PRIESTS/ The Aspiration to Live in Community

An excerpt from Massimo Camisasca's book "Padre. Ci saranno ancora sacerdoti nel futuro della Chiesa?" San Paolo, 2010. Forthcoming in English.

One of the most serious dangers for a priest is an affective vacuum: loneliness. This can coexist with the most frenetic activity, which is often the other side of the coin. During the day the priest is often besieged by an endless number of people expecting clear, reassuring answers to the widest variety of questions. Today, moreover, with the decrease in the number of priests, God’s minister often spends his time running from place to place, from church to church, from meeting to meeting. When he gets home and finds no one, except perhaps the television (the housekeeper of yesterday has almost disappeared), his loneliness makes itself felt. The presence of other priests in the house might not even lessen this, unless the priest is used to this arrangement since seminary and can appreciate the gift of companionship and refreshment they represent.

Nowadays in many dioceses, due to the lack of clergy, groups of parishes are entrusted en bloc to small communities of diocesan priests, who are called to live together. This is not an easy arrangement, and it probably has no future in places where there has not been an adequate preparation.

And yet, the aspiration to common life is inscribed in the priestly vocation, and indeed in the Christian vocation. It has given birth to various forms of expression: from monasteries to convents, to communities of canons, to diocesan presbyteries, to religious institutes. If we scan Church history, we see that very often the rebirth of this aspiration in men’s hearts, in the most varied and difficult circumstances, was the work of groups of friends, individuals who lived a profound communion together.

We must also not forget that the most fundamental expression of this is the family itself, to which God willed to entrust the future of humanity and the basic work of education. God has not arranged it that we are born alone. From the moment we come into the world, we are with others. We need to learn how to live with others, but this is also the only way to learn who we ourselves are. We have been made to be with others, and only become ourselves with others.

The human being bears within himself the promise of a lived communion, that everywhere in the world he is called to realize through participation in the life of those among whom he lives, in the realities of love and family and in the various forms of friendship. The grace of God is present in these realities, giving them the stability of the whole array of Christian vocations.

CLICK BELOW FOR NEXT PAGE