Homily: Holy Friendship And Community Life

[FFI Griswold]

Ave Maria!

 

A brief homily on the blessings of community life:

 

Jun 14 – Homily – Fr Ignatius: Holy Friendship and Community Life
http://airmaria.com/2013/06/14/jun-14-homily-fr-ignatius-holy-friendship-and-community-life/

 

St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazienzen had a profoundly holy friendship. Father explains how community life is a great spiritual support where brothers encourage one another in the advancement of virtue, holiness, and zeal. Ave Maria!

 

In the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary,

 

fra John Paul

 

[inperpetuity]

Thank you, FFI!  Fr. Ignatius... :like2:

[BarbTherese]

Thank you for sharing this sermon, FFI.

As a person under private vows in secular life, I am particularly interested in community - while I live alone.  I had an opportunity recently to bring a few people together who had strained relationships - I brought them together with some others in a "drinks and nibbles night" here in Bethany.  Thankfully, very thankfully, The Holy Spirit and Grace was at work in the evening and it all went exceptionally well and strained relationships are now mended and true friendships being developed on an ongoing basis.

 

Referring to the sermon and link you gave.  I think that friendships on a supernatural level and with a focus to encourage each other ("every day encourage one another" Introduction to Prayers from Divine Office) can be formed out here in our secular life.  One way this can come about (but not the only way) is through membership of some organization within The Church for secular people.

         I smiled when the homily mentioned "Holy Envy" or observing virtue in others and then striving to do better than them.  I give thanks for those I might "Holy Envy" and for their important witness too - and strive to at leat imitate asking for The Grace to do so.

     Out here in the world and for it in secular life, if we are going to live in Jesus and in His Gospel, we are going to be counter cultural again and again - and this will not bring us praise very often - rather criticisms and even rejection.  Criticism and rejection were factors in the Sufferings of Jesus and while it is never easy at all, I think we need to be prepared to embrace same in unity with Jesus and His Sufferings which are redemptive down the centuries to His Return. 

     I smiled again when Father in the homily mentioned "I'm OK, you're OK", which of course was a bestselling book.  I never liked the book nor ever cared to read it, simply because my observation was that I am not always OK, nor are others.  Not only that, on the cover of the book, I read: "Climb out of the cellar of your mind".  This to me was another way of stating "Go out of your mind, go mad!"

     Father mentions psychology as a science - and indeed the objective with psychology and even psychiatry is to establish interior peace and harmony.  However as disciples of Jesus and His Gospel, we need to have a perspective on life that is based in Jesus and His Gospel - and this is what psychology and psychiatry very often are totally disinterested in doing.  As a sufferer of Bipolar and severely so over many years indeed, I had this problem often with psychiatry i.e. that it viewed my Faith as a pathology or illness that needed to be cured.  It was a hard 'fight' and difficult struggle to 'swim upstream' against the notions then of psychiatry about myself, but somehow I managed.  And of course, that "somehow" was Grace and The Holy Spirit right in that fight and struggle with me all the way.  Nowadays, interestingly, psychiatry in personal treatment of me recognizes my Faith as an interior strength bringing Peace rather than a pathology or illness.

        Father concludes his homily speaking of that endless restlessness that is ours who do strive daily to journey with Jesus and His Gospel but only manage to 'limp along' as it were - i.e. the endless and continual dissatisfaction with ourselves and continual striving to do better.  This bears out what St Augustine had to say "our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in Thee"

 

Thank you once again for posting the homily.  The building of community and what exactly a good community actually is should also be of vital importance, I hold, to those of us out here in the midst of all the battles and struggles and called by vocation and call to secular life - and we are plopped, as it were, right smack bang in the middle of it all and the absolute mess it can be - and ideally as real leaven in the mix striving to bring Jesus and His Gospel as present in it all.  Most of us are going to belong to a few communities probably in secular life.  There is our parish community, our family is a community as is our circle of friends, there is our particular neighbourhood community, workplace community and probably one or more social type communities - and there may be more.  In each of these, we need to strive to be a leaven - and leaven for Jesus and His Gospel.  Nothing in our secular life should ever be outside of our daily striving in and with Jesus and for His Gospel in our own personal life and in that of others in secular life, religious or not.   Very often it aint no easy task at all - and one that may ask suffering and even the suffering of failure - and the Grace and resolution to never allow failure to discourage, let alone despair - and no matter how often failure, even dismal failure, may visit.

 

Thank you again for posting the homily - and of great importance to us out here striving and struggling in secular life too!

[FFI Griswold]

Thank you for sharing this sermon, FFI.

