Community Not Disunity

C O M M U N I T Y   2 0 0 0  A . D .

(REFLECTION FOR COMMUNITY DAYS, September 09, 2018 –  S. Roberta Bailey, O.S.B.)

First written in 1984 when I was challenged to envision our community in year 2000.  The Word of the Lord came to me thus:

I will take you away, my people, from any disunity to which you have come, and gather you from all sides to bring you back to your charism.   I will make you one community in the hills of Pasco and you shall have one aim, one goal in life.

No longer shall you defile yourselves with uninformed opinions, opinionated statements, or long-standing grievances.  I will deliver you from all your small-mindedness and lead you, if you will follow, to single-mindedness.  I will cleanse you so that you may be your own person, each freely united to all the others.  Let yourselves be my people that I may be your God.

You shall live by my statutes and carefully observe my decrees: those you hear in the quiet of your own heart, and those you discern with others of my people in those holy spaces which you call chapel, chapter room, conference room, community room. . .  You shall live in the place which I gave to your mother Dolorosa, the land where your predecessors lived; you shall live here long years, you and your followers and your followers’ followers.

I will make with you a covenant if peace; it shall be an everlasting covenant, and I will make your number multiply and increase and I will dwell with you forever.  I will be your God, and you shall be my people.

Thus, all who see you shall know and come to believe that it is I, the Lord, who make you holy when you give me sanctuary among you.

They will report to others what they see and hear in this place.

They shall ask: “What are we to do?”  These people are performing all sorts of signs.

They speak and act with a respect and love unmatched anywhere.”

This is my promise to you, my people, says the Lord God: if you love one another, accept and support one another, openly and honestly challenge one another to grow, give me sanctuary within and among you, then you shall truly be my people, and I will be your God.