Redemptorists are community people. When we are about our mission, we are in community with the people among whom we work.
Whether about our mission or at home together, we belong to a particular Redemptorist community. The fact is, we live and work in community. Even when we work alone, as our mission often dictates, we are working within the outreach of our Redemptorist community. The love, encouragement, zeal and the prayers of the community are always with us.
When making his religious profession, each Redemptorist prays:
May your grace (Lord)… and the co-operation of my confreres be constantly with me”. And the leader of the community responds saying: “And I receive you fraternally as a member of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer…
Joining the congregation is entry into a fraternal community for our mission among the poor. It does not take away our ongoing individuation as persons; nor does it take away our personality. Both these dimensions of our being are ideally fostered in community and through its supporting relationships.
The whole purpose of community life is to have the members, like the apostles, in a spirit of genuine brotherly union, combine their prayers and deliberations, their labours and sufferings, their successes and failures, and their material goods as well, for the service of the Gospel.
– Constitutions of the Redemptorists, No. 22a
…At the heart of the community, to form it and sustain it, is the Redeemer himself and his Spirit of love. And the closer their union with Christ, the stronger will become their union with each other.