As a person under private vows in secular life, I am particularly interested in community - while I live alone.  I had an opportunity recently to bring a few people together who had strained relationships - I brought them together with some others in a "drinks and nibbles night" here in Bethany.  Thankfully, very thankfully, The Holy Spirit and Grace was at work in the evening and it all went exceptionally well and strained relationships are now mended and true friendships being developed on an ongoing basis.

...

 

Thank you again for posting the homily - and of great importance to us out here striving and struggling in secular life too!

 

Ave Maria!

 

You're very welcome! It is a great blessing to not only listen to homilies every day in religous life (along with conferences and catechism), but to actually live with priests opens up a whole new world. We talk at lunch, so you can learn extraordinary things that you would never get outside, ask all sorts of questions, talk endlessly about saints, and really be formed in holiness.. not to mention all the little things in daily life, including work and playing sports and games.

 

One of our main apostolates is the formation of our Third Order Franciscans, who at various levels imitate the prayer life of the friars and sisters, which at the highest can be quite challenging. In the old days, cities would form because people would gravitate around monasteries, imitating the life of the monks inasmuch as their state in life would allow.

 

Praised be Jesus and Mary for you have received some of the fruit of our apostolate and living the community life! May God reward you for being open and truly discerning community life, even though He has called you to remain in the world, but not of the world, to be a light and extension of communities like ours.

 

Let us pray that discerners come to realize what a blessing community life is, for God, Who in asking us to surrender all for His sake, does so only to give us everything of His for our sake.

 

"A religious vocation is the greatest grace God can give a soul after holy Baptism,” -St. Mary Magdalen di Pazzi

 

“The Religious State is like the Promised Land; it is Paradise on Earth; it is a great Grace.” -St. Alphonsus de Liguori

 

"Is not that a holy state in which a man lives more purely, falls more rarely, rises more speedily, walks more cautiously, is bedewed with the waters of grace more frequently, rests more securely, dies more confidently, is cleansed more quickly, and rewarded more abundantly?" -St. Bernard

 

Ave Maria!

 

fra John Paul

[BarbTherese]

Thank you for your comments - and important comments to my mind.

 

I wholeheartedly agree that a vocation to religious life or the priesthood is one of the greatest gifts that God can bestow - and including for the reasons you have mentioned.  The more startling reality to me is that God should call to me (me!)in the first place - and why that call was to remain in the world and to strive to be leaven in its midst is a mystery to me.  I still love dearly contemplative life in religious life for example and at times can experience a 'holy envy' and a certain sadness (on the human level if not the spiritual) to know that I will remain outside it insofar as I know - but I know where my actual call and vocation is and where it remains to date and in that is my very real Peace, Joy and consolation spiritually.  I know that for various reasons I am attracted to religious life - but for far more important reasons decided against it and this was with sound spiritual direction and on an ongoing basis still after 30 years or more in secular life under private vows.

 

 God's Will and His Invitations can be very mysterious indeed and no actual reason can be fathomed - this side of Heaven anyway.  It is to embrace God's Will and His Invitations in all their various expressions (without needing, if necessary and indicated, reasons personally grasped) which can be our call and the way to holiness of life in all vocations.  I am, in this latter instance, thinking specifically just now of those who are suffering long term illnesses and other long term intense suffering in their lives - and heroically so with Faith and fortitude, confidence and trust in The Lord - and no matter their particular vocation and path in life.  Our circumstances come about through Divine Providence and circumstances just may present impediments to certain vocations and it can be a real suffering to embrace this in trust and in confidence and with Faith and fortitude.

 

Religious life and the priesthood offers many opportunities to grow in holiness and available 'at one's fingertips' within the life itself as you have pointed out - yet we do have saints who were not religious nor in Holy Orders - and holiness is our objective and goal ideally and no matter to which vocation we are called.  Undoubtedly, as Vatican II pointed out very clearly for us indeed, the laity has a very specific and vital, important, function in the life of The Church - and it asks understanding the vocation to the laity and very real personal commitment to this vocation.  It does ask very important special Graces since we do remain  in the midst of the world and can be subject to many temptations and distractions.  It also asks, to my mind, prayer and reflection on our Baptism, which has not come aboujt 'willy nilly' as some 'accident of fate',  nor by our parent's choice, nor our own choice at some stage, rather it has come about through Divine Providence and The Lord's choosing. "You have not chosen Me, I have chosen you".  Our Baptism is the call and vocation to holiness - to Love of God and neighbour.  A call to embrace and follow Jesus and His Gospel.  Any further vocation is the "how" of it all or the role we are called to embrace.

Edited June 19, 2013 by BarbaraTherese