Word of God: Acts 2:42-47
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
Insight from the Founders
Spiritan spirituality cannot be understood apart from community life. From the very beginnings of the Congregation, this conviction was already present. Claude Poullart des Places—coming from high society and with no prior formation in fraternal life—discovered community by living it. His conversion led him to share the daily life of the poor seminarians entrusted to his care. Among these young men, so different from himself and living a simple and austere existence, he learned what it means to follow Christ in fraternity.
The retreat of 1704–1705 marked a decisive turning point: he realized that fraternity must be structured in order to endure. He therefore established a small community of formators serving the students, laying the foundations for a Spiritan life conceived as a shared journey. As a man trained in law, he then gave the Community of the Holy Spirit a Rule of Life of 263 articles, which he himself observed. Thus, the Spiritan life was born within a regular, simple, and evangelical fraternity.
In Libermann’s case, his sense of community was evident from the very first steps of his missionary work. When, in 1839, he received the proposal for the “Work for the Blacks,” he accepted it only on the condition that it be lived “in a congregation,” and not in isolation. For him, mission required a stable, discerned, and sustained form of community life.
This conviction is clarified in the Provisional Rule of 1840: spiritual regularity—the very spirit of religious life—is inseparable from community life, even when permanent living together is not possible. The spiritual health of a missionary body depends on the quality of its fraternity. The Regulations of 1849 will make this a fundamental rule: “For the perfection of apostolic life, for the stability and expansion of the works, and for the sanctification of its members, the Congregation has adopted communal life as a fundamental rule. All its members shall always live in community.”
Thus, for Libermann, community is not merely a framework but a spiritual principle: the Spiritan mission is born, nourished, and safeguarded within community life.
Reflection
The Spiritan is a man of community—not simply out of practical necessity, but because shared life is the lifeblood that sustains our spiritual and missionary identity. From the beginning, our founders understood that mission cannot be carried out by isolated individuals, but by a body shaped by the Spirit. Community is therefore not merely a setting; it is a theological space, the place where the Gospel takes flesh.
Prayer is the heart of this space: it nourishes fraternal charity, brings peace to relationships, and sustains the mission. Without prayer, community life becomes a fragile coexistence; with prayer, it becomes a place where each one learns to receive from God and to give himself to others.
Libermann knew how essential prayer was for fostering mutual understanding. He reminded his missionaries that “the life of our missionaries is a life of community; they must never remain isolated” (ND VI, 438). Aware of differences in temperament and the tensions they can generate, he saw in prayer the inner leaven capable of transforming relationships and fostering unity. In the Instructions to the Missionaries (Chap. II, 3), he presents the community as a true school of holiness: a place where one is supported, encouraged, corrected, and lifted up. For him, the community is also a bulwark—a collective shield. In isolation, the missionary becomes vulnerable; united with his brothers, he receives a strength and fidelity he could never sustain alone. Community prayer allows this fraternal strength to unfold and endure.
Thus, fraternity is far more than a support for mission: it is already a full expression of it. What we proclaim, we must first live among ourselves. A community that prays, shares, forgives, and welcomes differences becomes a living catechesis. The way we live together is already a proclamation of the Gospel—a preaching in action.
Our international and intercultural communities are a particularly eloquent sign of this. Day by day, they are true places of Pentecost, where the Spirit gathers people of different languages, cultures, and histories to form a single body. They bear witness that the Gospel can unite what everything else seems to divide, and that fraternity—fragile yet beautiful—is a concrete reality requiring patience, prayer, and daily conversion.
Thus, community becomes our way of living the mission: a space where the Spirit continues to create unity in diversity, and where shared life makes visible the very purpose of evangelization—to bring about Christian fraternity.
Questions for reflection
- What conversions am I being called to embrace so that my way of living in community — or within my family — may become a genuine proclamation of the Gospel?
- Do our communities awaken in others a desire to believe in Christian brotherhood? What aspects of our common life attract, challenge, or discourage? And what signs of the Spirit can we discern within them?
Prayer
Spirit of Pentecost, You who bring hearts together and foster communion, come and dwell in the midst of our communities. Spirit of Jesus, mould in us one heart and one soul. Teach us anew to pray together, to welcome one another in our differences, and to live in authentic brotherhood, attentive to each other’s needs, joyful in service and united in love.
Spirit of the Father, breathe upon us, so that our way of living together may become a sign that draws all your children to You. Amen.
This article is also available in:
