Religion Is Community

Children were brought to Jesus that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked them, but Jesus said, "Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." After he placed his hands on them, he went away. (Matthew 19:13-15)

World Youth Day is judged to be a success.  The “children” went to Lisbon, and they prayed.  They also heard many speakers telling them that the Kingdom of Heaven belonged to them.  What follows is part of Father James Martin’s presentation.  He answered the question: Why do I need religion at all?

(begin) At this point someone might say, “Well, O.K., so maybe I believe in God. But can’t I be happy without religion? I mean, what’s the point? Who needs all those rules? I can get support from all sorts of places outside of religion. So who needs it?” The answer is yes, you can be happy without religion. I’m sure you know many people who might believe in God, but have zero interest in going to any sort of church service, much less be baptized.

So why do you need religion? Here I would like to distinguish between faith and religion. Faith is belief in God. Religion is believing in God as part of a community, with other people—believing together, worshiping together and journeying together.

Now a lot of people prefer that it just be “God and me.” And there is a certain appeal to that. It’s important to have a personal relationship with God and to explore that in depth. That’s what a lot of Jesuit spirituality is about: how to experience a one-on-one relationship with God.

But there’s a problem: As social animals we naturally want to be with other people, even if it’s difficult. That’s one reason that Jesus called a group of disciples together: not only for his own friendship but because he knew that the disciples would need one other.

Even if you look at something as simple as concerts or sporting events, you can see that we’re drawn to be together. It’s great to listen to music on your own, but isn’t it different when you’re at a concert with friends? It’s nice to celebrate your birthday by yourself, but isn’t it nicer with friends and family? We’re social animals. I mean here you are at World Youth Day! You could have stayed home, right, and just watched it streaming, right? So “God and me” denies the reality of community.

To paraphrase the American priest Isaac Hecker, the founder of the Paulist Fathers, religion helps you to connect but also to “correct.” Or rather be corrected. Because if it’s just you and God then there is no one to challenge you. Let’s say, for example, you’ve decided that it’s O.K. just to ignore poor people. You figure, as one character says in E. M. Forster’s novel Howards End, “The poor are the poor. One is sorry for them, but there it is.” And that’s the end of that.

Religion will help correct you in that. You have a whole tradition that pushes up against that. Not only of Jesus explicitly telling us to help the poor in the Gospels (Matthew 25 most bluntly) but also the tradition of Catholic social teaching and, more broadly, the Christian legacy of social justice. Or, before that, the Jewish tradition of caring for the widow and the orphan. Put more positively, religion helps you to understand more about God. Because God isn’t just at work in you: God is at work in the community, as we Catholics say, the people of God.

Here’s another way to look at the need for community. I have led several pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and we visit all the sites where Jesus was born, lived, preached, healed, died and rose from the dead. It’s amazing—life-changing really—to see places that Jesus himself saw. And at the end of each day, we have what we call “faith sharing,” where I ask people to describe something meaningful, interesting or significant that has happened to them in the day. And the amazing thing is that people’s reactions vary widely. One person will find sunrise on the Sea of Galilee a deeply moving experience; another might say, “Meh.” And here you see how the Spirit is at work in different ways.

The Holy Spirit meets people where they are, and different things touch different people. But if it’s just you and God and you’re not in a community, then you miss out on all those different ways! You miss out on connecting with the faith lives of others and you miss out on seeing God in unfamiliar ways, and, therefore, you miss out on connecting with God in new ways.

So, the community, also known as religion, helps to correct us and connect us. More basically, without religion you’re missing something fundamental about God himself, or Godself, who is, you could say, a community. The Trinity is a community of love, each relating to one another. So, without community you’re not really encountering God. (end)

We hope Father Martin connected with his audience.  His perspective is illuminating.

Deacon David Pierce