Alex Swain
Salutations friends known and unknown!
I find increasingly that the power of community is ever more a precious jewel that maintains my very being - mind, body, and soul. The long and drawn-out rend in our manifold communities over the last few years has decimated my sense of self, allowing for larger spans of isolation than I suspect is healthy for me. Going about the challenges of life isolated makes everything harder, more painful, more wearisome, and more dreadful; while when in community our burdens can be shared by our many members. When bound closely in community - with my roommate, my coworkers, my friends, and you! - I find that healing is faster and the hurts much less deep, the exhaustion less exhausting, and the joys more full. This is surely a grace from God that we are given to be with one another (and with God!) to be our fullest selves.
Despite these observations, I, unfortunately, consistently forget this truth. This relational reality that is so truly wonderful for the human spirit, divinely given I am sure! So God sees fit, in my ignorance(s), that I should learn and re-learn these tenants of the human spirit - the utmost importance of community for the true health of us humans, precious as we are in the eyes of God.
In today’s Gospel, the apostles declare and affirm their identity and joy in their communal life. After many people left Jesus, finding his teachings too difficult to bear, we read: “So Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’” (John 6:67-69). The apostles affirm with joy that in community they have come to know God Himself. (Conversely, we know later in the gospels that when scattered and isolated from one another and from God, they flee from truth and joy, and end up quite miserable).
In the Epistle, St. Paul writes, “Therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…” (Hebrews 12:1-2). Let us not forget a host of heavenly and divine folk, the prophets, saints, dearly departed, and angels, who are with us yet in this life, praying for us and guiding us. We have not only an earthly community, but a heavenly one to whom we are united in prayer, in jubilation, when in sorrow, and at Holy Mass.
Our Christian faith teaches and reminds me - us - that we are divinely suffused in community with the saints and angels, and with our dear ones on this earth. This principle first resounded within me during my service year with Beloved in the Desert in 2019-2020. During that year, us 5 service corps members laughed, cried, prayed, worshiped, learned, and served together as community. And my heart was full through this union, as we lived and worked through Tucson, and muddled through the terror of the beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020. We held one another, and to this day it was through Beloved in the Desert that the principles of community living were not just understood didactically, but were made all the more true through experience.
May we never forget the blessed joy of community, both earthly and heavenly!
Amen.
Alex Swain
Alex was a member of the first cohort of Beloved in the Desert (‘19-’20). He now works at the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona as their Volunteer Services Supervisor, and works closely with Mtr. Taylor and the Beloved program. He is a postulant in the Diocese of Arizona and will attend seminary in the Fall of 2022.
For more information about Beloved in the Desert, click here. To support this ministry financially, click this link and select “Give to Outreach: Beloved in the Desert.”