CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH

 

Fraternal Life in Community

 

The Lord’s own words regarding fraternal life are enough to make us want to reach out beyond ourselves and actually love as we have been loved, “By this they will know that you are my disciples, by the love you have toward one another.” “This is my commandment, love one another as I have loved you”. Our greatest testimony to Jesus Christ is the love with which we love the members of our community. The fraternal love of a religious community is essential to its mission and for its fidelity to its own particular charism.

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A religious order, congregation, society or community is a collection of the most diverse people you ever want to meet in your life. Each person is so unique and a mystery onto themselves that it can only be by the grace of God that they should dare come to live together. In the world, most religious would never have become friends, much less acquaintances with the members of their own community. Yet God, in His infinite kindness, has called them together so that they may give a testimony to the surpassing love of Christ Jesus.

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In marriage two people discern their call, one to the other. They seek to know if this person is the one to whom they will spend the rest of their life with. Once it has been properly discerned, they vow themselves to the other. For religious it is a bit different. We discern to know if we possess the charism of the founder of that congregation. It matters little if I’m attracted to the friendship of any particular individual. The important part is that I come to know that God is calling me to vow myself to Him among these others whom He has also called to Himself. I will spend the rest of my life with these people whom I hardly know. I will see them more than a married couple spends time together. Yet God calls us to walk with them and to love them with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength. Jesus calls us to work with these others, pray with them, recreate with them, minister with them and, if God so wills it, to die as martyrs with them.

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Fraternal life is both a gift and a mystery. It is a mystery because God has asked us to reach outside ourselves and by His grace love those whom He has given to us as a brother or sister. It is a gift because we are surrounded by others who are committed to help us get to Heaven. God has given us the support of our confreres and their guidance to help us along the way. These other people in the community have felt the same pull that we have to follow the Lord along the way of the founder. They too wish to become saints and they too know that mutual love is a prerequisite. In following God in community, we are never alone. Even in the strictest solitude and silence of a Carthusian Monastery, one is never alone.

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Communal life of the family is the first teacher in the ways of love. In the family, we learn to share, do our chores well for the sake of the others and we wait our turn. In the context of the family we learn to work together, play together, seek forgiveness, give forgiveness and, God willing, pray together. The family is the model for a religious communal life. Just like a family, you don’t get to choose those with whom you will live.

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Part of the struggles of young people living in community comes from the breakdown of the family. In small families where the child never had to share, the child can grow quite afraid of ever having to share. Or, where parents are separated and family life is tensioned filled, the concept of living in a stable form of religious life could be quite scary. Or, on the other hand, it could be quite attractive since religious life presents a way of life, a family life, of brothers or sisters that they never had.

 

Some people discerning will ask, what happens if you get stationed with someone you just don’t like? You know that person, that no matter what they do, just rubs you the wrong way. It’s a real question and if you’re lucky, it will be a reality in your life. What I mean by that is, the person who is your dear friend and pats you on the back all the time could be the true “enemy” of your soul. Sure, they’ll encourage you, but it could lead to a deep pride. The other person, however, who drives you crazy is your truest friend. Or, as St. Philip Neri would say, “If you don’t have an enemy get one!” St. John the Beloved says, “How can we say we love the God we cannot see if we do not love the brother whom we can see?” If we can come to truly love the one who drives us crazy, then we are fulfilling the Lord’s command to love one another, even our enemies. That’s the person I need to love. I need to love them because they teach me the most about myself. They will teach me the extent of my patience. They’ll let me see just how far my charity will go. They will show me the depth of my generosity and my own preferences for myself and my own comfortability. By loving the person that is hard to love, I learn so much about myself. It’s these people I need to love with all my heart, soul and strength. It makes us reflect on how patient, kind, generous and merciful God has been with us. Even though we have often despised His love, He has not stopped pouring love upon us. As St. Paul says, “We were all once enemies with God”. We need to show to those whom we find most trying the same love that has been shown to us.

