2. A witness to communion and solidarity

Whereas our confrontation with individualism arises from today's culture, the Church of Vatican II impacts the dynamic of our community life by inviting us to make it what it already is at heart: a communion in the Spirit. Modern man is seeking unity in spite of every obstacle. The people of God join this seeking in their efforts to live the experience of the first community in Jerusalem in modern terms (Acts 2, 42-47). An irresistible attraction for religion is at the source of many groups and sects; in a parallel way, the urge to communion – of which the Spirit is the well-spring and the moving force – never stops creating basic ecclesial communities and many other kinds of new movements in the Church. In a world thirsting for unity and yet wounded by hatred and killing, by division and discord, communion seems very distant and, humanly speaking, an unattainable dream. This is why community life has begun to give a witness: communion, which here and now seems impossible by any human means, is possible in Christ. Community life does not consist only of a gathering of servants of Christ's mission. It is an integral part of the mission itself in that it is a witness to communion of persons, otherwise not destined to live together, who show that the new commandment of love need not remain just something nice that Jesus said, but can be realized in human life. "Community life itself is a manifold testimony for our contemporaries, especially since it fosters brotherly love and unity by which all will know that we are disciples of Christ" (NC 316, 2).

It goes without saying that community life with such an apostolic scope is much more than simply sharing the same house, the same table and the same rules. There is in it an exacting demand that will prove new to many of us but that the new generation harbors in its heart, hoping to find it responded to in consecrated life in the steps of Him who drew around himself the apostles and disciples. Without a sharing of our faith, of our reasons for living and working as companions of Jesus, and of our deeper experiences in encountering Him who sends us, we will be giving no witness.

Many of our communities give an irrefutable witness by the simple fact that Jesuits of many nations, cultures, languages and ethnic groups live together – most remarkably in geographical regions where this kind of diversity has provoked coexistences that are harsh and even explosive.

Another witness is not so easy to give, according to the ex-officio letters: a community lifestyle that speaks of simplicity and compassion, of solidarity and open-handed generosity, of a loving preference for the poor for Christ's sake. Yet, "to those among whom we must live" (NC 327) we must together give witness of Christ poor and of his love for the poor.

Wanting our community life to give witness has not been so usual among us. But if we live as "an apostolic community whose focus of concern is the service that our members are bound, in virtue of their vocation, to give to people" (NC 315), then we will indeed witness to that communion in the Spirit which is humanly far beyond reach but which is truly attainable through "a close sharing of life and goods, with the Eucharist as its center" (NC 315).