HOLY REST challenges our individualism: It reminds us that we need each other. The manual for discipleship, if it existed, would come with a warning: Do Not Try This Alone. Christianity is fundamentally expressed in community. Jesus formed a community of disciples, he sent the disciples forth in groups, and he promised that “where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). The Holy Spirit descended in community, creating church. And our continuous process of conversion is both realized and expressed in community, for, as Tony Kelly writes in The Force of the Feminine, “to be converted, turned out of oneself toward that Universal Love revealed in Christ, is to be turned toward others who, one way or another, support or occasion one’s growth in conversion.”
In short, discipleship has never been a solitary endeavor, and even less so now. If we’re even going to try to live kingdom ideals in contemporary culture, we need time to gather as a community and immerse ourselves in “God’s culture.”
As we who follow Jesus try to balance our own call to work for God’s reign with our need to rest and renew, we can learn much from those who have so beautifully integrated the demands and gifts of their own faith. We can live discipleship as Matthew describes it: a balance of fully committed action in the world centered by the time to renew and rest in our fundamental identity as God’s beloved.
This article originally appeared in the May 1991 issue of Sojourners. Read the full article in the archives.
Michaela Bruzzese teaches social justice courses at a Catholic high school in Albuquerque, N.M.
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