Riflessioni ad alta voce

Community life: CONCLUSION Family is not a place where everything goes well. We usually encounter problems, misunderstanding, and often there are people who are not mature, who do not know how to deal with love. We have a clear example of it in the parable of the good father and the two sons: Lk 15,11-32 commonly called the Prodigal son. Both sons are very important and the real centre of the story is the comparison of the way of acting of the two sons in front of the love of the father. It strikes me the full freedom given by the father to the youngest, in spite of him knowing what he was going to do and how wrong that was. The son goes and loses sight of the father and of his house. The result can be only ruining the inheritance looking for a replacement of the lost joy. The family is where he belongs and cannot be replaced by anything, richness, feasting etc. He may not have the courage to admit it but he feels empty inside. Away from the family he will always be an...

THE CHALLENGES OF TODAY Facility of journeys, policy of exchange of personnel among provinces and the vocational crisis in Europe along with new openings and promising developments in Asia and Africa are all factors that contributed to the formation of communities characterized by what we now call “Interculturality”. It is a fact that now it is quite common to have communities where the members come from 3 or even 4 different countries. This fact represents a big challenge with great potentialities for the witness to the gospel, but carries also a few difficulties. First problem we meet is the one of languages. Now religious are called more often than ever to learn new languages, sometimes even strange and difficult ones. No matter how good we are, but when it comes to preach, to teach, to counsel, we will always feel handicapped having to use another language. More than with the language, the problem may arise from the cultural setting of our backgrounds. In Asia we fa...

COMMUNITY AND VOWS The communitarian aspect of our vows makes sure that they are real values. While speaking about vows we have seen how they give an answer to the problems of our society. But these vows, if not lived in a community environment could lose most of their prophetic power. A person who does not get married and dedicate himself to work for the other could well be a philanthropist with some problems preventing him to marry. But if chastity is lived in a community based on love, on real relationship, as a choice of all and not just of one, then it becomes a sign of something superior. A person who gives up possession could be a crazy man or someone who does not like those particular items, after all we have examples of trumps who live in the street and could have had a good life a job or a career. Giving up these things was a choice done in the name of freedom but not exactly a spiritual one and not an answer to the problem of poverty. But when it is a whole community...

COMMUNITY AND APOSTOLATE I would like to start with a question: Is community life simply for helping the apostolate or is there more than that? After what we have said above the answer seems to be obvious: The community has a value in itself, we all know that, but it is not so when we go to the concrete life. Our communities are set up because there is a work to do, a parish to work in, a school to run etc. People sent to it are chosen according to their skills: he has a B.Ed and is a good teacher so let us send him to a community where he can be put in charge of a school. Even the timetable is made in a way to favour the work we do. Of course we need a place where to stay, to pray, to eat and that is the community house. But if we look at the efficiency in our apostolate we can see that working with others slows down the process, the different ideas make the decision making process more difficult, and often is impossible to reach a conclusion to our discussions. So many people s...

JESUS MAN OF COMMUNITY SPIRIT How did Jesus live this aspect? When coming on earth he chose to come through a family and remained in the family for the longest part of his life, subjected to the rules and regulation of family life. He stayed hidden in his family for almost thirty years and worked for his mission for about three years. As soon as he started his apostolate he formed a group, a new family with whom share his work. He could have become a lone preacher like John the Baptist or a Rabbi like many others in his time. He instead chose to go around and called somebody to follow him. Note that he did not choose the best, and most of them were already married. Soon he left the apostolate for the crowds and concentrated on the apostles only. He trained them, cared for them, shared light moments with them as in Lk 9:10, trusted in them and sent them (two by two) to the mission, he served them like when he washed their feet (Jn 13); he defended them like in the garden of...

Extra reading: THE COMMUNITY OF THE THIRTEEN Jesus was about to accomplish the most important fact in the history of humanity: the salvation of the world. He knew that he could not possibly accomplish it in the few years available, he needed a structure, a group that would go beyond the centuries and the civilizations: the Church that would become the biggest and most powerful structure ever. As God he could have chosen better times, maybe be incarnated in today’s society where technology would have made his job easier and more effective, or at least choose the most powerful empire: Rome; or the most developed culture: the Greek; and instead he chose the smallest and most troubled nation: Israel and Judea. In Israel he could have chosen as companions and successors the rich Sadducees, or the religious Pharisees, or some members with political connections with the king or with the Romans, and instead he chose simple people, mostly poor and illiterate, fishermen, tax collecto...

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FAMILY AND RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY So far I have referred to family and to community as if they were the same thing. Indeed our communities are our families now and should have as much as possible a family atmosphere. But we have to admit that no community will ever be a family in the full sense because there are basic differences which should be respected. Here are differences FAMILY COMMUNITY Husband and wife chose each other and generate their children Religious do not choose the members of their communities They are together for ever They are together short time and often they have changes Their number is restricted They can be in big groups and belong to a bigger “group” (Congregation) Their aim is inside of the family itself: their unity and welfare. They work together for the fulfilment of each on...

Community life INTRODUCTION Everybody needs a family. It is not only a matter of having a place where people can stay, rest, eat etc. It is a matter of belonging. We need people around us of whom to say: They belong to me and I to them. We are born in a family and this family, throughout our childhood, moulded us in good and in bad. With growth we became more and more independent, not because family is not any more important but because we started feeling the desire of having a new one which we could call our own, in which we can make the changes, we can build a future with new people. To have a family make us feel secure, active, fulfilled. But to build a family is not something automatic, and not even easy. You have to make space for the other, and so you need to give up some of your space. If you want to be active you have to expose yourself, your skills and so risk to be criticized. You need to trust people around you. All these things, since they are neither sim...