A Personal Reflection
We are built for community. The God we worship is a community of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Three distinct persons, perfect unity. The history of salvation is that God has saved a people. No one is saved alone. Even the hermits of the desert grouped themselves in communities.
I live in community because I can’t live the Gospel on my own. I need the encouragement, and the challenge, of other men and women who are striving for holiness. Otherwise, I get flat. I stop seeing the grand vision of what a redeemed humanity is meant to look like. This has happened in many parts of the Church. If things remain implicit for too long, they disappear.
If we are a Catholic family, a Christian family, but God is not spoken about or prayed to, and the children are not introduced to Christ or shown what loving him looks like; if there is no public testimony to him, even around the dinner table, and no support for living a virtuous life; if there is no evident life of faith, no standard of morality, then the whole enterprise can fall down like a house of cards. It cannot withstand the onslaught of an aggressively secular culture. We are witnessing this today. Christ may have won the definitive, ultimate war against Satan through his death and resurrection, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t losing the contemporary battle for the culture.
God forms communities
Community is a gift. People don’t form communities. God does. God moves in our hearts. He places a call. The desire to share my life with others may come from gratitude or deep need. Whatever its source, God is always on the move to draw me to himself.
For many of us, community was a place where we discovered that we had a voice, and gifts. A place where we were noticed, listened to, and encouraged. Community is made up of a million small gestures that let us know we are seen. Personal spiritual and psychological growth usually comes slowly, if it is to be lasting. It begins when I have a few trusted friends to whom I can reveal myself. Being known by others is key.
The self-acceptance that enables me to move forward with my life is the fruit that comes from sharing life, speaking the truth in love to one another. It is usually not “high octane” stuff, but it is one of the greatest helps we can give each other. It is a deliverance because it exposes all the lies we carry around inside. I have seen strong men weep in pain or sorrow, or because of experiencing the overwhelming mercy of God. But most of it is quite ordinary.
I do not spend my life in the heavenly realms; I spend it going to work and doing chores, meeting deadlines and taking care of my family. But in sharing life with others, I have learned that we are a lot more alike than we are different, that men who have a relationship with God struggle with the same things other men do: anxiety, lust, loneliness, greed, insecurity, fear, anger, jealousy, envy. You name it.
We all share the solidarity of a broken human nature. Call it the fraternity of the Fall. But in community I experience a power for healing and change that I never knew anywhere else.
The stability of long-term relationships
Good times and bad times. There have been lots of both. One of the main things that holds a community together is forgiveness. We mess up all the time. We need to ask, and offer, forgiveness frequently. Seventy times seven, Jesus said. The fruit of doing this, over many years, is the enormous stability that comes from long-term committed relationships.
In a community that works right, we get together in our brokenness and ask for help and prayers. We are patient with each other. Over time, we begin to see that our very limitations form the pieces of the puzzle that God is putting together, and that our limitations help us to fit next to someone else’s strengths, and vice versa.
This reflection © 2022 by Gregory Floyd is an abridged excerpt from the book, Unforgettable: How Remembering God’s Presence in Our Past Brings Hope to Our Future, chapter 14, used by permission of Paraclete Press. For a longer version of the reflection, see Life in Community: An Unforgettable Reflection, from the February 2022 Living Bulwark Issue.
Top image credit: People of Hope community members gather for worship and praise, © photo courtesy of the People of Hope.
Gregory Floyd is Assistant Director for the Center for Diaconal Formation at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey, USA. He is a coordinator of The People of Hope, a Catholic charismatic covenant community based in New Jersey, and a member community of the international Sword of the Spirit. Gregory and his wife Maureen are the parents of nine children. They live with their younger children in Warren, New Jersey.