Category Archives: Community

Community, Formation

Community and Resilience

2 Comments

At the conclusion of a recent conversation, one of my closest friends said to me, “Thank you for believing so strongly in me. I hope I never let you down.” My response surprised him I think. I said, “You are welcome, and you will let me down. When you do, it will be ok.” If I could have finished my thought I would have said, “I don’t want to let you down, but it is likely I will. I hope it will be ok when I do.”

Authentic community is not suspended in the bonds of unity by the perfection of its members. It is not marked by all the members avoiding offense. It is not marked by the absence of conflict, disagreement, hurt feelings, sin or betrayal. Authentic community is marked by a love that transcends these human frailties and that unites each person to the other in a heavenly bond that perseveres in spite of our human frailty. This capacity for perseverance can be best described by the term “resilience.”

A dictionary definition of resilience might provide helpful reflection:

  • the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
  • the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.

A community’s resilience then is its ability to handle difficulties and to recover from them quickly. The general resilience of a community can be measured in the collective “toughness” of its individual members to deal with challenges and remain intact and healthy.

The resilience of a relationship and relationships in a community is determined by many things. The most powerful enabler of resilience is self-sacrificing love that flows out of and is empowered by our love for God. This love recognizes the profound depths of our own frailty and God’s provision. This kind of awareness sees the injurious or otherwise irritating frailty of others through the eyes of one who has been forgiven much and thus must forgive others and must remain in relationship. This humility knows its own sin and brokenness and lives in a state of profound gratitude to God for all that has been forgiven them. A perfect expression of this humility would never nurture a wound, harbor an irritation or withhold forgiveness because of the ever-present realization of how much they themselves have been forgiven by God.

Beyond authentic charity, another potent enabler of unity is the recognition that we need one another. God the Father through St. Catherine of Sienna has revealed that He has purposefully designed us in a way that we are insufficient in and of ourselves to attain salvation. He designed us to need one another for our salvation. St. Paul reveals in scripture that the Body of Christ is made up of many interdependent parts. This interdependency is akin to the kind of need mountaineers have for one another on a treacherous trek. All have a role to play in their own survival and the survival of others on the same trek. When one fails, all suffer. When one succeeds, all benefit and rejoice. Few expeditions achieve their ascent without authentic resilience. Many people and expeditions have failed due to a lack of resilience rooted in self-centeredness rather than other centeredness. To the degree that we are all other-centered our community resilience increases. To the degree that we are self-centered and focused on our own needs and desires, our community resilience decreases.

A third enabler of resilience in community is the embrace of a common rule of life. When Godward souls are called to a common standard that exists outside of themselves, the measure of progress on the journey is external and objective. Thus a common rule militates against an isolated self-ruled narcissism that judges and governs itself and others by its own desires, perceptions, preferences and standards. In this context, as we strive to ascend to the fullness of relationship with Christ, we are actually striving toward one another. The best way to illustrate this is to envision each member at the bottom of separate corners of a triangle ascending to God at the top. As each member ascends to God, they actually move closer to one another.

Questions for your consideration and response:

  • What characteristics have you experienced thus far in Apostoli Viae that have helped you increased your resilience?
  • Where do you feel we are weak or could improve our resilience as a group?
  • What role can or should you play to increase our resiliency?
  • What can you do to improve your own resiliency?

Unum est Necessarium

Dan

Community, Featured

Sacrament and Community

5 Comments

Dear Apostoli Viae Family,

I am at the Sacred Heart Retreat House in Alhambra California – a joyful expression of self-giving of the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles. As many of you know, the reason I am here is to promote awareness and devotion to the person and work of Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity. By God’s grace we were able to initiate a celebration that has become the national celebration for her canonization for the United States. Today we will have a kind of festival, reflections, and then Mass provided by Archbishop Gomez.

You are all on my mind in a powerful way as I pray this morning and meditate on this event, Saint Elizabeth’s unique devotion to the Most Holy Trinity and the profound insights of Pope Benedict the XVI whom I miss in a painful way.

Pope Benedict reflects that to assume that our participation at mass is to ensure own own private spiritual health is a supreme misunderstanding of what a sacrament truly is.

He asserts that Christianity, “by its very nature, is a mystery of union. The essence of original sin is the split into individuality which knows only itself. The essence of redemption is the mending of the shattered image of God, the union of the human race through and in the one Jesus Christ.”

The challenge we face in our culture is a radical isolationism that severely damages our ability to know union with God even as faithful Catholics. Catholic culture and thus authentic Catholic community no longer exists in the U.S. except in very unusual circumstances.

Pope Benedict goes on to say, “Union is redemption for it is the realization of our likeness to God, the Three in One. But union with Him is accordingly, inseparable from and a consequence of our own unity.”

My vision for Apostoli Viae is that we restore the shattered image of God through the shattering of isolation. That we destroy the distortion of God in our time as we restore authentic Christian community.

My vision is not of a community that merely provides formation and fellowship but one that reveals and lives the truth that we cannot ascend the narrow way alone and that we must depend on others on the journey.

This dependence is not a mere affinity of the faithful but a radical authentic love that allows for vulnerability and interdependence.  It is radical because it is so dramatically different from our culture. It is vulnerable because its members transcend the fear of interdependence knowing that without it, we risk a deadly isolation. When we are not vulnerable to one another, we make ourselves more vulnerable to the enemy of souls.

As the darkness descends only those who hold on tightly to God and one another will survive and provide a light to the world as it slogs into the gates of hell.

Of this I am sure to the depths of my being, the gates of hell will not prevail against the strength of one who clings to Christ, to His Church and to the expression of His Church that results in authentic and life-changing community.

God bless you. Be assured I carry you with me in prayer in a special way today.

Yours in Christ,

Dan – Unum est Necessarium