~ by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ

It is just as well that the Acts of the Apostles does not go into detail. If it did, we would be depressed to the point of never trying to live the ideal of community life described in its pages. For I am sure it was a variegated experience of light and darkness. As it is, we can hold onto the report that all members of the community “who believed were together and had all things in common.” These are words to inspire countless utopian communities from the moment they were written.

Jesuit community life has at its core this desire to hold all things in common. We wish to live the common life so that we might have life in common, that we may be able to openly share communally all that comes to us individually; all that comes to us through Christ, the Lord of Life.

Does all this not sound perfect? This is what we call an ideal with reality always struggling to resemble it. For Jesuits the common life means we all have a share in everything together. We do not have our own money– it comes from the community, we do not have our own time– it is arranged and spent according to the needs of the community, and we share objects in common, mostly. Jesuits, like the early Christians, strive to hold all things in common because of our shared, our common, belief in Christ, who brings all things together in himself.

The difficulty in sharing all things in common is not in the shared use of objects but rather in the shared upkeep of the shared object. For the sake of illustration I will use the example of a community car. Most Jesuits share a car and all Jesuits are quick to understand the use of a car and how it might fit into their needs and wants at any moment. We are equally ready to insist on availability and drivability of the vehicle. Because it is held in common, it should be available to me when I need it. It is easy to own our share in the use of the car it is much harder to own our share in the maintenance of the same car. There is rarely an argument over who gets to fill up the car with gas, or why does one community member never get to clean its interior. In this case the term ‘common’ remains partially understood to mean only a share in benefits and not in responsibility.

A shared car is simple example of all the things that a religious community, like the Jesuits, holds in common. We also share our lives, our histories, our future, and our very living together in common. We hold in common a brother who is declining in health, we hold in common our desire to be on mission with Christ and we hold in common our lives of prayer and service. Our life together in the Society of Jesus is arranged around Christ at our center. It is as though we individually are spokes sharing Christ as the center of a wheel that moves us all forward together. Without Christ we would be a stack of sticks going nowhere.