I have been preparing my article for the next issue of The Visitation. I usually muse over the topic for a good month or so before it all goes down on paper. This time, I find that I am bombarded with notions of community: how to live community, what is community? how does that translate to the Body of Christ? what are my communities?
The snippet that keeps coming back to me is where two or more are gathered in his name, there am I in their midst.
Justin and I, due to our vows, are always gathered in the name of Christ. That notion recently hit me like a ton a bricks. When we are having fun playing with Gracie, when we are driving to our cousin's birthday celebration, when we are in a heated discussion, when we work on publishing the next issue of the newspaper.... there Christ is!
Then I think about the family that was gathered around the Infant Jesus, the Boy Jesus, the Adolescent Jesus... What an image of perfection the Holy Family is. Christ literally was and is always present there.
A few months ago, a good friend recommended that I read Familiaris Consortio an encyclical by Pope John Paul II from 1981. It was an amazing read. I totally recommend it. Here is a tidbit of it as a reminder to what we are called to as a Christian Family.
...the family has the mission to become more and more what it is, that is to say, a community of life and love, in an effort that will find fulfillment, as will everything created and redeemed, in the Kingdom of God. Looking at it in such a way as to reach its very roots, we must say that the essence and role of the family are in the final analysis specified by love. Hence the family has the mission to guard, reveal and communicate love, and this is a living reflection of and a real sharing in God's love for humanity and the love of Christ the Lord for the Church His bride.
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