TOWARDS A PROPHETIC COMMUNITY
By Paolo
Archiati, OMI, Vicar General
I would like to continue
my thoughts on community,
the first call to
conversion from our
last Chapter. Fraternal Life in Community,
a document from the Congregation for the
Institutes of Consecrated
Life and Societies of Apostolic Life which appeared in 1994, addresses
the topic of
common life regarding the difficulties it has
to face in our day, especially that of
individualism. The religious community
is defined as “the place where the daily and
patient passage from ‘me’ to ‘us’ takes place, from my commitment to a
commitment entrusted to the community, from seeking ‘my things’ to seeking ‘the
things of Christ’.” This patient passage is
a daily task and it happens in a balance that is sometimes
difficult to find
and maintain, “between respecting the person
and the common good, between the demands
and needs of individuals
and those of community, between
personal charism and
the communal apostolic project.” The
enemies of this balance are, on the one hand, fracturing
individualism, and on the other, stifling communitarianism.
If this passage
is done with balance,
the religious community becomes “the place where
we learn daily to take on that new mind which allows us to live in fraternal
communion through the richness of diverse gifts and which, at the same time,
fosters a convergence of these gifts towards fraternity and towards
co-responsibility in the apostolic plan.”
We might note here
that the community
neither suppresses nor replaces the
“me”: the “me’s” who
form the community
are the starting
point: without individuals,
there is no community;
at the same time,
the community goes
beyond them, or better, it draws
them to go beyond themselves
so as to find themselves in another arena of action
and mission -- the community itself.
This helps us to avoid what the document
called “stifling communitarianism”, which suppresses
freedom, initiative and individual
talents; it is a question of a call received from Jesus
who makes of those he has called a community
with himself and invites
everyone to go
beyond self in order to arrive at
a higher level, namely, that of community, of family. The mission is
given, at the same time, to each individual and
to the community. That the individual aspect not be overwhelmed by
conversion to the community is well expressed
in the first of the nine calls to conversion: “That
each Oblate reflect on the witness of his religious life, living the vows in a
prophetic way so as to share these values with the world, as an invitation for
others to join our Oblate family.” The subject of this invitation
is “each Oblate.” The starting point is always each of us as a person; here we
are asked to reflect on the testimony of our individual Oblate life and to live
the commitments of the evangelical counsels in a prophetic way, so that the
values which they represent might be communicated to the world and so that
other persons, through this testimony, might receive the invitation coming from
the very one who called us: to join our family.
A special
invitation is addressed to each superior and each community: when we say “each
community,” we imply that each community, within the whole of the Oblate
Family, plays the same role that individuals play in the local community. That
would be an interesting point to develop further.
When we consider the situation of our
communities around the world today, it seems clear that internationality is one
of its most obvious characteristics, a challenge that can determine the success
of our mission and our life in years to come. Looking at things more closely
and in view of communal conversion, the question that comes to mind is: Are our
differences really something we treasure? We often say so, and we like to say
it, but the question remains. The other, in his otherness, is he really a
treasure for me? I would not answer too quickly in the affirmative, for we have
a long way to go. I am convinced that we are only beginning, but it is
certainly worthwhile to face this challenge of being open to the concrete
reality of life in our communities and to pursue this goal. To love one another
-- someone whom we perhaps too quickly call our confrere -- is not so obvious, if
Jesus made it the second commandment, which completes the love of God and is
summarized in the Law and the Prophets! Without realizing it, and often very
subtly, we tend to liken the other to ourselves: what we like in the other is
what we already find in ourselves; what spontaneously brings us together is what we notice in the other that
resembles ourselves -- what we have in common. To love the other not only
because he is the other, but also so that he might be the other, that he might
be himself; to love him with his differences and his uniqueness: that is the
challenge for conversion to a community that will truly be prophetic.
