simple one: commit

a commitment to follow Christ without compromise.
• focus on prayer and personal conversion.
• remain devoted to radical hospitality, especially for the poor.
• allow the Holy Spirit to guide our marriage and family through prayer, fellowship and leadership.
• provide for large degrees of individual freedom in the Holy Spirit.
• remain ecumenical, with an outlook that is global.
The way in which the Holy Spirit leads Miranda and Me to guide our marriage, family and community:
Be faithfully dedicate to a lifetime of continual conversion in Christ.
To be a Christian is to follow Christ; to be a Christ follower in every way. It is to live one’s life in a specific way, excluding nothing. But we cannot follow Christ simply by deciding to do so. Like all humans we are deeply involved in evil, in a great many ways, most of them invisible to us, and we cannot follow Christ until we acknowledged this evil and have taken steps to deal with it. We must change. We must become radically different if we want to follow Christ, if I want to be truly alive, as he was truly alive.
To follow Christ is to love as Christ did, to heal as Christ did. To do so requires fundamental and continual changes in both our conscious and our unconscious being, in both what we intend to do and what we do unconsciously. It requires changing the spiritual forces we are associated with—rejecting the old ones and inviting new ones to take their place. The good news is that in Christ we are capable of change. Like our fellow humans who encountered Jesus during his life we also can be healed. Our lives can also be transformed. We too can adopt new values. We too can live in new ways.
That is why the Christian message is called gospel, which means good news. This great change, this conversion, is a journey we can take only by deciding to do so. It begins at a specific time and place, with a decision to move to another place, through time, and like all other journeys this one also requires that we leave the place where now are. And like all other journeys this journey’s destination can be reached only by following the first step with a second, and then a third, and then a fourth—day after day until the days become years, and the years become decades, and the steps become miles, and the miles become great distances. This is a journey that takes a lifetime. It is a journey that continues through to eternity. Like all journeys this one is made in companionship; a marriage to continue through to eternity.
I believe that we are called together because if we were to attempt to make it alone we will soon run out of food, and at night there will be no one to watch while we sleep. When we fall there will be no one to lift us up. When we become discouraged there will be no one to raise our spirits, and when we become lost there will be no one to point the way. To embark together on this great journey is the whole purpose of our marriage and our family.
To have been given the opportunity to make it is the greatest gift anyone can receive; a gift we will pass on to our children. We accept it with joy. And keep nothing for ourselves. All glory is given to Christ.
Continually relearn to pray.
Prayer is the primary means of our continual conversion. Prayer is to consciously and with full intentionality accept God’s presence in the place and time where we actually are, and to respond to that presence as we would to a person—with conversation. It is impossible to encounter God in conversation without being changed at the very core of our being, and it is impossible to be changed at the very core of our being without communicating with God in this way.
As we converse with God we become more like God. We become more able
to love, more able to create, more free and more disciplined, more able to hear and to see, more able to heal and to reconcile. To be converted is to become like God, and we can only become like God by knowing God, and we can only know God by spending time talking and
conversing with God. This ability to be in conversation with God is innate within us, something that is part of our essential humanity. We have been created to pray, and to do so is as natural as eating or breathing. Prayer is so fundamental to being human that it requires an act of the will not to pray. But prayer is also something we must always continue to learn to do.
We will view our prayers as a great privilege, not an obligation. Only when your prayer brings you deep and visible joy can you be certain you have been speaking with God. How can those who truly know God be anything but joyful?
There are many ways to pray, and all are equally valid. Just as we interact with other humans in many different ways, so our interaction with God will take place in many different ways. We will continually make time to pray together everyday in creative and new ways.
Continually choose to be whole through Christ in community.
