September 17th: Day Seven
17/09/2014 15:06
This morning in the Aula we had a presentation from Dom Jean-Pierre Longeat, the president of AIM, the Alliance InterMonasteres. The vision of AIM is to support communities throughout the world in their birth, growth and difficulties.
In the discussion after Dom Jean-Pierre's presentation, the AIM president made three observations about monasticism from a global perspective.
The first was from the business world, in that one of the main challenges of the workplace is the difficulty that co-workers have of sharing a workplace with one another. As monks and nuns, living with our brothers and sisters is a central concern for us. We are at the center of the issues of the world.
In Dom Jean-Pierre's presentation he had mentioned although we may experience a diminishment, there is a vitality and growth in global monasticism. A question came from the floor about the criteria for recognizing this vitality and growth.
In translation, Dom Jean-Pierre responded by saying that the principle criteria is to ask whether we are joyful because we have met God? If so, then we can meet any situation. This must be at the center of our lives. He went on to elaborate this point by saying that when this joyfulness is balanced with finding the common good, and this is done well, then the community will flourish.
Although this was meant as a tool for recognizing the vitality of monasticism, in it we also have a recipe for its success.
The third observation came from conversations that Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche. Jean Vanier used to say that the presence of the poor is important to our communities because God is revealed in the poor. Of course we have poor people, but how do we respond to them? Are they a burden that we rid of?
As we return to our commissions, we have new perspectives and hopefully insights for understanding the communities of our global order.
For more information about AIM, you can visit their website at https://www.aimintl.org/
A picture of the Basilica of St Francis, 4 km away, taken from the third floor of the Domus Pacis....
