Bishop talks to students at 'Faith Alive' series

Students from the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi Newman Center braved a norther that blew in during the late evening hours of Nov. 7 to join Bishop Michael Mulvey for the Faith Alive series entitled, “Created by God, Created for Communion.”
 
Students listened intently, some even writing notes as Bishop Mulvey spoke on what it means to be communion. The Church creates a communion of persons who want to love and be loved, he explained. “It’s in our DNA.”
 
He said there are two ways of living and expressing what it means as a diocese to be communion. There is St. Paul’s understanding in Corinthians and there is the Eucharist.
  “There are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I do not need you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I do not need you’” (1 Cor 12:20-21).
 
According to the bishop we’re made up of diversity – not uniformity. “It’s unity and diversity of the body. The Church makes the Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the Church. When we eat the same food, ‘Jesus,’ we become one and we are created for communion.”
 
He said that we need to make the Church attractive to others, by training each other to get out of ourselves and in service to another, because being of service takes us out of the ism’s which distort us.
 
He described the five isms that keep us from communion and lead to isolation: individualism, narcissism, materialism, nationalism and racism. All these isms or sins he said are based on fear.
 
Some fear is healthy. A fear of God means a reverence, a wonder and awe in God’s presence. “If God is not the center of my life, I would regress,” the bishop explained.
 
“Fear, because we don’t have a foundation in God,” the bishop said as he read Gospel readings pertaining to ‘fear’ to the group of students. “The Word of God is revealed truth. We fear because we don’t put God first. We fear because we do not love, and love is what fills us.”

Music during adoration was provided by student and music minister, Jessica Reyes. And Tino Quiocho ran the slide show.

The Faith Alive series this year was on "what it means to be created in the image and likeness of God," said Amy Barragree, director of the campus ministry for the Diocese of Corpus Christi at TAMUCC.