Communication and Silence

60.Community recreation and the sharing of our views help to build up family spirit. When we share in all honesty, we offer to our Brothers what is best within us.

The community meeting, by encouraging us to speak and to listen, is an effective way of helping community spirit to grow. We bring simplicity and good will to these meetings and take an active part in them. Realising that it takes time to create community, we do not allow ourselves to be discouraged when difficulties and tensions arise.

We value silence because it opens us to the mystery of others, thus preparing us for heart-to-heart communication and sustaining it¹. It leads us, out of love for our Brothers, to respect times for prayer, for work, and for rest.

60.1 The community decides how often it will

hold community meetings. These provide opportunity for input or for exchange of ideas, based usually on the documents of the Institute. They likewise give the Brother a chance to reflect on his responsibilities to the community and to revitalise his apostolic spirit.

60.2 We take our meals together in simplicity and joy, as an expression of our friendship and union. The food is plain and ordinary. We avoid being too particular, as foreign to our spirit of poverty. At times, we go without, so that we can share what we have with the poor.

60.3 The times of silence are decided on by the community to encourage the interior life and to foster a spirit of charity. In the same way, we decide, after due reflection, how best to use the various forms of mass media.

60.4 Holidays are times to regain our strength and to draw closer together in our life as Brothers. Following what is laid down in the Norms of the Province, the community plans ahead for its holiday times, part of which is to be spent together.

(cf 151.1.3)