Life in Community, Life on the Road

Hard to believe, but we are nearly at the half-way point of our journey. We have already learned quite a bit about the joys and challenges of life in community. This is appropriate, in that we are following the trail of missions established by Franciscan monks who knew very well how difficult life in community can be.

I hope that these words do not indicate that we are not having a good time, or that we are not enjoying one another's company. Quite the contrary! But the reality is that it takes practice, patience, discipline, and love to learn how to live in Christian community. That is one of the chief reasons why monastic orders have communal (and individual) disciplines. We Christians forget this from time to time, which is why pilgrimage is so valuable.

When we are home, in the midst of our routines, family and school lives, activities, etc., we can get away and escape when communal life becomes difficult, challenging, or a bit overstimulating. When we are away, on pilgrimage, we cannot get away from one another, nor from God for that matter (indeed, there is an intimate connection between life lived with one another and life lived with God-God knows this, and wants us to remember it). Instead, we have to learn to live with another, to listen to one another, to appreciate one another's gifts as well as one another's limitations, and to see those limitations not as obstacles to our common life, but as reminders of why we need one another and as invitations into deeper communal life.

I pray that in the days remaining on this voyage, we continue to learn what it means to live in community, to seek in one another God's invitation to deeper communion with him, and to learn to live, laugh, and love one another, not in spite of our limitations, but precisely because of them.

With every good blessing,

Father Skutch