"He who loves community, destroys community; he who loves the brethren, builds community." - Bonhoeffer
"The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world. Unless we can now tame and transmute the potential for evil in the human soul, we shall be lost. And how can we do this unless we are willing to look at our own evil with the same thoroughness, detached discernment and rigorous methodology to which we subject the external world?" - Scott Peck
When someone seeks intimacy before choosing what they want in life, there is danger.
There are too many people in the world who have no hope. There are too many cries which go unheard. There are too many people dying in loneliness. It is when the members of a community realise that they are not there simply for themselves or their own sanctification, but to welcome the gift of God, to hasten his Kingdom and to quench the thirst in parched hearts through their prayer and sacrifice, love and acts of service, that they will truly live community. A community is called to be light in a world of darkness, a spring of fresh water in the Church and for all people. If a community becomes lukewarm, people will die of thirst. If it bears no fruit, people will die of hunger.
"Do not feel obliged, in order to protect your religious dignity and your intimacy with God against exterior dangers, to put up barriers between the lay world and yourself. Don't put yourself on the fringe of human society... Like Jesus, become part of that humanity. Penetrate deeply into and sanctify your environment by the conformity of your life, by your friendship; by your love, by your life totally given to the service of others, like Jesus, by a life so mixed in with everyone else's that you may be one with them, wanting only to be in their midst like yeast that loses itself in the dough in order to make it rise." - Little Sister Madelaine
It's quite easy to found a community. There are always plenty of courageous people who want to be heroes, are ready to sleep on the floor, to work hard hours each day, to live in dilapidated houses. It's not hard to camp- anyone can rough it for a time. So the problem is not in getting the community started- there's always enough energy for take-off. The problem comes when we are in orbit and going around the same circuit. The problem is in living with brothers and sisters whom we have not chosen but who have been given to us, and in working ever more truthfully towards the goals of the community.
Old age is the most precious time of life, the one nearest to eternity. There are two ways of growing old. There are people who are anxious and bitter, living in the past and illusion, who criticize everything that goes on around them. Young people are repulsed by them; they are shut away in their sadness and loneliness, shrivelled up in themselves. But there are also old people with a child's heart, who have used their freedom from function and responsibility to find a new youth. They have the wonder of a child, but the wisdom of maturity as well. They have integrated their years of activity and so can live without being attached to power. Their freedom of heart and their acceptance of their limitations and weakness makes them people whose radiance illuminates the whole community. They are gentle and merciful, symbols of passion and forgiveness. They become a community's hidden treasures, sources of unity and life.They are true contemplatives at the heart of community.
In the end, the most important thing is not to do things for people who are poor and in distress, but to enter into relationship with them, to be with them and help them find confidence in themselves and discover their own gifts.
Prayer is no more than a child resting in his father's arms and saying "Yes".
We need constant challenge if we are not to become dependent on security and comfort, if we are to continue to progress from the slavery of sin and egoism towards the promised land of liberation.
We are all called to do, not extraordinary things, but very ordinary things with an extraordinary love that flows from the heart of God.
It seems to me that some Christians are in danger of talking too much about things they do not live: they have their theories on what makes for the 'good life' but they have not really experienced it. They speak from ideas rather than from the heart. The hidden life of Jesus is the model for all community life.
The spirituality of Nazareth, or the spirituality of the circle which implies littleness, love of little things and humility, is not easy in our world. We are schooled from an early age to go up the ladder of human promotion, to be outstanding, to succeed and to win prizes; we are taught to fend for ourselves and to be independent. We are taught how important it is to possess knowledge, success, power and reputation. We are taught to put external values over and above internal ones. However the gospels call us to love and live the Beatitudes; to die to ourselves. This implies a huge change of attitude, a conversion. And it can only come about if we are truly grafted onto Jesus and receive His Holy Spirit. We will never be able to live the littleness of love unless we are truly determined to respond to the call of Jesus to follow him. And that means we have to be rooted in prayer.
We are more earthy and more heavenly than we have cared to admit.
We are simply a tiny sign, among thousands of others, that love is possible.
Very often these days we have joy without God, or God without joy. That is the result of a certain tradition of God as all powerful and severe, a tradition which separated joy from the divine. But celebration is joy with God.
These days, when there are so many people depressed and frightened for the future, it is important to announce and celebrate our hope in God. There may be wars and revolutions; there may be sickness and natural catastrophes, but God is watching over humanity with love. Death is not the end of all. Love has conquered hate and death.