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The benefits of communal life are innumerable. I always like to say that I became a religious in a strict community not because I am strong, but because I am weak and I need the community to help me remain faithful. Community calls us to pray and that prayer is accentuated by the voices of brothers or

sisters who pray with us. It’s a grace to have brothers or sisters at your side who are there to support you, build you up and encourage you to live the charism. There is a great grace in community that you can turn to your brother or sister for help and they are there. It is wonderful to go to a ministry as a group and be able to leave the place and hear them say “The Friars were here!” or “The sisters spent time with us!” Community helps us remain humble, hidden, obscure, yet it also allows us to reach out to so many people in such incredible ways.

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Fraternal life, communal life, is such a wonderful way to live out one’s vocation. It is one of the essential elements of religious life and it’s also one of religious life’s greatest tools for interior growth in holiness and for the upholding of the Body of Christ. If community life is lived well and according to the dictates of the institute, then it will attract vocations.

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Each order will have its own personality and will live communal life very differently, each according to their charism. For example, Franciscan communal life will be different from the Carthusians and they are different from the Dominicans or Camaldolese.

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However, there are common trends. The first is joy! There must be joy in the community. Not just a jovial joking around, but a peaceful disposition of true content with oneself, God and others in community. They must love one another. Recently a young man visited a religious community and he was turned off because he saw no joy in them. A former member of that same community said to me “I don’t know if they really loved me.” That’s not good! Every member of each community should know that they are loved by the other members of that community.

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One of the sad traits of present day religious life is what they call “Intentional Communities”. These are communities of religious men or women that choose to live together because they like each other. It is sad because it doesn’t allow them to truly act in love in the way that God has so designed it. Also, another sad trend is priests from religious orders, or brothers or sisters living on their own in apartments or in rectories. When a community abandons a person like this, or allows a person to isolate themselves in this way, something is seriously wrong. It goes against the very dictates of communal life.

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Another essential part of fraternal life is praying together. It may seem odd to have to say but, since the misinterpretation of the Second Vatican Council, many communities barely pray together. Most do the minimum they can. The Council actually asked us to embrace a radical life of prayer in community. Praying the full Divine Office in common, communal rosary and communal meditation periods are all part of a healthy religious community. If the community is going to have joy, fraternal peace and mutual respect and love, then it must begin in mutual prayer where the community comes together to praise, thank, bless and love God.

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A contemplative community has an apostolate of prayer and penance. The healthy contemplative community will have a “cooperate” understanding and practice of the apostolate. Active communities must also have a cooperate understanding of their apostolic activity. A community should be serving as a community and not as mere individuals. A common, community life, calls for a common apostolate. It has become all too familiar to see a sister working at this parish and the rest of the community peppered about, all working wonderful “jobs”. Or, a community that has spread itself so thin with individual commitments that there is hardly any time to be with the other members of the community. Finally, I should state that there is a powerful witness to a group of several brothers, priests or sisters ministering together and working toward the same goal.

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Fraternal life is really the hub of the wheel turning all the spokes in the same direction and keeping the spokes united as one. Without fraternal life, healthy communal life, why join a community? There are many of the same apostolic works or prayers that we can be doing on our own, as lay people. Fraternal life that is healthy, peaceful, joyful, sharing prayer and common meals, builds up the individual to become the saint that God has requested that they be.

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As you make your way around visiting religious orders, remember to take a good and critical look at how that community lives out its fraternal life. Examine to see if they really pray together as their founder had wanted. Do they enjoy being together? Do they speak behind each other’s back? Do they minister together, or are they all lone rangers? Is there real joy? Do they have a common understanding of their identity as an order? These and similar questions should help you take a critical look at the community, so that you can make a healthy choice for a good fraternal life.

Jesus Himself traveled in a community of twelve companions. Sometimes in groups of seventy-two. He sent them out in two’s and everywhere they went they established communities that grew into local parishes and eventually into entire dioceses. The Trinity Itself is a communion of persons. We are made in that Trinitarian image and likeness. While seeking ever deeper union with the Most Holy Trinity, we, especially we religious, must give the most loving example of the loving unity of the Most Holy Trinity.