When we were created we were endowed with enormous potential, of many different kinds. It is God who gives us this potential, and it is God’s greatest desire that we realize this potential, that we become the persons God has created us to be. Whatever our condition, we always have available to us important new potentials, which are waiting to be acted on. We will constantly seek these potentials, and as a result we will become encouraged by God's provision. We will be strengthened only when we accept the potential God has given us. It is only by accepting these gifts that we become truly God’s children, in the way that God has intended us to be. It is by becoming whole persons that we become holy persons. When we follow Christ we become what we are created to be, and our defects
gradually disappear, for our defects are the result of ignoring our potential. There is only one defect that is truly fatal, and that is the failure to live out the potential given us in creation.
One of the greatest potentials we have been given is our capacity to live in community, and it is only by accepting this gift and living it out that we become fully human and fully Christian. But to become a whole person we must choose to live in a community which exists to empower its members, to make them whole. Such communities must be formed intentionally, for virtually all existing communities are founded on the assumption that human communities can only succeed by placing the community’s needs ahead of its individual members’ needs, and by forcing dissidents to conform.
That assumption is based on a certain realism, for when communities are made up of people who are acting only in their self interest constant coercion is required to keep these communities from disintegrating into chaos. But by making conversion and prayer central to our lives we have the capacity to create entirely new kinds of communities—communities which exist to empower and free their members. That is the kind of community Christ created, and by following Christ without compromise we can do the same. To form such communities requires constant intentionality and great perseverance. Furthermore we expect constant struggle and great resistance from those who still hold to the old assumptions. But you will also meet with great approval and assistance, for this way is the way we were created to live.
The greatest act of love any individual can offer the world is to become the person she or he was created to be. And the greatest gift any community can give the world is to provide a living example of a place where the people who live in it are enabled to serve the world. We will only be happy in shalom if we give these gifts.
View the world as a garden to be tended.
We will be intentional with our participation in economic activities as a way to serve the world, as a means to achieve our central calling as Christians. It is now possible through Christ for us to see our mission as transforming human society by becoming involved and embodying Christ-like values—committing to love, stewardship, forming a strong family, and building grace and peace in the lives we affect. If we choose to view the world as a place of danger to be avoided, it will become that—a lawless jungle in which we are trapped. If instead we choose to view the world as a garden to be tended, as a great gift given to us by God, it will become what God intended it to be—a place of great beauty and happiness. Do not flee the world. Enter joyfully into its problems and possibilities.
Love the Body of Christ
We acknowledge that we are part of the larger Body of Christ. We were born of this Body in Spirit, and have been fed by it. We Love the Body of Christ as we do our parents. We are called to be different than other Christians only so that you can be models for them. Your task is not to be superior to them, but to be their servants, equipping them for their own ministries, which will very often have much greater impact than your own. One of the most important gifts we can give is to furnish the Body of Christ with usable and effective models that other Christians who wish to live more intentional Christian lives can follow.
We will continually allow ourselves to be fed by the Body of Christ, so that in turn we can
feed the Body of Christ.
Note that those Churches which view themselves as an alternative to the Body of Christ rather than as part of The Church have always eventually adopted beliefs and
practices that were held only by that community or convention. These self-selected beliefs have in the end always proven to be mistaken, and have in the end destroy the communities that select them, along with the lives of their members, especially the children.
We will constantly test our practices and beliefs against the Great Tradition of the
Church. It is here that you will find preserved those beliefs which have been shared and affirmed by the Christian community throughout the centuries. Note that those who have dissented from some portion of the Great Tradition have also disagreed with all others who have dissented from it. Be in constant conversation with other Christians, especially when you
believe them to be mistaken. It is in conversation with those you disagree with the most that you have the most to learn. We will affiliate our community with the parishes and congregations in your area. We will seek to become servants of these communities, helping them deal with the real problems of the people in them. We will continually recognize that we cannot follow Christ outside the Church, for the Church is the Body of Christ.
Combine the inner and the outer, the visible and the invisible.
Vital Christianity has always come from those communities which were consciously dedicated to combining the inner life of prayer and spirituality and the outer life of action in the world. To achieve this combination we will continually recognize that we must put prayer first. Sincere prayer will always lead to effective action that heals the world. But when action is placed first it always crowds out prayer, and the end result is an increasingly sterile attempt to give to ourselves what only God can give to us. This is the essential lesson to be learned from the long history of Christianity.
