My day began with an email Easter greeting from a diocesan priest who I and other priests in my religious community assist since he is alone and is the pastor of the largest parish in our diocese. He acknowledged that with the pandemic parish life has had its challenges, living alone and apart from parishioners, learning to use modern day technology, stream mass and other religious services.
For my part I replied saying that living in a religious community with twenty other priests, together for daily liturgical celebrations, meals, fraternity was helping us navigate the challenges of the pandemic. He replied that at times such as this he wished he too were a member of a religious community.
It was only later when I was preparing the homily for mass today and read the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles and how St. Peter described the community of believers who were of one heart and one mind and no one claimed any of his possessions as their own, that I had one of those moments when all I could think of was, that’s what I am living at this very moment. I’ve been a religious for over 50 years and have tried to live out the Constitutions of my religious congregation but this was a Eureka moment, a moment of truly sensing satisfaction and believing that the life I was living in community with 20 other brother priests was what Saint Peter described.
By the grace of God, I have been living in an intentional religious community in many ways like the one that Peter described in the Acts of the Apostles. The Holy Spirit and the Resurrected Christ that Peter spoke of as being present in his community is with us today. The wind that blew through the community Peter described is also blowing among us and like them we too believe Jesus is Risen.
In our prayer lets us ask God’s for his guidance as we seek to be of one heart and one mind in our families, our church and local communities.
