Domestic church is a home where there is worship, religious instruction, and community ministry. It is as old as the church itself. The Apostle Paul recommends the special wife and husband witness and ministry of Priscilla and Aquila, “my fellow workers in the service of Christ Jesus”. “I am grateful to them – not only I but all the Gentile churches as well. Greetings also to the church that meets in their house.” Romans 16:3-5
Writing to the Ephesians St Paul acknowledges the sacred quality of the family: “I fall on my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth receives its true name.” He prays for Christian families “that Christ will make his home in your hearts”. Ephesians 3: 14-15.17
As in those days, Christians today work for Christ at home and by going out from their homes. Their homes are domestic churches where family members practice the arts of living, open to the learning of love and care and growth in virtues; sacred places for mature committed people to form communities that welcome young and old, children and extended families alike; centres from which radiate concern for others in the neighbourhood and the wider society.
About parenting, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#2222) says that when a husband and wife accept the responsibility of parenthood, they become partners of God in creation. “Parenting includes not only the temporal wellbeing of a child, but most especially, it calls for the spiritual nurturing of the child. Parents must regard their children as children of God and respect them as human persons.”
The challenge both for domestic church and for church catholic is to share together in the life and mission of what St Paul in his greeting to Priscilla and Aquila calls “the service of Christ Jesus”.
What do you think is involved in forming a community of persons bringing life to families, to neighbourhoods, and to the wider society? A further question is how to grow a two-way relationship between domestic and institutional church?
