Here is a provoking question: what do you –who read this article-, think about the old saying, “Community life is my utmost penance”?

The more I go on in my life and my reflection on life, the more it seems to me that this statement is true only if we mean our “duty” of staying together. The penitential aspect has its own reason of being, but it is not all. Rather, I see it as the necessary action of something that opens spaces to what is indispensable for our communitarian being together: love.

Thus, the penance of forbearing (better, of “welcoming”) what you like and perhaps it causes uneasiness in me, allows me to activate a current of love. Then, this becomes joy in you and in me, because everything is love. Let us explore this dynamics better. 

First of all the personal search for peace

Maurice Bellet, an acute living thinker, writes, “the worse danger, today, is that our producing and consuming delirium, supported always by money, gradually succeeds to “produce” dehumanized human beings, without roots, future and consistency” 1.

It soon comes to mind, as contrast, the statement of Isaiah, “If you will not take your stand on me you will not stand firm” (Is 7,9b).

However, what do I mean by faith, today? People no longer admit a faith consisting only in intellective adhesion and a series of doctrinal formulations. This would be like a papier-mâché wall, which the pouring in of a swollen river sweeps away. 

Today, more than ever, the flooding waters of a wrong mentality pour in a mentality that makes us believe in happiness, wellbeing, expensive and convenient realisations providing such an enjoyable pleasure as the “privacy” may get its best and living together may be comfortable if it means fun.

We could object saying that we religious move along different ways.

It is true, but the apostolate itself (besides the not disciplined use of the “mass media”), involves us in the “dough” of this world, which is infected by this mentality.

We could define it as “materialist mentality”, but also a mentality of hurry, of racing, of feeling gripped by the urgency over urgency of unknown aims. They substantially aim at the requests of the globalising system at market level: to produce, to make money, to experience pleasure, to consume.

The complaint of anguish and the smell of death “drip” unobserved. from all this

It is just on this background that an inescapable way of inserting faith in life and life in faith gets the “go ahead”.  

«You shall have no stability unless you believe”, the First Testament says. The word of Jesus adds, “He who believes has eternal life”. Yes, here and now (“he has”, is the present tense, not the future one). He who believes vitally has the Kingdom of God in his heart. This Kingdom is his divine Presence with “Justice, Peace and Joy in the Spirit” (Rom: 17, 14).

It is indispensable for me in the morning not only to read, but also to ruminate the Word of God, if I want that this may give consistency to my days and become the vigour of my action. Above all, if I want the breath of peace to be set free in me, a breath, which I need very much.

We need absolutely to find times of contemplative quiet for this “rumination”.

I think of the animals ruminating in the sunny green pastures. All is silence and sun. The presence of the shepherd assures the safeguarding of that peaceful space.

This is how our days must be. Everything starts from here; everything depends on how we “ruminate” under the eyes of the One who safeguards us in love. The interiorised word becomes World of life. It puts my days in order. It prevents the chaos of thought and of feelings. It stops our worries, the killing worry typically of today’s “overwork”, of “running and running” in all directions.

The stability, which our faith-trust in the Word obtains, becomes breath, rhythm as well as peace.

For a positive relational life

Here we reach the point. I can enter a relational reality healed from conflicts, from blockage, from fears and defences, only if the peace of Jesus Christ, rather if “Christ, our peace” dwells in me, in the depth of my existence surrendered to Him.

Through our constant going back to the heart, remembering the morning ruminated Word, I charge myself with energies of peace, of a welcoming luminosity, which enables me to welcome the other in his diversity and of discovering that just this diversity  enriches me.     No one is an island, not even the hermit leaning against the cliff. Even less we who in the community experience a constant contact with the most different expressions of humanity.

There is the very much-learned sister, with a high quotient of intelligence, and there is the sister who can hardly read and write more or less correctly. There is the lively, creative and joyful sister who spreads good humour and colours her speaking with serenity; there is also the sister who, because of the old age or because of a fundamental temperament made worse by certain diseases, easily sees everything black and emphasises endless difficulties.

There is the sister who “does everything” and the sister who”does nothing”. There are sisters who like my own favourite authors and music, who are full of passion for whatever is beautiful, but there is also the practical type of sister, with good sense and immediate realisations.  