But placing prayer first does not make prayer more essential than action. The
experience of the Christian community is that when prayer is separated from action, especially when it becomes a substitute for action, the persons and communities involved soon degenerate into a self-absorbed pietism that is the exact opposite of a truly Christian life.
Maintaining a fully Christian combination of prayer and action requires replacing the mind-body dualism that pervades our civilization with a holistic Biblical view of reality.
The human person is not a ‘ghost in a machine’ or 'a brain in a vat', as some philosophers have put it. We are embodied spirits, in which the physical and the psychic can be distinguished but never separated.
The same God created both the physical and the spiritual, and is equally present in both—and above all in the relationship of the two. Replacing the dualism embedded in our culture with a more realistic view of reality is the most counter-cultural task we will ever need to undertake, but unless we do so we will experience constant failure. The dualistic assumptions that our culture holds require us to make a constant series of decisions about what is important and what is unimportant—choosing between the spiritual and the material, the personal and the social, the emotional and the intellectual, the masculine and the feminine, the old and the new, in an unending series. We will only succeed by asking in Christ how these polarities are related, since they are all equally part of reality. This will give us the ability to form combinations that others think are impossible, and these combinations will give you great power, a kind of power no one else has. We can follow Christ only by building on the same foundations He built on.
Combine freedom and community.
God has created each of us to be an utterly unique individual, with characteristics and talents that no other person has ever had, or will ever have, and with a purpose in life no other person has had or will have. And each of us has been endowed by God at creation with a completely free will, which can never be coerced or ignored. It is equally true that we have also been created by God to live in community. We are not only utterly free and unique, we are utterly dependent on each other. The experience of human history is that unless we accept the gift of community we quickly lose the gift of individuality, and that unless we
accept the gift of individuality our communities weaken and die. We are called to empower the individuals we are in community with. Also, we are called to enrich and empower the community in which we live. There is no contradiction in this. The strongest individuals are always those who live in the strongest communities. And the strongest communities are
always those whose members are the strongest individuals. It is impossible to create a strong community from weak individuals, and it is equally impossible to form strong individuals in a weak community.
We will continually embrace our freedom as an opportunity to serve. When we consciously make this choice, we will enjoy true freedom in Christ, for freedom consists not in the absence of restraint but in choosing life-giving goals and in having the ability to achieve those goals.
We will constantly guard against individualism of all kinds. By acting together we
can transform our world, but we will only make our world more fragmented and more violent if we join in idolizing the autonomy of the isolated individual. But we will also guard against collectivism of all kinds. It is as great a threat to successful community as individualism, for it ends in the individual’s destruction, which in turn destroys the community. We will embrace the opportunity to work together as a gift, not as a burden and let our marriage be an example to everyone in both the Church and the world that individuals become more powerful and more free when they are released from the crushing burdens of individualism.
We will view ourselves as cells in a body—small entities when viewed alone, but
essential entities when viewed as part of the larger whole.
Befriend the poor.
To follow Christ is to treat the poor as we would treat Christ himself—to become their friends, people from whom we receive and to whom we give. If we see the poor as Christ we will not view them simply as strangers who want something we have, and whom we can ignore if we wish. We will instead view them as our equals, people who have something important to
give us from their experience, which is very different than our own. At the end of our lives when we stand before Christ we will be asked how we have served those most in need. What will matter then will not be our sacrifices or the other efforts we have made—but only what we’ve given to those who needed it most. Unless our lives have been lived in a way that has shared in the lives of the poor, especially the poorest of the poor, and has made these lives better in some practical way, we will stand before Christ ashamed. Poverty and suffering are not something to be avoided, nor are they problems to be solved. They are an essential part of every human life, and they are the parts of our lives that bring us closest to Christ.
Expect weakness and evil, and be prepared to deal with them.
