1. Faith experience creates community, and at the same time community transmits faith experience. The model is found in the first communities: What are their traces?. Vatican Council II had been convoked for this reason, "To give back to the face of the Church of Christ all its splendor, revealing the more simple and pure traces of his origin" (John XXIII, preparatory speech of the Council, November 13, 1960).

2. It was rightly said that the most important text of the Council is the Acts of the Apostles, those of the first Christian Community: Acts 2,42-47. When the Council plans what the Church must be, it goes to Acts (LG 13, 1; DV 10,1 ); when it plans what the way of life of a priest will be, it goes to Acts (PO 17, 4 and 21,1 ); when it plans what the way of life of a missionary will be, it goes to Acts (AG 25,1); when it plans what the religious life will be, it goes to Acts (PC 15, 1 ). In our time, we must go back to the fountain of community experience so that the Church, profoundly renewed, can preach the gosepl to modern man.

3. The first communities are groups of men and women that gathered regularly on the Lord´s day (Rev 1,7). Among themselves exists a brotherly relationship. That is why the mistery of communion that constitutes the church (see LG 1) can be seen even by non-believers, who say: look how they love each other. They are like a big family.

4. The basis of this comunion, what really gives coherence to this new family of disciples is the Word of God. As Jesus said, "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the Word of God and act on it" (Lk 8,21 ). He who accepts the Word is united to the community. In the first communities, the Word of God becomes experience of Christ (Acts 2,36 ) and experience of conversion (2,38).

5. The first communities are a minority within society, but they are like a town on a mountain (Mt 5,14), like yeast in the dough (Lk 13, 21 ). In them is a strong process of preaching the gospel to adults, and also to children. The oldest cathechism is done by inmersion in the community´s life.

6. They meet together where they can, usually in homes. Here, for example in the the house of John Mark´s mother in Jerusalem (Acts 12,12); in the house of Aquila and Prisca, in Ephesus and in Rome (1 Co 16, 19); in the house of Philemon, in Colossae (Phlm 2); in the house of Nympha, in Laodicea (Col 4,5). In its origen, the word parish (para-oikía) refers to the first communities that meet together in their homes (Acts 2,46).

7. If the community is larger than 40 or 50 members, you rent a meeting room, or you buy it, or perhaps the owner is a community member. You adapt it to the new use. That is what happens to the house of Dura Europos, a town by the Euphrates River, around the year 232. The meeting room holds 60 people. The house of Pudens, who receives Peter in Rome, could serve for this purpose. In Saint Pudencian (from Pudens), they have found bricks with the hallmark Q. Servius Pudens. Other Roman churches are built on private houses.

8. The community is a place of teaching, communion, celebration and prayer: They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to prayer (Acts 2, 42). In the community signs are used ( Acts 2,45).The signs confirm the Word revealed (Mk 16, 20).

9. The communion of hearts is seen in the sharing of possessions, "All the believers lived together and had everything in common"(Acts 2,44). And also, "No one claimed any possessions." (4, 32). The community is welcoming and open to new members: "Every day the Lord added those who needed to be saved" (2, 47).

10. In the middle of the 2nd century, the author of the Letter to Diocletian writes: "Christians are not different from other men, neither by country of origen, language or customs... They live in their own homelands, but as strangers; they participate in all things as citizens and they suffer everything as foreigners; all strange land is homeland to them, and all homeland is strange land. They get married as everybody else; and as everybody else they have children, but they do not make a show of them. They set a common dinner table but not a bed. They are in the flesh but they do not live in the flesh. They pass their time on earth but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the established laws, but with their lives they are above the laws (V, 1-10)."

11. The first communities find themselves in a difficult political and religious situation. Saint Paul says, "We are afflicted in every way but not constrained" (2 Co 4,8-9). In the Letter to Diogneto it is written also about those Christians: "They love everybody and they are persecuted by everybody. They are unknown and they are condemned. They are killed, and because of that they are given life. They are poor but they enrich many. They have nothing and they have an abundance of everything. They are dishonored, and in the same dishonors they are glorified. They are cursed and they are declared just. They are criticized and they are praised. They are slandered and they carry themselves with honor. They do good and they are punished as dishonest; punished to death, and they are delighted, as if they were given life. For the Jews, they are fought as foreigners; for the Greeks they are persecuted, and nevertheless the same ones that hate them cannot give a reason for their hate (V, 11-17)."

12. The community is the most sensitive way that we have to listen to the Word of God, to recognize Christ’s presence, to perceive the action of the Spirit. It is the pool of Siloam, where the man born blind is cured from his original blindness (Jn 9, 7). It is the place where Paul, blinded by the light of the Lord on the way to Damascus, regains sight and strength (Acts 9, 3-19). It is the womb where the new man is conceived "Through the living and abiding Word" (1Pe 1,23). It is the resurrected body of Christ (Eph 1,22-23), filled with the Holy Spirit (1Co 12, 13 ).

13. Being a community, the Church is light of the people(LG 1), a sign raised amidst nations (SC2), universal sacrament of salvation (GS 45). It is not the individual but the community which can preach the gospel. It is not the individual person, but the community which deeply renews the Church. It is not an individual person, but the community which can give an effective answer to present society, such as it is. It’s not a person, but the community that can live today the signs of the Gospel.

14. Nowdays, we have to rebuild the community fabric of the Church. In the first communities there were about 20 to 60 Christians; in the Middle Age, many parishes had no more than 300 members; the big towns had from 10.000 to 50.000 inhabitants. Today, many parishes are authentic medieval towns. Where do we go from here? Is it possible to speak of true Christian community?

15. In the Synod on Catechism (1977) this proposal was approved almost unanimously: "In fact, quite a few parishes, for different reasons, are far from being a true Christian community. Nevertheless, the ideal way to renew this communitary dimension of the parishes could be to convert it to a community of communities." The Synod on Laity (1987) and the apostolic appeal of John Paul II (CL 26) followed the same lines,. Sometimes it is said: The community is a utopia. One can answer like this: They were told it was impossible, they did not believe it and for that reason they achieved it.