It seems to me that I have never known a person free from this desire for total welcome, for unconditional acceptance, which comes naturally to me to call longing for communion. Longing because at the beginning of our earthly life there is a maternal womb to welcome us and perhaps also because at the beginning of the boundless mystery of every human life there is the Trinitarian communion of God. It is therefore our origin, founded on communion, that we always pursue in our life and that we seek to build in our relationships of love and friendship which, alas, are strewn with difficulties and often fail miserably.
Yet nothing succeeds in extinguishing entirely the faint flame of this desire for communion, a hope that sometimes seems senseless to us but at the same time tells us that yes, it is precisely to this that we are destined.
Many groups today offer man refuge for his uncertainties, human warmth for his solitude, but are they all equally adequate to his deepest expectations? Jean Vanier helps us, in a small book, to discern this, he helps us to judge: and we know that we can trust him.
He tells us that in some of these groups there are traits, more or less accentuated, proper to a sect rather than to a community: what are they?
- The closure toward the external world: only the leader is considered the inspirer, the holder of truth and his authority is undisputed.
- The strong push toward proselytism, the continuous search for new members because the group feels itself the unique bearer of truth and salvation.
- The consequent division of society into good and bad with the impossibility of maintaining relationships outside the group.
- Individual conscience, freedom and critical capacity are manipulated and sacrificed: one obeys slogans rather than attempting to deepen the truth together.
- Distressed and fragile persons are attracted by these communities, but their anguish, even if soothed, is not truly healed while it becomes impossible for them to leave the group.
These characteristics thus render the group sectarian and dangerous, no longer of real help to its members.
J. Vanier observes that even in a Christian community, especially at its beginnings, some of these negative elements can be present, but if the group grows and matures, they must diminish and disappear while the positive traits that distinguish it will increasingly become evident.
- The person is encouraged to use all available resources in the Church and in society for the sake of his better human and Christian formation.
- Members, invited to enter, can try and assess whether and how much membership in the group is useful to them: if the experience were not positive they are helped to leave peacefully.
- The community encourages its members to open themselves to others, to offer warmth and friendship to those who feel its lack more acutely, to come into contact with other Christians, with other movements to accompany themselves with.
- Authority is exercised increasingly as discernment and dialogue; each person must grow and take on more responsibility in his own life and in the life of the community.
I am very sorry to have to confine in a few lines what J. Vanier explains and clarifies so well in his book and this urges me to recommend reading it. I am convinced that the theme of communion concerns us all, from young people preparing to form a family to elderly persons who can discover how to illuminate in new light the most important part of life. Because we feel that only in this climate of affectionate communion can we build and define our humanity, can we become aware of our limits, accept being contradicted, feel ourselves desirous of learning and growing, finally become ourselves capable of offering in turn warmth, support, friendship (also) to others.
- Lucia Bertolini, 2000