Thursday, July 27, 2017

Parable and Conscience Meditation July 27

Community  July 27

Those engaged in an apostolate need understanding, respect, and often active cooperation from the other members of the community (Const. 22.5).

Understanding, interest and collaboration are the offspring of a marriage between personal apostolic aspirations and those of the community.  According to the Constitutions, pastoral commitments, whether communal or personal, are always the fruit of community discernment.  (We Crosiers practice the “community of goods” at all levels of our life so as to avoid every trace of individualism.)  In this context, it is expected that the confreres show mutual support in the various works decided upon by the community.  If the confreres are not engaged in a common community apostolate, each of them tries to be aware of the work of the others.  Each one wishes the others well, giving them the freedom necessary within the limits of community agreements.  Everyone is attentive to everyone else’s pastoral joys and burdens.  There is a real effort to follow the development of projects, even to offer a word of advice or a helping hand here or there as desired.  All consider themselves agents of a single community mission, inspired by the Spirit of diversity, however multiform that mission might be.  All do their work in this fraternal confidence.

People who don't know how to agree are like water which falls abundantly:  they do not follow the same route.  (Lega)

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