Hans Buob
Human community is based on sympathy. When sympathy is lacking, the community also dissolves. In contrast, spiritual community is established through the calling by the power of the Spirit. What is unique about religious community throughout the history of humanity is that here people meet who have not chosen or sought each other out, and in the novitiate, one recognizes those with whom they will walk together for a lifetime.
There is something unique in the history of humanity that people who could not choose each other, who did not come together based on sympathy, can live together for an entire life.
This is only possible based on the community created by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, I always clearly realize: where we have friction among ourselves, God's blessing is deeply felt and effective. Because where we argue, we do not get too close to each other, and God's Spirit has the opportunity to connect us in a much deeper way not because we are sympathetic, but because of the Lord. And that is the community formed by the Spirit.
Our boundaries are a great help so that we do not get too close to each other in any community and become merely a human community that may soon part ways, but instead we constantly die, struggle, and thus give God's Spirit the opportunity to bring new life from our dying, which He bears, which truly bears, and which makes us much more sympathetic to each other with a spiritual sympathy than just an external sympathy that would bind and tie us.
Therefore, anyone who lives in community – and that is indeed the majority – from marriage to spiritual communities, must never forget that the boundaries of the other are a great blessing. And if there is a clash, you have the opportunity to meet again in a deeper way – in greater devotion, because of the Lord. Such relationships are much deeper and more lasting than those based on mere human sympathy.
(From the book The Gift of Discernment of Spirits,
translated by Alžběta Sirovátková)
