Community life

18 Dec 2017

#friendsintheLord, #prayer

“How do you see yourself living in a community?”

When I was asked this question – the first for one of my interviews for admission to the Novitiate – my mouth was (thankfully) full of ice cream, giving me a few seconds’ grace to come up with an answer.

Two months have flown by here in the novitiate, and as I’ve finally settled into a new rhythm, that question presents itself more and more concretely.

Being the eldest of five brothers, sharing a household is by no means new to me. Still, the context has changed dramatically: my newest brothers are 11 other novices, from four different countries, each bringing a vastly different experience of life. Add to this the different so-called «Apostolates» (work we do assisting parishes or institutions in Genova) we do, and even our daily experiences have become more distinct.

Though we may not all share the same language, culture, work & academic background, Apostolate and interests, we are united by a personal relationship with Christ and a deep desire to answer His call with love. So much so that, seeing life through the eyes of faith, our diversity is most certainly a strength and a gift to be thankful for, seeing in one another a different face of the love of God.

What to do with a gift like this? Use it! And in fact, our routine gives great importance to this sharing of ideas, opinions, experiences, interior movements, joys, concerns, strengths and weaknesses: whether it be through open discussions during mealtimes, daily evening recreation all together, Thursday outings hiking in the mountains/by the sea/visiting Genova, or discussing our weekly Movie Night or monthly CineForum.

But perhaps the highest expression of this daily diversity is through prayer. For us, prayer is a time to recognise and nurture the desires God has placed in our heart, to listen to Christ’s personal call, to deepen an intimate relationship with Jesus. But it is not a time of isolation: nothing we have and experience is ours alone, and this is true also of the graces received in our daily hour of silent morning prayer. For this reason we share graces, insights, reflections and consolations received during this encounter with God with the whole community during Mass as we present our intercessions.

Vespers, the prayer of the whole Church, is also preceded by a time of silent personal prayer, so that when we raise our hearts to God in unison, our common prayer stands on a deeply personal and individual experience of the Word of God.

Community life isn’t simply about ‘friendliness’, of which there is plenty, but sharing a life which is centered on Christ. And this is what it means «to be friends in the Lord», just like the first companions of the Society of Jesus.

Sullo stesso argomento

The repetition of prayer: a frustrating or deeper experience?

by Andrea Cassar

During the month of Spiritual Exercises, I lived and experienced for the first time what St. Ignatius of Loyola calls the ‘Repetition of a meditation or contemplation exercise’. This consists in meditating a Bible passage or any other exercise described by St. Ignatius for a second time, putting emphasis on those points in which one has felt major consolation or desolation or greater spiritual feeling (Spiritual Exercises [62,2]).

When I got to know that I had to do this type of exercise, I was struck by a feeling of frustration and asked myself: “What else can this Bible passage tell me?” This thought had crossed my mind many times before the month of Spiritual Exercises and, in fact, it happened quite frequently to meditate on the same Scripture passage with wariness, lacking an attitude of engagement with the text. During this long retreat, however, I noticed that my frustration and dissatisfaction were hindering me from accepting a profound truth: that prayer does not depend on my thoughts and expectations, and that I’m not the protagonist of such a time. On the contrary, it is the benevolent presence of God that awaits me and desires to meet me as I am, even though I could feel distant from Him.

In the Letter to the Hebrews, Saint Paul writes that the word of God is alive and active and judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart (cf. Heb 4:12); keeping in mind such truth, I didn’t feel the need to worry anymore about meditating the same passage and the same words of the Gospel. This experience brought about great inner freedom and it taught me how to let go of my expectations and ideals, which I usually set before starting the moment of prayer. With this disposition of the soul, I could face and engage, in much more depth, with the various repetitions of the Biblical passages, observing slightly clearer what my interior movements were telling me. Moreover, there were specific days where I experienced more “taste” in the second hour of prayer (the repetition) compared to the first hour, which proved to be hard and tedious.

I believe that this method of repetition, proposed by St. Ignatius in the Spiritual Exercises, could be useful and valid not only for personal and community prayer but also for our everyday life. Often, we find ourselves immersed in long days made up of a succession of things to do and this could provoke a sense of boredom and perhaps apathy in us, giving up on the beauty and surprises that such days could offer. In a world where joy seems to depend on the latest market news and the many earthly pleasures that weigh down the soul and try to wither our heart, stopping and taking the time to reread our days and delve into the true meaning of our everyday life may seem a waste of time. This is a real temptation and none of us is exempt from experiencing it, and could lead us to live our daily lives with mediocrity. Deciding to act against this temptation will help us recognise His living and consoling presence, particularly in those areas of our life where everything seems dull, unknown and dead.