Prayer and Community

Over the last 7½ months we have been living in a religious community. This is by far our most extended experience of living in a Christian community larger than just the two of us. As a community it is far from perfect, there are many aspects of the community life here which I would like to be improved. There are many inequalities which I think erode the sense of solidarity. However living in the less than perfect often orientates us towards the ideal. At its best living in this community has given me a glimpse of a way of life that I find very inspiring and life giving. The community here both prays together and lives together as a family. These two aspects of life knit together very closely. It is from this life of prayer and community that the Salesians find their inclination and energy to work for others.

To pray is to be infused from within by the presence of God, a presence of absolute affirmation and love. To pray is to be taught how to love yourself. It is from this experience of being loved that we are both enabled and propelled to love others. The most natural action of someone who feels that he is both loved and affirmed is to love others. To the extent that we can love ourselves we are drawn inevitably towards loving others.

Prayer leads us towards community.

Living in community involves both joys and challenges. The experience of living closely with others puts our capabilities to forgive and to be reconciled constantly to the test. Through this process of being pulled closer together in constantly reconciling ourselves to each other we are also drawn towards God.  If we are living closely together in community then prayer follows almost automatically.

Community leads us towards prayer.

That is the theory but Christianity, of course, is not an idea we can learn intellectually; it can only pointed towards, not contained by words. Understanding of the Gospel only comes through living relationships. It is in our encounters with others that we really discover the Gospel.

Knowing how to love the students here has been a source of constant questions for reflection. A certain small section of our students have been persistently lazy and unwilling to work. Knowing the right balance to strike between force and encouragement is not always easy. If I thought that deep down they didn’t want to learn then the right thing to do would be to let them stop. But I know that this is not the case, they do want to learn but just aren’t mature enough to turn this desire into reality. A few weeks ago we finished our final exams. The policy is that each student gets three chances to pass each subject before being given a failing grade. Of the seventeen who failed there are ten who have been constantly lazy, absent, uncooperative and sometimes disruptive, some of them have even tried to blame their failure on us. Justice dictates that they deserve to fail; fairness to the other students requires us to fail them.

But our experience of prayer and community encourages us to look at the world differently. What about love? Love is not interested in justice or in what is deserved; it is interested in reaching out to those in most need. My natural inclination was to fail them and my (I think) justified anger with them impelled me to fail them. But what about love? When can it be said that by their actions they have decided themselves to fail? These questions have been a real struggle. How can we allow our faith to shape what we do?

Steph and I are running additional classes; we are giving them a fourth chance to pass. It isn’t really what I feel inclined to do but it is what I feel I ought to do. Is it right or is it wrong?

Prayer and Community create these dilemmas. Perhaps I am continuing to teach because, just like my students, I have desires to be good that I sometimes lack the maturity to accept.