Human beings are orientated towards community, we are oriented towards each other. We are immersed into this in different ways, some of us lean heavily on community and support while others prefer to be more independent but even our individuality and independence, especially in this modern times is possible solely because we are a well-functioning community. So that we could be effectively independent and isolated from one another a whole line of requirements and technology development is necessary which get developed only through community. An individual who would remain alone in this world and in that way completely dependent only of himself, despite all of his knowledge and experience culturally and technologically would have to retract for at least a few hundred years in its possibilities. Development of the human society always depends on community although community by itself brings benefit and harm, gains and losses. The world in which we live in, the world of people is imperfect but it is important to us, we are not the beings of isolation but beings of community and cooperation. Our values and ideals are born in that setting, are mirrored, formed but also tested and threatened in the framework of relationships with others. We are often grateful to others for our formation. Sometimes it’s our family that brought us up well and sometimes it is some other community that saved us despite errors and threats from those who were first supposed to form us and protect us. Sometimes it’s individual role models and people who stood up for common good who inspired us to be good, to persevere, to go forward. Sometimes we are a role model and support to others. Animals also often rely on groups, on community, on numbers but human beings are the only ones who can actively and clearly ask for support and cooperation from another being that is like him.
On the first pages of the Bible humans are pointed towards other humans: ‘I will make a helper suited to him’ (Gen 2, 18b). Humans are not only pointed towards other humans but are a being that continuously and ceasingly looks toward someone with whom it can communicate and cooperate, constantly is looking for an Other. That is the way in which we are oriented and the way in which we are built, that is not something that is bestowed upon a human person but something to which we are invited which means that we are given an Interlocutor and interlocutors which are ready to reply. In our journey towards the values and through values we are offered help, encouragement and solace are available. As faithful we are a part of a covenant with God, God is on our side when we try for good, we are not on this path and in our endeavors left to ourselves, this is not a test to see if we can make it and where the prize lies only at the very end but rater this is a way, a pilgrimage where we are accompanied, listened to and supported throughout the way. We are prone to self-examining and self-blaming in our decisions and endeavors because we are limited and often we cannot recognize if we did and choose well, we are prone to think that we have maybe lost the right to support or that we were somewhere and somehow left alone, but considering the foundations of how the world is built that is never true. God alone is ‘He who Is’, who is present. We are never without support and without a chance to call for help, without a chance to communicate and to come back if we went astray, we can never escape the Community, we can only purposely deny it and thus do harm to ourselves and make life difficult for others around us but it is way better for us and others around us if we ask for help and if we accept help, if we put our will in service of values and if we engage heavenly and earthly help on that way.
Values and ideals are really something that surpasses us, something we can’t reach by ourselves, something that is really demanding and difficult to achieve. So many great human endeavors and ideas had sad endings because despite big dreams we as humans are fragile and limited in our will and possibilities. As faithful we are invited to have great ideals, too great for our possibilities, out of this world even, but we are not left without help, without an offer to cooperate. At the part of this Trail where we find many churches and chapels consecrated to saints, parish church consecrated to saint Michael archangel who is by his service a warrior and a defender, Our Lady of the Rosary who offers us a mighty weapon and her help let us remember what we confess, that we believe in communion of saints in one holy Church which consists from earthly and heavenly citizens, many have gone before us into heavenly communion and offer us their help and intercession, we are not separated, we are only in different places and we are in a position where we still need help, why not accept it? Jesus himself has reminded Jews that the Lord is the Lord of the living, and not of the dead, that he will prepare a place for us, that we will be where he is. Catholic Church encourages us to live in that community even now with heavenly citizens of the church, with those who are already where we hope to come if we find, keep and live the high ideals to which we are called. Called and supported.
