Eugene continues to reflect on community and how each member is to be committed to it. He uses the concept of “house” in the sense not of a physical building, but of the place where the community takes a form.
One must moreover be greatly attached to the house. He who considers it only as a hotel through which he passes will never do anything good in it. One must be able to say like St. Thomas: “haec requies mea” [ed Ps. 131, 14: It is ever my place of rest; I will dwell there…] for the whole of one’s life.
I see that communities where this spirit is important are the ones which do the most good and where one lives the most happily.
May God give us the grace to be imbued with this truth and let us neglect nothing to instil it in our young people.
Letter to Henri Tempier, 12 August 1817, O.W. VI n. 20
The Community is not a Hotel
Amen to that. For a community to come together takes work. In our age and place here in Canada, we are seeking for what does community look like. It is not this or that, either/or, but I think a bringing together the past and the future dreams into the present. Throwing out the baby with the bath water has only made for some lonely older men and young men with out roots. What we need now maybe are communities that are open in which we share prayer, meals and the moment.
This morning Frank introduces us to the idea of a place where the community takes a particular form; not a place or form that is static, but rather is ever-deepening.
Upon first reading this my thoughts center on how one can allow this place to speak of the limits of time – as if I might put boundaries and walls around my oblation, or treat it as a time-limited interlude, a holiday…
The second time I read it I find myself focusing on “…for the whole of one’s life” – not so much the idea of the time span, but rather the quality of the journey, the wholeness…
It must be more than a mantle for specific or special occasions, or for a select group of people: rather it become a way of being, of bursting forth with life… with my breathing in and my breathing out…
It is more about the wholeness of my journey, as a pilgrim – in hope of communion… It is about how Isaiah spoke of and Eugene lived and how I might enlarge the space of my heart to welcome and accomodate all…
This is what God has created me for, where I have been planted, where I am nourished and become fruit for and with all others…