Oftentimes, when you feel the urge to experience community life with new patterns of behavior, such as detachment and surrender, one of the thoughts that go through your mind is “What about my family? What will become of them?”
Each being has a different family context, but we can affirm that when a family member takes a step towards God, everyone also takes it, on some level.
Lucía, a resident-member of the Light-Community of the Brotherhood, in Cordoba, Argentina, shares her experience: “When my brother and I felt a very strong impulse to experience community life, at first, it was not easy for the rest of my family. It was a leap into the unknown. But with time, as we took steps in the consecration, they began to feel that the family, instead of diminishing, was, on the contrary, expanding, as they already began to experience brotherhood with everyone, not only with blood relatives of the family. My parents began to collaborate more deeply with the Work and are now very active members of the Light-Network and Association Mary. My brother is a monk of Grace Mercy Order and my sister lives at the moment together with me at the Community.”
In the Light-Communities, to treat one’s neighbor as “brother” is a great school to learn to relate with the other as a part of oneself, as a consciousness that comes from the same Source. Being able to understand what the other lives, or accepting other forms of developing one’s own spiritual path, leads to an expansion of consciousness, to working in oneself that which we see as wrong in the other, and to value their talents, offered to carry forward the Work of God.
In one of his conferences, Trigueirinho instructed us:
“If you enter into an attitude of collaboration with the Evolutionary Plan, of collaboration with the Karmic Law, for example, to mitigate all this, then you begin to find beings with the same tendency, and then you gradually perceive that there is a spiritual family, that there is a greater family, that there is a family that is not a formal commitment, nor a personal commitment. You feel that you are energies that match, and that must remain united… little by little, you discover another family, which we call, so that the minds can understand better, ‘Universal Family’.”
The daily experience of a family is the starting point to cultivate tolerance, love and union with those who are closer, to then be able to expand these qualities to all contexts in which we live.
In face of so much lack of brotherhood among beings, may we, in this week dedicated to families, offer the love we feel for each member of our family, both human and spiritual family, so that this love may flow in the hearts of the beings who live inequality and permanent conflict. In reverence, may we thank God for each “brother” He places on our path, so that we can learn more each day.
