The Spiritual Fitness ManualSample

Fellowship

By Father Joseph Tyrrell, Pastor, St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church at The World Trade Center, NYC

GET TOGETHER

Fellowship is part of the earliest description of the Christians. It is found in The Acts of the Apostles. The disciples may have been afraid, but they came together. Without that they could not hope to fulfill Jesus’ prayer at the last supper.

There are a number of excuses that we fall prey to in not fulfilling God’s command to be together with other believers. We say things like: "I already gave an hour on Sunday," or "the rest of the week is mine." But God wants us to do more than keep the Ten Commandments. He wants to hold us accountable for our actions and help us grow.

GO TO CHURCH

When we go the church and offer ourselves as spiritual sacrifices we implicitly acknowledge that: "For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord." 

Now our lives have a context, our service of others has a reason. We are people whose lives have been purchased at great price. We no longer live for ourselves and are therefore free to serve others and offer our lives with Christ as an offering to God the Father. Here are a series of questions or excuses we use not to come together to worship God in church. When they tell us we have to go, they are treating us like children.