Robert_Wild_-_Catherine_Doherty_Servant_of_God

love” to be, in some real sense, the essence of the apostolate:
“If you love one another, then the world will know
that you are my disciples.” An experience of a community
of love is an experience of the way of life Christ came to
give us.
Often when people come to Combermere they say it’s
like “coming home.” Whether they know reflectively or
not what they are articulating, I’m not sure. Certainly they
experience a welcoming community, a home atmosphere,
a place of acceptance. On a deeper level they are experiencing
the Church in some life-giving way that they probably
have never experienced before. In some sense, the whole
Church is present here—East and West, priests and laity,
men and women, parish and diocese—and all infused
with harmony and liturgy and a Christian culture.
Here we arrive at the heart of where the Spirit was leading
Catherine. Unlike some of the other lay apostolates of
the last century, Catherine was being led to form what the
Church now calls ecclesial communities. This community
is the flowering of her vocation and life. It is not so much
her many charitable works that is the crowning achievement
of her life, but the ecclesial community she founded,
a new model of the Church. All her voluminous teachings
are directed to forming members of the Church. It is
to the nature of this inspiration of the Spirit we now turn.
What is an Ecclesial Community
The word the Church is using for some of these movements
and communities—“ecclesial”—really says it all.
The 20th century has often been called the century of the
Church. Lumen Gentium is frequently designated as the
key document of Vatican II. Throughout the century, and
even before, the Popes had been calling for a greater
involvement of the laity in the life of the Church. Many
people responded to this call. Some of them were truly
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