Accept weakness and evil as part of the human condition, and openly acknowledge them so that they can be healed. If we seek to conceal our own weakness and evil, or to avoid the weakness and evil of others, we will have chosen to follow the Pharisees, not Christ. Do not be discouraged by weakness and evil, or contemptuous of others because of it. That is also Pharisaical. Accept the weakness and evil in yourself as an opportunity to be healed, and the weakness and evil of others as an opportunity to serve them. Everything that is acknowledged can be healed, but only what is acknowledged. Perfection in Christ comes from confronting and accepting our imperfections, not from attempting to hide or deny them. Always remember that those who are most idealistic and who have the highest aspirations inevitably harbor real evil in that part of their psyches which they keep hidden.
Avoiding weakness only grows weakness. This is why it is so important to be aware of our weaknesses and to seek healing. We will succeed to the extent that we are healers and must always remember that we become stronger when we tend to our brokenness.
Let our lives be lives of intentionality to Christ.
To act intentionally is to make a conscious choice to make a conscious choice. It is something that only humans are capable of, and it is in using this capability that we become fully alive in Christ. It is possible to cultivate intentionality, and doing so is our greatest source of strength. It is this strength that has made it possible for the relatively small intentional communities that have existed throughout history to have an impact far beyond their numbers.
Constantly ask, “Why am I doing what I am doing?” and, “Why are we doing what we are doing?” Only when you can honestly answer these questions by saying, “Because I have chosen this, and I have chosen it for this reason” are you acting intentionally. And you will be acting with Christian intentionality only when you can answer, “This is what Christ, through the Holy Spirit, is asking me to do,” or “asking us to do.” Only when all the decisions in a community are made intentionally, and all decisions are based on the living presence of the Holy Spirit in that community, and in the lives of the individuals in that community, can that
community claim to be a truly intentional Christian community.
Choosing to live intentionally will also strengthen us by allowing us to profit from our mistakes. Growth is the goal, and we grow only by learning, and we learn most from our mistakes, when we choose to do so. With great intentionality embrace Christian intentionality as your way of life, and teach it to others. Intentionality is the only alternative to ideology and addiction, and only by intentionally adhering to it can we avoid the two great curses of previous intentional Christians—legalism and fanaticism.
Cultivate the life of the mind.
The intellect is a terrible tyrant, as all who have tried to live exclusively intellectual lives have discovered, but it is a wonderful and powerful servant, and all those who have successfully preceded us on the path of Christian intentionality have been notable for the clarity of their thought and their speech. They have tended to their own education and to that of others. They have read books, and they have written books. They have attended conferences where new ideas were being discussed and they have proposed new ideas. They have engaged in constant, serious dialogue with other people, especially with those they most disagree with.
They have done so because it has brought them closer to the Divine, and because it has enabled them to understand others much better, and thus to serve others more effectively.
A developed intellect enriches prayer by expanding it beyond the realm of the personal into the universal. It allows us to expand our spirituality beyond our own experiences and opinions, and to incorporate the experiences and insights of others. Our service to the world becomes more effective because we are enabled to see the primary causes of human problems and needs, and not simply the outer manifestations of those problems and needs.
Our communal life expands in extent and depth because we are enabled to see the vast extent and diversity of the human family, and are not be limited to our encounters with those we meet in daily life. To follow Christ is to learn to think like Christ.
Be open and realistic about sexuality.
The sexual passions are an essential part of the human gift, given us by God when we are created as human persons. To accept these passions is to accept life. To reject them is to reject life. When the sexual passions are gratefully accepted and integrated into our conscious personality they become an important source of power. When they are ignored they become a hidden source of depravity and dishonesty. Always remember that we are sexual beings because God wants us to be sexual beings. We have each been created through the sexual process, and we have each been created to participate in some life-giving way in the sexual process. Gratefully accept sexuality as a gift from God. When we deal honestly and openly with the burden of shame regarding sexuality that we have inherited from the past we are given strength in Christ. Affirm with joy and gratitude the gender differences that God has chosen to make a central feature of all biological life.
View leadership and organization as a gift.
All forms of human social activity require leadership and institutionalization, and it is by accepting these resources that we are enabled to truly serve the world and the Church.
