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Persons in Communion: The Disciplines of Communion (Part I)

We can now give an outline of the disciplines of communion. The first thing, before love is even mentioned, is humility, and what humility becomes when it is exercised towards another person, that is, respect. Respect rejects all self-interested curiosity, all possession of souls. Some people undergo a strict regime of self-denial to free themselves from carnal desire, only to fall prey to a more exquisite desire, that for souls. This must be identified and

Persons in Communion: From Individual to Person (Part I)

The Body of Christ is not only unity but interchange, by which the ‘movement of love’ of the Trinity is conveyed to humankind. This movement, in which each effaces himself in order to give, is the transition from individual to person, a growing to maturity certainly, but only achieved by means of a succession of death-and-resurrections, in the course of which we are stripped down and recreated. We become unique, escape the repetitive character of

Persons in Communion: The Justification of the Good

But sin turns this diverse unity into a hostile multiplicity, so that space becomes a separator, time a murderer, and language good only for expressing juxtaposition or possession. Whence the slogan of May 1968, ‘Love one another’; this is facile blasphemy, because the erotic encounter itself is given us as a symbol, a foretaste of personal communion. In the universe of sin solitary individuals devour one another. There is a besetting tendency today, when faced