Thursday, September 27, 2007

Fr. Paco Carin shares his latest experience in China. He speaks Chinese fluently.

Qingzhou: Knowing the Church of Our Ancestors

From September 12 to 22nd. I was in Qinzhou, a small diocese in the Shandong Province. I gave a short course about the History of Early Christian Communities. Slowly we studied how starting from Jesus and his announcement of the Kingdom of God in Palestine a group of followers, men and women, started the odyssey of taking the Christian message to the ends of the known world.

The religious sisters were captivated by this odyssey even if it was quite difficult for them to understand categories so distant in time and culture as “person”, “nature”, “essence”…

What we all came to acknowledge is that the Church is a “common good” belonging to all Christians. All are Church and the Church embraces all. Soon we shall continue with the history of the Medieval Church, no less attractive and complicated than that of the first Christian communities: 1000 years of history often times easily forgotten… but nevertheless full of the Holy Spirit who refuses to be absent.

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