It has always been the marriages with the most effective leadership and organization that have been of greatest service to their communities and the world. On the other hand those marriages which have lacked effective leadership have soon disintegrated into confusion and paralysis, and those that have had strong leadership without effective organization have soon degenerated into tyranny and selfishness.
Imagine this marriage as the two of us the car, wishing to travel along a busy
road to a certain destination. Both of us are capable of driving it, but only when one person is selected to drive and given the authority to do so can the journey begin. Unless there is some process for selecting a particular person to drive the car it is unlikely the journey will ever begin. If we wish to follow Christ, continually be in careful study of the way He led and organized the community He founded, and the way His followers responded to that
leadership.
Let the leadership in our marriage be examples to everyone of the kind of leadership Jesus
modeled, a leadership that empowers rather than dominates; and lets both of us be examples to everyone of the ability to empower leaders to serve.
Provide efficient structures of accountability—structures which will guard us from the temptations to pride and ambition that are an inevitable part of human life. At the same time provide each other with forms of affirmation and support that will enable us to carry out our mission.
And consciously devoted to being productive followers—persons who are liberated by strong leadership and effective institutional structures to focus their our entirely on the mission the Holy Spirit lays on our marriage, and on our individual calling within that mission.
Our life of conversion and prayer will enable us to form structure and leadership in our lives that provide as flexible models for cooperation for the our family's function. We will continually accept this opportunity as one of the gifts we have been given to give.
Put the needs of children first.
Let everything we do be judged by this standard: How does this action, this practice, this belief, this form of community, affect the lives and well-being of our children and children everywhere? The well-being of children comes first because they will live the longest, and
because they are the weakest members of humanity and therefore the ones that require the most care and attention. Whenever evil is done, or good is not done, children are the ones who suffer first and who suffer most. Everything we do will affect the lives of our children and the children abound. Above all, children will be affected by what we do not do.
How can a community provide a model for Christian intentionality if it does not serve the children of the world in some meaningful, practical way? How can such a community defend itself against the charge that it is fundamentally selfish—that it exists only for the sake of the adults in it? When children are a part of the community their welfare and development must be central to the community’s life. Be sure to equip them with the skills
needed to live outside the community, if they choose to do so. When persons are forced to live in an intentional community simply because they have no other practical option, that community becomes a place of bitterness, and grave harm is done to all the persons involved. Children bring great joy to life, and great wisdom. That joy and that wisdom
will greatly strengthen our marriage, as we continually accept it.
Make family life a high priority.
If the welfare of children is the standard by which your actions are to be judged, then we will make family life our first priority, since the life of the child and the life of the family are inseparable. And the strength of every family is closely linked to the strength of the
marriage that provides the foundation for that family. Our community will embrace and support this value and our marriage to make our relationship a high priority of the community. By doing so they will greatly strengthen not only us but the community as a whole, for where the marriages in a community are healthy and life-giving the communities will be healthy
and successful. The skills needed to form strong, life-giving marriages can be learned in the
same way as any other skill. Our Community will encourage those who have fashioned longstanding, productive marriages to teach those skills to others who are younger, or whose marriages are not functioning well. It is in the family and through the family that we all learn to love.
Prize friendship.
A friend is another person who is not obligated to us in any way, a person whom we have chosen to treat as an equal—a person whose welfare is as important as our own. The process of Christian conversion makes possible friendships that are stronger and more long-lasting than would otherwise be possible. Embrace this opportunity and make the most of it.
Make a conscious choice to form as many friendships as possible, and make it a part of your intentionality to nurture your friendships, by spending time with your friends, and by being aware of your friends’ needs. Learn how to form friendships from those who have many friends, and learn from them how to strengthen and maintain our friendships. Rely on friends. Ask them to rely on us. Seek out their counsel and be generous in responding to their needs.
Be constantly engaged in the study of scripture.
