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Alpha Up and Running…

By Barry O'Halpin

Kraainem (19 March 2006).- The Alpha Course began in St Anthony’s on March 8th with the traditional dinner and talk. It was a very good start with more than 50 people in attendance, many of who were new or returning to Christianity. This is of course the primary mission of Alpha, to bring people to God who have not met Him before or have drifted so far away as to have lost touch almost completely.

This Alpha is a little different to those that we have hosted and been involved in before. It is not simply a St Anthony’s initiative, but a cooperative venture between five churches in the broader area in and around Brussels: St Anthony’s is joined by Holy Trinity, St Paul’s Tervuren, Our Lady of Mercy in Waterloo and St Andrew’s Church of Scotland. So this is a multi-Church and multi-denominational initiative. The catering is being shared out between the churches and there will be five “Live” talks – as opposed to the recorded ones – of which a representative of each church will give one. In addition to the churches, we are greatly helped by the experience and wisdom that has been brought to the planning team by Youth With A Mission, for whom Wim du Plessis has been a great, wise and willing representative.

This is a really exciting course. It offers the chance to meet and get to know people of other denominations and none, and it is a real opportunity to reach out to the broader Christian community in Belgium. It is truly an ecumenical undertaking and will, please God, sow the seeds of greater and more extensive inter-church contacts at the level of the laity in the future, to complement the existing close contacts between the clergy in each of the communities.

The course runs until June 7th, with a final “Farewell Dinner” on June 14th. It is still not too late if you would like to join us. 

God Bless all involved and all of you who have been praying for it.


…and leading to other things?

One of the great things about Alpha is the way in which it introduces newcomers and restates for those already within the Church the fundamental things that we believe in. This is often identified with the movement for Charismatic Renewal and the Charismatic Renewal is something that is often misunderstood. 

The Church is in its nature Charismatic, in the words of Charles Whitehead, a former chair of the Worldwide Conference for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal who was one of those personally commissioned for this ministry by Pope John Paul II. This is to say that the mission to bring the Holy Spirit into the centre of the faithful’s consciousness is not in any sense a niche or peripheral mission. It is a central mission and very much of the mainstream. As such, it is necessary to look beyond the caricature of the Charismatic Renewal and see it for what it is: a renewal of all that is best in the Church and not simply a sectional concern.

We are encouraged therefore to adopt an open attitude, not a closed one and this applies to all who embrace the Catholic faith. To Catholics, it is necessary to be open to all the gifts of the faith and for Charismatics this can be as great a challenge as for anyone else. 

To this end, it is important to note that in welcoming the Charismatic Renewal we also welcome all forms of worship that are in accord with the teaching of the Church and this includes many things that might be thought to be “old fashioned” or “traditional”. The Church is, by virtue of her 2,000 years of history, old fashioned and it is from the roots of the early Church that the Charismatic Renewal takes its inspiration. Similarly, it is from church history and experience that the awareness of the value of private devotion is derived. It is to be hoped that the light of the Charismatic vision that has illuminated the parish here for the past several years will, in turn, also lead to a renewal in the observance of and participation in private devotion, most notably the Rosary but other private devotions as well.

To this end, an invitation will soon be extended to all who would like to share in these devotions, perhaps on a weekly or twice monthly basis. This will, please God, serve not to supersede or “rival” in any way the wonderful GIFT or Mothers’ Prayer Group, but rather as a complement to them. Possible devotions could be the Rosary of course, but also devotions to particular saints and The Divine Mercy. The detail of this will emerge in the fullness of time.

St Paul talks about us being One Body with Many Parts and it is the pleasure and charge of us all to bring these many parts into a more closely functioning and harmonious Body in our Church.

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