that will make us whole
and perfect in the eyes of God.
Perfect love is loving not only the
people who are good to us, but
loving even our enemies and
persecutors.
23. Love is not the same as like.
You do not have to like a
person to love him.
You can love a person even if
you do not like him.
To love is a decision.
This is mature love.
24. “Love one another as I have
loved you.”
To love with the love of Jesus: a
love willing to give up even
one’s life for a friend.
A love that dies to oneself:
“selfless love.”
25. The love of Jesus is
“unconditional” & “unmerited.”
Jesus Christ loved even the
public sinners and social
outcasts.
Example: The Story of the
Good Samaritan
26. Luke 6:32-33
“If you love only the people who
love you, why should you receive
a blessing? Even sinners love
those who love them. And if you
do good only to those who are
good to you, why should you
receive a blessing? Even sinners
do that.”
27. Luke 6:27-36
Love for Enemies:
– Do good to those who hate you.
– Bless those who curse you.
– Pray for those who mistreat you.
Do good without expecting a
return.
Do not close your heart to your
enemies.
28. Matthew 5:23-24
Reconciliation before Communion
“If you are about to offer your gift to
God at the altar and there you
remember that your brother has
something against you, leave your gift
there in front of the altar, go at once
and make peace with your brother, and
then come back and offer your gift to
God.”
29. Matthew 18:15-17
Fraternal Correction: If your brother sins
against you…
1st step: Go to him and show him his fault,
but do it in private.
2nd step: If he will not listen to you, take
one or two other persons with you so that
every accusation may be upheld by the
testimony of two or more witnesses.
30. Fraternal Correction
3rd step: If he will not listen to
them, tell the whole thing to the
Church.
4th step: If he will not listen to the
Church, treat him as a pagan or
tax collector.
31. Acts 2:42-47
Eucharistic Community
They spend their time together…
– Learning from the Apostles.
– Taking part in fellowships.
– Sharing in meal.
– Praying together.
32. A community is about relationships.
Although we try to love all members
equally, we can never be equally
intimate to all.
There will always be different levels
of intimacy in a community.
Among his Twelve Apostles, Jesus is
closer to Peter, James and John.
Among the three, Jesus is closest to
John.
33. Dynamics of
Human Relationship
Birds of the same feather flock together.
– Same gender or sexual orientation.
– Same age group.
– Same economic status.
– Same region, or race, or color, or
language spoken.
– Same interests.
34. 1 Corinthians 12:4-7
“There are different kinds of spiritual gifts
but the same Spirit gives them. There
are different ways of serving but the
same Lord is served. There are different
abilities to perform service but the same
God gives ability to all for their particular
service. The Spirit’s presence is shown in
some way in each person for the good of
all.”
35. Every person is
a unique gift of God.
Like gifts, we come with wrappers.
Wrappers are not the gifts. The
gift is inside the wrapper. We
need to remove the wrapper to see
the gift.
Do not reject the gift because you
do not life the wrapper.
36. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3
“I may be able to speak the languages of
human beings and even of angels, but if I
have no love, my speech is no more than a
noisy gong or a clanging bell. I may have
the gift of inspired preaching, I may have
all the knowledge and understand all the
secrets, I may have all the faith needed to
move mountains – but if I have no love, I
am nothing. I may give up everything I
have, and even give up my body to be
burned, but if I have no love, this does me
no good.”
37. In serving the Church…
We can learn the work easily.
The more challenging part is how we
will relate with others – how we love
one another.
Human relationship is the harder
part.
But it is how we relate with each
other that will make us holy and will
please God.
38. Called To Be
A Community of Disciples
Like the day of the Pentecost, with
the coming of the Spirit, the walls of
division and differences were broken
and the disciples became one heart
and one soul.
They became a Community of
Disciples, a loving, caring and
sharing community.
39. How do we make this
“community of disciples”
a reality in our parish?