Community life 8: Conclusions
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 out of place. Even if he would have been successful in his business, he would always have something missing.
The conversion is to acknowledge that he made a mistake and ruined himself, he alienated himself from what he really wanted.
But to be alienated from the family spirit does not mean necessarily that somebody must run away. We have the eldest son, who has been serving, obeying and working. From the answer he gives to the father who is inviting him inside to celebrate we understand that he too did not feel the belonging. None of the two is mature, but the father conquers them both with his patience and acceptance. The attitude of the father is understandable only if we look at him as the God of compassion well described in Hos 1-3 and Hos 11,8: a God who has chosen a wife who is a prostitute and keeps of running away from him, a God who is so much in love that always takes her back and continues to love her; a Father who waits patiently because he knows that the son will eventually come back.
We need to live in a community which is not just one of the features of our life. Community is something that has a great mystical and prophetic aspect.
The mystic is described well in 1 Cor 12:12. We are the mystical body o Christ. We are just part of this body and we cannot function if separated from it. It is true that the only necessary part is the head but a body without a leg or a hand, though alive, will always be a lame or a handicapped body. This is what Jesus meant when he said “When two or three are united in my name I will be there”. (Mt 18:20). He was not referring only to prayer. We are united in his name in any activity we do in the community because religious community are by nature built in the name of Jesus. So to act as family is to make Christ present among us. Another consideration connected to this is that if it is true that we can see Jesus present in everyone, how much more we should be able to see Jesus present in our sisters or brothers in the community.
Another mystic point is in the purpose of the community life itself. The community life is the image on earth of the communion existing among the persons in the Trinity, a communion which can only be described through pure love. A lover wants, by nature, to be united, as much as possible, with the loved one. In this case when we build a community based on love (and there would be no other reason for remaining united), we share in the life of the Trinity itself. Practically speaking when I love you I make the Trinity dwelling among us, and when I try to be united with God there is no other choice but to love those around me.