CLC Models: A Flourishing Apostolic Church

 

FLOURISHING APOSTOLIC CHURCH MODEL

CLC members who want to discuss the bishop’s pastoral letter, A Flourishing Apostolic Church, may want to have it as one dimension of their activities.  

“It’s simply a letter about how we can draw closer to Christ, and there is no controversy in that,” Bishop Malesic said. “Let’s just pray 15 minutes a day; join a small group; invite your Catholic neighbors and friends together to have a cup of coffee and talk about ‘Why are you Catholic?’; ‘How can you become a disciple of Jesus?’ I think these are the basic things.”

Elements of the Model  1. At least fifteen minutes of quality personal prayer each day. That could be Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours, meditation on the life of Christ, bible study, study of the bishop's letter, etc. depending upon each person's preferences. 2. Joining or forming a spiritual support group. The CLC group could be one that already has been formed according to one or more of the models above, or one could form a group at one home, or among friends, or members of the parish to use that model in conjunction with appropriate Commonweal readings 3. Our stories: discussing the unfolding of our understanding of the Kingdom of God in our own lives, i.e. life as a continuing process of conversion to the Gospel 4. Our concrete missions: discussing our unique concreate missions of witnessing the Kingdom in the various communities of which we are a part, household, family, neighborhood, professional, workplaces, leisure and civic activities.

 CLCs which chose this model could either chose to spend several full meetings to discussing aspects of the pastoral letter or spend the first fifteen minutes of each meeting discussing one aspect of the letter, e.g. our experiences of fifteen minutes of prayer on a daily basis.