Every successful community of intentional Christians has been centered on the scriptures. From these ancient and inspired texts they have drawn an unending source of wisdom, hope and guidance. We will succeed by continuing this process, allowing the message of the
Hebrew and Christian scriptures to penetrate our hearts and our minds, and allowing them to guide and form our marriage. They are an unequaled source of power, one of the Church’s greatest gifts. Learn to pray the scriptures, so that we experience the stories as events in
which we are a participant, and so that we hear their injunctions as directly addressed to us.
Use the scriptures as a means to be healed of your own weaknesses and defects, not as a means to condemn others. And do not place the scriptures in a position of authority they do not claim for themselves. The scriptures can only become truly the Word of God when
the Spirit of God speaks through them, and that only happens when we read the scriptures in communion. Those in the past who have been most certain they knew the exact meaning
of scripture have been the ones which history has revealed as having understood scripture the least. When our immersion in scripture has made our marriage more loving, when they have become places of healing, then we can be sure that you have read the scriptures correctly and absorbed their message.
Treasure time.
The gift of time is inseparable from the gift of life. Only when we treasure time—when we use it intentionally and plan for the future, when we carefully record the events that occur in it—are we accepting that gift. One of the greatest contributions the first millennium monastic movement made to the world was the clock, which was created to make their use of time
more intentional. That invention is now essential to our entire way of life. We will not take time for granted as something to be endured, or even ‘killed’. To do so is to assume that time is limitless, that it will extend forever, and therefore it does not matter what use we make of it.
We continually pray that our marriage be a place, as the older monastic communities were,
where the gift of time is joyfully accepted as a great opportunity, and where no time is wasted, either in haste or in sloth. We continually pray that our marriage be a place where the events of the past are remembered truthfully and completely. If we choose to remember only those events from the past that confirm your present opinions we will lose touch with the past,
and with its rich store of wisdom. We continually pray that our marriage be a place where the past and the future are connected. Only when this occurs can real progress take place. Change is a constant, but only some of the change that occurs is progress. Only change
which is connected to the past and which builds upon its accomplishments is progress.
Embrace order
The created world is characterized by a complete and dependable order in all things, both visible and invisible. This is what makes the study of nature by scientists possible, and it is what makes a rule of law possible in human society. When we live close to Christ our lives become models of order, both individually and communally. The result is great human well-being. Order is one of the greatest gifts being given us, and one of the greatest we have to give. Without this gift all others are lost in a meaningless chaos that destroys everything.
Order cannot be created or imposed. It exists only as a gift. Let us joyfully and gratefully accept that gift, and with equal joy and gratitude give it away.
Clearly define our mission, and persevere in it.
There are many things that need to be done, and which could be done, to serve the world and the Church. Each of them is a gift given us by God, and each has the potential to bring us great joy when we accept them and act on them. But we can accept these gifts only one at a time. When we try to accept them all we succeed in none, and in effect reject them all. It has been said that “Purity of heart is to choose one thing,” and the lives of the great Christians, from Saint Paul to Mother Teresa bear this out. Those who have followed Christ most successfully in the past have chosen one thing, and chosen it carefully. They have then made a formal public commitment to this task, so that their commitment could be reviewed
regularly and their actions measured against it. Only those with clear goals, and who have persevered in those goals, have been able to render truly useful service to the poor, and to the world. Choose to choose one thing.
Remember that community is a means to an end.
All truly Christian communities exist primarily to serve others, not to serve the needs of the members of that community. This does not require ignoring the needs of the members of the community, but the needs of the members are met only in order to enable them to serve
persons outside the community. The greatest cause of failure of Christian communities in the past has been a very strong tendency to degenerate into communities that exist primarily for the sake of its members. Only those communities which have made service rather than survival their goal have survived.
Strive for unity rather than uniformity.
