An Excellent Statement

"Today we are united in action and prayer all on our own and in our own time."

Community life bears a lot of resemblance to family life: the individual does not pick who she will be with, but she had better figure out how to work with those people because their daily lives are intimately linked with hers. The big difference is, where in families blood-bound affection covers a multitude of sins, communities must be very intentional, created by its members and carefully maintained.

Part of the deal in VIDES is participation in certain community activities, especially meals and prayer. The sisters here are anything but carbon copies (a whole series of posts unto itself) and they fly off in all directions after breakfast. But, part of their discipline is daily mass, recitation of the Liturgy of the Hours, and the Rosary as a community. They take their meals together, especially dinner, and all of these practices together help create a rhythm and a unity among the women of the community.

I noticed this first right when I arrived. I had started saying the Liturgy of the Hours about a year before I came here, so when I arrived I fell right into that part of the rhythm -- it was a familiar song I could join in, like the Mass. Then a few weeks ago, one of the sisters commented how how "neat" it was to hear me saying the set of prayers they always say after dinner. Most recently, at the Chapter, I noticed that all of the sisters, though many had not seen each other in years, had that "pick up right where we left off" thing going on.

Now, allow me to presumptuously postulate as to why this is: they can "pick up" because they never actually "left off". Community practices create a community that goes beyond a particular house. This is true practically and abstractly. The sisters are all over the globe, but they share a common bond born of their Salesian charism. Their "practices of piety", done in Christ's name with the aid of Mary, forge a real and lasting link that goes beyond common sentimentality, bridges geographic distance, and even transcends friendship. Friendship, beautiful and precious thing it is, requires us to at least kind of like the people we are friends with. Community demands love without regard for fondness. In other words, community demands (gasp!) charity.

Four of the ten sisters were gone all week for the chapter, and then today was a nutty, no-schedule day at the convent. Sr. Rosann wrote the statement at the top of this post on the white board to let us all know the usual schedule of meals and prayer would be set aside. Nonetheless, as she points out, the community remains united because of its practices and intentionality every other day. It's true -- I didn't see most of the sisters all day today, but I find myself feeling no less a part of that rhythm (and I'm a lay person. I can only imagine how it is for the sisters). The shared spirit remains in all the moments of the day when it is carefully built up in all the intentional times, and perhaps it is what makes us a community.