I’ve been thinking about community lately, because I realize how important it is to me and to all of us. We can’t get along without some kind of community of friends, and the quality of the community we form says a lot about how healthy we are as human beings and especially as Christians.
Out on the plains of North Dakota there once stood a church, a building of severe Gothic style that served my German-Catholic ancestors. It is gone now, demolished! Those who once worshipped there have gone elsewhere. I was deeply saddened when I learned of its passing, because it was on the very grounds of this modest sacred edifice that my faith took first root.