Belonging and Meaning

Gospel: John 8: 21-30

Every human being seeks belonging and desires to be part of an authentic community where they are accepted and welcomed.  We seek to find relationships with others built on mutual respect, love, and truth.  These communities and relationships provide us with an authentic sense of safety as well as deep meaning in our lives.  This is what it means to belong to what is above rather than what is below.  When people fail to find such authentic community in one place, it is quite normal to find them seeking it elsewhere.

We ought to find such places of belonging and meaning in our families and faith communities, in addition to other places in our world.  It is no wonder that people often retreat into self-created realities and solipsistic worlds of their own when they try and fail time and again to find authentic belonging and meaning in the world from places where they ought to find it.  The sense of loneliness and alienation people feel is all too real.

It is our task to create authentic communities of belonging where mutual respect, love, and truth are the cornerstones of our communities - communities of belonging to what is above rather than what is below.  Repentance for our failure to do so is the first step to the creation of such communities. Living lives of mercy extended to others is the crucial next step.  This is the Lenten journey to a new community.