When we make Christ the center of our lives we are led into unity. That is another of Christ’s great gifts to us, the gift that makes it possible to cooperate in achieving great goals we could not achieve alone. But when Christ is present, diversity also thrives, since Christ wants each
individual and each group to live out that community’s specific mission and that person’s specific gift and calling. Diversity is essential to unity, since without a full and grateful acceptance of human diversity we are not free, and without freedom there can be no real unity—only a forced conformity which in fact divides us from one another. When we equate unity with uniformity we are forced to establish rules and regulations to enforce uniformity, and then we are forced to enforce these rules with coercive measures. And when that occurs the result is argument and controversy rather than unity. In every sphere of life there are many ways to achieve any goal, and all are equally valid. We are united by Christ, whom we follow, not by adhering to rules we make for one another.
Plan for the future.
We are aware that our efforts will have great impact on others, long after your efforts have ended, and even after our life has ended. We are responsible for the structures and practices and traditions which our children and also other Christians will inherit from us. We will consider them carefully. To consider only the impact your choices will have on us and our
immediate community while you are alive is extremely selfish, and is
completely contradictory to the witness of intentional Christ-Following. Choose
instead to care for the future, even though it does not yet exist. The future matters. Billions of people will inhabit it. And they will be affected, often profoundly, by the decisions we make in the present. To build something that can be passed on to the future is a great gift, and we
have been given that gift. Even though they are not yet alive, we can love those who will live after us, and we can leave for them concrete instances of our love for them.
Be devote to Christian unity.
Just as the human family is profoundly strengthened by the Church’s unity, so the world is profoundly damaged by the divisions in the Church. because we wish to follow Christ this must be one of your highest priorities. Communities have a unique opportunity to strengthen the bonds within the Christian Church, and by doing so to strengthen the bonds that unite the
human community throughout the world. We accept that opportunity as a great gift, which we have been given so that we can give it to the world and to the Church. We make it our intention to form relationships with other Christians and with other Christian communities throughout the world; seek new ways of forming such relationships, and seek to include other Christians in our efforts. We Pray to be shown ways that will enable us to help heal the wounds in the Body of Christ that now exist. This is a our special mission as members of
community in the Church. We embrace it with great gratitude and with great resolve. All the sheep that belong to the same shepherd belong to the same flock, and all those who follow Christ belong to the same shepherd.
Allow yourselves to be empowered by the Eucharist.
Christ not only calls us to follow Him, Christ empowers us to do so. Christ provides this power by giving us His own life, in a simple and miraculous way, day after day, year after year, century after century. It is this power that enables us to give gifts. Christ does this in the Eucharist. We do not know why Christ chose this means to empower us, nor do we understand exactly how Christ transmits his power to us in the Eucharist, we only know that he does so. This fact has been at the very center of the Great Tradition from the very beginning. In the past it has been only those communities which have centered their lives
in the Eucharist that have been most successful, and which have been able to render the greatest service to the world and to the Church. There appear to be no exceptions to this rule.
The Eucharist is literally the lifeblood of the Church, and has been from Emmaus to the present. Only those who have been fed from this source have had the power to continue the journey to its end. The Eucharist is not something imposed on us, it is a gift being offered to
us—a gift that enables us to live as gift-givers without becoming exhausted
and broken ourselves. When we allow Christ’s words, “This is my Body” and “This is my Blood,” to become completely true in our lives, our best efforts bloom into beauty and effectiveness. This is what makes us whole.
Above all, cultivate the joy of the Resurrection.
We have been entrusted with a great opportunity, one of the greatest in all the Church’s history and accept it with joy. We are empowered by this joy. Joy is the essential proof that we are living in the Resurrection, and only by living in the Resurrection, fully and joyfully, can we follow Christ, for the Resurrection is the journey’s destination. Where there is real belief in the Resurrection—both Jesus’ resurrection and our own—there is true happiness and energy and optimism. From these sources we receive the energy which transforms our own lives, and which enables us to transform the world. We accept the inevitable pain and loss of Good Friday—take up our cross each day and follow Him—but do so with joy. For in the midst of all defeat and suffering there is the Risen Christ, who has preceded us all on the journey from death to life, and whose Resurrection has transformed human existence from hopelessness to hope. We will continually be raised from the dead; raise others from the dead and constantly proclaim death’s defeat at the empty tomb! We live permanently in the joy of Easter morning!