The community is a furnace. The fire is (or should be) the love of God, but the things we temper and mould in are very “different”. 

However, something communes all the sisters: the thirst for love and for happiness in love, which in our consecrated being, even within fatigues or distorted journeys, never extinguishes, they is never wholly suffocated

See, it is just within this thirst for love and happiness that the Lord calls me to risk myself with the simple and essential movement of committing myself with him as the unique peace. Entering into relation with the other comes soon after, just through this peace.

The other things come as consequence, if my stability and consistency rest on believing in his “being there”, in “his dwelling in me” and penetrating me with love energies. True, the different person at my side sometimes can wound me with deluding surprises of a verbal exhausting persistence, but it will be important to memorise the word of Jesus, “Do not fear, keep on believing, that’s all” (Mark 5, 36).

In moments of conflicts, what matters is just strengthening  very well the interior communion with God and making sure that his peace (the peace, which is deeper than any joy or sorrow, which St. Paul speaks of), may not be put in danger. Rather, we must see that it becomes an energy which, mysteriously spreading around us, influences also the person who has caused the conflict,

Yes, risking oneself in a positive relation means, first, to be vitally firm  in One who is not only divine Providence, but also sets in motion my inborn will of doing good  and also (at level of awareness or not) that of the other person.

It is at this point that love grows in my intimate being and peace puts its roots in me. Also in the other person, whom I enter in relation with, perhaps latent good feelings emerge with new openings to peaceful communication and to the happiness, for which God created us, both the other and mw.  

Sharon Salzberg writes, «When we have a deep vision of our interior world and of what brings us happiness, we walk in friendship with ourselves and with all beings. Then we understand the others intuitively, even without words and we can feel close to the experience of others, just as if no barrier existed among us to set the boundaries of our interest. We then come to realise that, when anger agitates in us, there is an element of sorrow, which is not different from the suffering others experience when they are angry. Then, when we experience love, there is joy in us and we understand that, because of the very nature of love itself the other beings experience the same joy in love” 2.

When it is in communion with the depth of my heart in the awareness of itself and of God’s presence, the relational nature becomes an important occasion for spiritual growth.  

There are certain modalities of relating with the other sisters, within the exclusive dynamics of immediate interests (even if they are apostolic interest), which produce nothing because they are immersed only into immediate finalities. They are like some kinds of friendship, which stick persons to banal pleasures, like the flies to the flypaper. Whatever is superficial, banal or bound to theories of duty or rigid formalities, extinguishes the relation, reducing it to “the utmost penance, at the most. 

The large spaces: the growth in communion

Without interiority, our reciprocal relations are a like plants detached from their roots. They cannot but whither and die.

However, wonderful spaces will open in us, if Love dwells in us, if our heart constantly turns to Him, to God’s presence with the strength of our personal integrating desire.

In the light of His Word, our mental “habit” puts on positive thoughts and our heart  converts itself constantly into patient love, which is never envious or jealous, never gets angry, nor destroys with negative judgements, but believes everything about the unique, unrepeatable  manifestation of humanity of the person made like me “to the image and similitude” of God.             Therefore, I grow within the clear perception that the one near me, must realise a project like me, a beautiful dream of God in his life; together with me, God’s project urges her along the way of holiness, the way of love and therefore the joy of sunny nature, the joy she and I need absolutely.

At this point the “positive thinking” of the best therapeutic journeys of the actual anthropological sciences, becomes our mental habit, life-style and way of relating with all beings, not only with the Sisters who are near me. Then, we really feel enriched by the “diversity” of each sister in the community.  In fact, within the constant interior push on behalf of the energy of Him who said, “They will recognise you as my disciples from the way you love one another” (see. John: 13, 35), we shall have a merciful approach to the defects and shadows of our sisters.  We shall be aware that also in us -often not perceived by us- there is “beam”, which solicits the patience of the other.

However, the best adventure will be that of paying attention to discover the mystery of the others with a sight decentred from the ego.

The human-divine mystery, which radiates from my entering a relation with my sister, is a launching stepping stone into deeper waters of understanding, truth, beauty, joyful expectation, love and communion.

The “seaweeds” of differences do not smell of salt  They spread the smell of God the Creator and Redeemer who created us for large spaces, the spaces of joy here on earth and of everlasting happiness in the harbour of eternity..