Wednesday, April 9, 2008

St. Benedict in a Global Age

Francisco began by quoting the end of After Virtue and suggesting that a way to transform the culture is to create small communities within it, amidst the the virtue and vice of our culture, based on a flexible model of St. Benedict.

I would like to further explore what this looks like. In my mind, it involves living in the same neighborhood as 20-100 of my closest friends, and concretely and substantially being involved in each other's lives. I am not sure exactly how this would play out: morning prayer, daily mass, daily meals, weekly meals, a school. These questions might be best left to an individual community. In any scenario, however, we must live near one another in order to live with one another in a concrete and life-changing way. How can this happen when we all have ties to other places and other people? Do we give primacy to the community over family in terms of choosing where we live?