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In the past
The concept of neighbour was understood as referring essentially to one’s countrymen and foreigners who has settled in the land of Israel.
As Christians, we can not be isolated. We have to be sensitive for the people in need so our senses always have to open.
The Church is God’s family in the world. In this family no one ought to go without the necessities of life. Yet at the same time caritas agape extends beyond the frontiers of the Church.
The parable of the Good Samaritan remains as a standard which imposes universal love.
Fundamental life fact is that God loves us. "God has loved us first (1 John 4:10) and that God's love to us has become visible in Jesus Christ. We can see God in the love-story recounted by the Bible; he encounters us ever anew, in the men and women who reflect his presence, in his word, in the sacraments, and especially in the Eucharist.
Answer to God's love is our love, which is going in both ways: In God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. Then I learn to look on this other person not simple with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend. (Deus Caritas Est #18)
Love towards God generates love towards my neighbours. If I have no contact whatsoever with God in my life, then I cannot see in the other anything more than the other, and I am incapable of seeing in him the image of God.
Only my readiness to encounter my neighbour and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well. Only if I serve my neighbour can my eyes be opened to what God does for me and how much God loves me.
Love of God and love of neighbour are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment.
Parish Caritas does not only give answers to problems of territory, but has the goal to animate the whole parish community: in this way it allows every Christian in actively live love towards neighbours.
In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
A woman went to a confession. The priest gave her a penance to do a good deed at her liking. At next confession, she told the priest she had made her penance: “I prayed some prayers for all those poor people who live among us. Did this woman live in this world?
Spirituality of this woman was incapable of doing something good, she could have been concrete in her making of the good deed. Prayer would only represent a cherry on the dressing of a cake, final letter to a specific act, from which she escaped into prayer and therefore reduced, if not deprived, the value of the prayer.
The concept of neighbour was understood as referring essentially to one’s countrymen and foreigners who has settled in the land of Israel.
This limit is now abolished. Anyone who needs me, and whom I can help, is my neighbour.
Good deeds must be an answer to specific distress, specific need and not just dependent to the current mood or time available.
When people in need came to him, Jesus, despite the fact that he lectured to his followers about the need for rest an recuperation, he gave up from his rest and devoted his time to them: “He felt pity for them as they were like sheep without a shepherd and so he started teaching them many things.” (Matthew 9:36)
Therefore Caritas help must be on time. Often this means to overtake the distress itself and act before it arises. With prevention and education, Caritas not only respond to specific situations but also creates them, not to mention the effect of this kind of work with repairing something that is fundamentally flawed.
To approach people, to feel their suffering as ones own, ensure that they will not interpret our assistance they from us as humiliating, but as a partnership in brotherhood.
With helping to one who is hungry, thirsty, foreigner, naked, ill, imprisoned – as well as unborn child, those suffering from ageing and those nearing death – we are given, to serve Jesus as he has said himself: Whatever you have done to one of my youngest brothers, you have done it to me.”
Love of neighbour, grounded in the love of God, is the first and foremost a responsibility for each individual member of the faithful, but it is also a responsibility for the entire ecclesial community at every level: from the local community to the particular Church and the Church universal in its entirely. As a community, the Church must practice love. Love thus needs to be organised if it is to be an ordered service to the community. (Deus Caritas Est #20)
In all that we are doing we must never be just an organisation, movement, society, group, association etc. We are the Church and we are all called upon all people, especially those in distress or need, to show them her loving motherly face.
The crucial role of Caritas is animation of the Christian community for charity. It is not that Caritas resolves distresses, but animates Christians and encourage them to actively live love towards fellow man, so that we can all, as an Christian society, face the distresses.
Discover the situation in the parish - needs, poverty, emergencies etc.
Evaluate the needs and the concrete strengths, instruments and possibilities with which problems, needs that can be solved.
Sensibilise community through different communication means - Sunday mass, parish bulletin, website, social media etc.
Animate "in charity" whole Pastoral Council, or whole parish community.
Love our neighbour and testify God's love together as a parish community through charity.
Caritas is the charitable arm of the Roman Catholic Church. It is to spearhead the church’s social mission, to respond to humanitarian crisis, promote integral human development and advocate on the causes of poverty and violence.
Caritas Penang comes under the jurisdiction of The Titular Roman Catholic Bishop of Penang.
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