Word of the Week

2nd Sunday of Advent

Partnership: Koinonia (Gk.): meaning, “fellowship by association with a community”, or “communion by joint participation”. This term also conveys a sharing of everything, a gift jointly contributed as exhibiting an embodiment and proof of fellowship.

First and foremost, to understand partnership is to understand communion. In its general application, the Church speaks to communion as “our fellowship and union with Jesus and other baptized Christians in the Church, which has as its source and summit in the celebration of the Eucharist. In this sense, Church as communion is the deepest vocation of the Church” (CCC Glossary, 871).  In a more specific application, Communion is the receiving of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist (CCC, 1382).  Our reception of the Eucharist enables us to participate more fully in the most holy Trinity that is the Family of God. Essentially, this partnership with God, in fellowship with the Holy Spirit, calls us to live in a complete donation of self (cf. CCC, 959).

We find the term koinonia twenty times in the New Testament, thirteen of which are from the hand of Paul. This brief examination will primarily focus on Paul treatment of the term. Paul explicitly speaks to our fellowship in Christ as a fellowship in mystery, where we participate in what was established from the beginning of time (cf. Eph.3:9), the divine fellowship of the life of the Trinity.  Consequently, one must first understand the key virtue that is shared in the mystery of the Trinity to better understand the proper measure of our self donation…the virtue of humility. Paul states: “If there is to be any participation in the Spirit…do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves” (Phil.2:1-3). Paul’s treatment of living in partnership with the gospel also entails a call to suffer with him, that we “become like him in death” (Phil.3:10). Humility and suffering become the pre-requisites into a life that is in communion with the Gospel message (cf. Phil.1:5).  Our interpersonal communion with God also entails the call to be teachers of the faith (cf. Phm.1:6) following in the footsteps of the early Church (cf. Acts 2: 42). The participation in the mystery of God has as its source and summit, the Eucharist (cf. 1 Cor.10:16), which as the Body of Christ (Corpus Christi) unites us to the body of Christ, the Church.

This Second Sunday of Advent affords us the opportunity to look at our participation with God and its relationship to preparing our heart for the infant Christ.  When we lead a life of humility and share in the suffering of Christ, subsequently, our lives will be ordered to simplicity. Thus, we must avoid the urge to indulge ourselves in the abundance of material things to avoid missing out on the real gift of Christmas—Jesus Christ. Just as Christ entered the world in the mode of poverty, let us rekindle that same spirit of poverty within our own hearts.

“First of all the Church is one…although in the past this unity has suffered the painful trial of many divisions, the Church's inexhaustible Trinitarian source spurs her to live ever more deeply that Koinonia, or communion, which was resplendent in the first community of Jerusalem (Acts 2: 42, 4: 32).”

--Pope John Paul II

Primary Texts Consulted

• Catholic Bible. Suggested trans. Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition, 1997.
  
  

The Catholic Hour Home Page
Comments or Questions?
Contact Webmaster