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There are communities
where this ministry does not need to be implemented, for everyone
knows one another and each one finds a place as easily, if I
may dare this comparison, as the ox in his stable. In these
cases the community is created at the same moment that it congregates.
In other communities
the welcome is absolutely necessary, especially if it is a question
of strangers, of poor, or simply of timid people. The Didascalia
of the Apostles (which is a type of liturgical book of common
law drafted in Syria in the third century) gives this advice
to the bishop:
If a poor man
or a poor woman comes, whether they are from your own parish
or from another, above all if they are advanced in years,
and if there is no room for them, make a place for them, O
bishop, with all your heart, even if you yourself have to
sit on the ground,
You must not make
any distinction between persons, if you wish your ministry
to be pleasing before God.
There is little doubt
that arrangements could be made in our assemblies to keep the
bishop from sitting on the ground, but the teaching remains.
And it is splendid! There are in all Christian hearts of the
usual guests, should occupy the first places. These are "the
poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame" of the Gospel
(Luke 14:21). Forgotten through the disfavor of this world,
they are the privileged in the heart of Jesus. They have a right
to preferential treatment.
Sometimes the welcome
is so important that it is the purpose for which the community
might be created. Let me quote the following case. There was
a community of cloistered Sisters who, evening and morning,
celebrated the liturgical prayer of Vespers and lauds. Some
Christians "assisted" there. Without seeing any human
face, they heard virginal voices coming from behind a wall,
through a drape. One day the Sisters decided to remodel their
chapel. The knocked down the wall of separation and replaced
it with an altar which became the center of prayer -- thus gathering
together the Sisters and the faithful. Now, each time a Christian
in search of prayer enters the chapel, a little Sister, like
a busy bee, runs up, offers a breviary, opens it to the right
page and, with heaven in her smile, say, "The psalm of
the Office is right here!" At once Sisters and faithful
became an evangelical community of praise and prayer, the community
of which it is said: "The multitude of believers had only
one heart and one soul" (Acts 4:32).
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