The title of this article gives much food for thought. The first thing to do is to put ourselves in the position of apprentices and ask again what is community? Who are part of the community? How did the community arise? “In the light of the Gospel” also challenges us. We have already been told that Gospel means Good News. What is the good news you are referring to? The Good News is that God not only creates, but enlightens and saves. God gives us guidelines to live well, but He also educates us and forgives us, accompanies us and calls us, seduces us and guides us to listen to His call, to be moved by His mercy and to accept with humility that He alone has all power and glory.
If we are to live “in community in the light of the Gospel,” the first thing is to listen to Jesus from the depths of our hearts. Otherwise, we cannot, even if we want to, make community as we expect it to be. In other words, it is the responsibility of each one to understand the other Christian who has truly listened to Jesus from the bottom of his or her heart. This is highly significant because unity occurs when we share the same truth, and in our case, we are clear that Christ is the Truth. St. Augustine reiterates this in many different ways and explains that truth unites in joy. It is neither yours nor mine, but everyone’s, and when two or more find it, they rejoice together. For this reason, when we speak of leaders, coordinators, those in charge of this or that activity within the community, there will always be two or three who do not understand the actions of the person in charge, who, many times, is so focused on his task that he forgets that it is Christ, with his sweetness and mercy, who goes before, in the center, to one side, and behind, of the community.
The attitudes into which we can fall can interrupt and even impede community living: from excessive contemplation to laziness, from authority to arrogance and ignorant substitution of God, from activism and speed to forgetfulness of God and the demand and reproach of the lack of help from others, from self-absorption to selfishness, from mutual praise and adulation to rivalry and competition. Do we want more? Each one, in the light of the Gospel, can begin by asking himself why I say I love God and fail to love my neighbor. What is it in our thoughts that obfuscate or suffocate our heart? Are we afraid to love and to be loved? Do we feel that the community invades my life? Do I feel that I am not worthy to love and be loved? What do I think of myself and others? And what happens in my heart from those thoughts?
Heart is a metaphor and refers to the will, to wanting to do, which depends on thoughts born of desires and phobias. So, if you want to live well, check your thoughts. Desire other things, desire better things than what you have desired until now, desire what Christ wants for you and for your fellow travelers. What do you want? Read the Gospel: Love one another as I have loved you. With Mercy.
We lie when we say we love God and do not love our neighbor. What does this mean? When does it happen that I am not loving my neighbor? Is it not, perhaps, often the case that I do not love him when I limit his potential, when I prevent him from developing his gifts and talents, when I do not take him into account for the shared mission, when I underestimate his proposals, when I prevent him from putting at the service of the community the calls that God makes to him and the motions that he has received from the Holy Spirit? In short: I do not love him when I do not allow him to be a self on earth with the same dignity that I have and that I defend for myself. “I want to have a meaningful life.” Well, that is what every human being wants. Do you love him and make a way for him to reach the meaningful life to which God calls him?
Community in the light of the Gospel is: here you do not command, nor do I command, here only Jesus commands and his Word is Love. The agendas, actions, schedules and spaces have the sole purpose of loving with God’s love in every part of the process, to live in God, with God and for God in all our interpersonal relationships. There is no human love, that is called affectivity, tendency, chemistry; true love is the love of God between humans. This is so because we are the image and likeness of God, capable of God, capable of loving one another as Christ loves us.