Community life 5: Impact of apostolate on community life and vice versa

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 start acting in a solitary way, while others may fall in the temptation to live in a passive way, accept blindly whatever comes and avoid giving contributions of ideas and projects.

The apostolate takes a great part of our time.

All this is ok and nobody wants to deny the importance of apostolate, but if the apostolate becomes the only reason to be in a particular community, what will happen when I become sick, I cannot work anymore: does my presence in the community lose its meaning?

What I want to say is that the community is an apostolic tool in itself, which is much more effective than the apostolate done by the single religious.

You remember the passage of St. Mark: “He called them to stay with him and also to send them”. The staying with him is not for the mere purpose of training them but is because Jesus chose to do his mission through a family life style. So to stay with him is the priority, not the instrument. Jesus built a family and in several occasions he underlines this family aspect. He didn’t build a group or a hostel, he built a family. Everything is different when is done as family, and this aspect should be remembered especially by those who are superiors. Take for example prayer. It is different to pray together and to pray as a family. To pray together means that we are in the same room and say the same prayer at the same time, but maybe our hearts does not feel any difference, maybe among us there is division, coldness. When we pray as family, even if one is physically missing, he is spiritually there, in his desire but also in the desire of the brothers, they pray for him and also in his behalf.

Jesus taught us: “When you pray you say: Our Father”. Our is plural so this prayer has full meaning when we pray it as “we” and not as “I”. Only Jesus could say “my Father”. We can say “Father” only through Jesus, so our not my.

Something similar is the work in the community. Do you remember the parable of the two sons whom the father invites to go and do some work? Mt 21,28. Who among the two was a real member of the family and who was not?

To build a family is much more than just to be united by blood relation. It needs spirit of belonging, capacity of sacrifice etc. We have many religious who worked well for years with genuine apostolic zeal, but sadly they left the Congregation, the priesthood and as a consequence, even the apostolate. What was missing was not the joy of the apostolate but the sense of belonging. What they were doing in the apostolate could have been done in any Congregation and even as non priest. But to be Son of Divine Providence, can be achieved only living in the family and building up the sense of belonging. The fact that some left because of a lady is not a true view of the problem. The falling for a lady was not the cause but the consequence of an emptiness. Apostolate drains your emotional resources; you cannot keep on giving without receiving and if you do not have a family who supports you, you build a surrogate one.

Community has a prophetic task. Prophetic means “that speaks for (about)”. Our community life must be an attitude that gives a clear message of what it signifies: They have to speak to the world about the love existing in the Trinity.

This is a very important point for today’s society. Every day we face situations of broken families, groups where people are exploited and their needs neglected in the name of progress, selfishness and greed; Psychologists speak of need of self affirmation, but this is often done through rejecting rules, moral values etc.

Apostolate becomes more meaningful when lived in a community way (which does not mean that everybody is there to work in the same place). In Italy we have many institutions. We used to have many religious working in each one of them. Now due to the crisis of vocations we gathered the religious who were in nearby houses in one community and from there the confreres handle the works. So one community can now be in charge of three or four activities and each activity will see practically one religious working. It is important then that the work of the religious is done in a community minded way. What is not seen has to be felt in the way he works.

After all, apostolate is to make people experience the love of God and what love God has which is not a sharing of the community of love which is the Trinity? The first apostolate in the history of salvation is that God took pity on our situation and sent his only Son among us to rescue us. We send one of our brothers to do a particular job, it has to be the fruit of our love which overflows to benefit the others. So apostolate is always a mandate of the community.