Quotes About Community

Community as discipline is the effort to create a free and empty space among people where together we can practice true obedience.

Community has little to do with mutual compatibility. Similarities in educational background, psychological make-up, or social status can bring us together, but they can never be the basis for community. Community is grounded in God, who calls us together, and not in the attractiveness of people to each other. There

God is the hub of the wheel of life. The closer we come to God the closer we come to each other. The basis of community is not primarily our ideas, feelings, and emotions about each other but our common search for God. When we keep our minds and hearts directed toward God, we will come more fully "together.

A true disciple of Jesus will always go to where people are feeling weak, broken, sick, in pain, poor, lonely, forgotten, anxious, and lost.

Your unique presence in your community is the way God wants you to be present to others. Different people have different ways of being present. You have to know and claim your way. That is why discernment is so important. Once you have an inner knowledge of your true vocation, you have a point of orientation. That will help you decide what to do and what to let go of, what to say and what to remain silent about, when to go out and when to stay home, who to be with and who to avoid.

Community thus is obedience practiced together. The question is not simply, "Where does God lead me as an individual person who tries to do his will?" More basic and more significant is the question, "Where does God lead us as a people?" This

It is not easy for us, busy people, to truly receive a blessing. Perhaps the fact that few people offer a real blessing is the sad result of the absence of people who are willing and able to receive such a blessing. It has become extremely difficult for us to stop, listen, pay attention, and receive gracefully what is offered to us.

We all are children and parents, students and teachers, healers and in need of care.

They discover that there are people who heal each other's wounds, forgive each other's offenses, share their possessions, foster the spirit of community, celebrate the gifts they have received, and live in constant anticipation of the full manifestation of God's glory.

when prayer is no longer its primary concern, and when its many activities are no longer seen and experienced as part of prayer itself, the community quickly degenerates into a club with a common cause but no common vocation.

being alive means being loved.

Deep and mature friendship does not mean that we keep looking each other in the eyes, constantly impressed or enraptured by each other's beauty, talents, and gifts, but it does mean that together we look at the one who calls us to a life of service.

When we lift the cup of our life and share with one another our sufferings and joys in mutual vulnerability, the new covenant can become visible among us. The surprise of it all is that it is often the least among us who reveal to us that our cup is a cup of blessings.

Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears and to open our houses to the stranger, with the intuition that salvation

It is hard for me to imagine what it means to be a complete foreigner, a person to whom no one shows any sign of recognition.

Around the table, we know whether there is friendship and community or hatred and division. Precisely because the table is the place of intimacy for all the members of the household, it is also the place where the absence of that intimacy is most painfully revealed.

When we accept our complete belovedness, we stop judging ourselves and other people; as a result, other people begin to feel safe with us. When we open the hospitality of our hearts to the Spirit, the Spirit frees us to extend hospitality to our fellow humans and all God's creation. The Spirit's hospitality becomes ours, and we experience the alignment of our will with God's will—a traditional definition of successful discernment.

As the Beloved ones, our greatest fulfilment lies in becoming bread for the world. That is the most intimate expression of our deepest desire to give ourselves to each other

In solitude we discover that community is not a common ideology, but a response to a common call.

Real loneliness comes when we have lost all sense of having things in common. When

When we dare to speak from the depth of our heart to the friends God gives us, we will gradually find new freedom within us and new courage to live our own sorrows and joys to the full. When we truly believe that we have nothing to hide from God, we need to have people around us who represent God for us and to whom we can reveal ourselves with complete trust.

Where does God lead us as a people?" This question requires that we pay careful attention to God's guidance in our life together, and that together we search for a creative response to the way we have heard God's voice in our midst.

Why is it, that many parties and friendly get-togethers leave us so empty and sad?

But once I am able to truly confess my most profound dependence on others and on God, I can come in touch with my true self and real community can develop.