Constitutional text - Chapter Tree - Our Community life

United through baptism
Baptisrn gives the basic unity to all Christians.
Tue body is one and has many rnernbers, but all the rnernbers,
many though t hey are, are one body; and so it is with
Christ. It was in one Spirit that all of us, whether
Jew or Greek, slave or free, were baptized into one body.
All of us have been given to drink of the one Spirit.
(1 Cor. 12:12-3)
An earlier draft of the text made this bond in baptism very explicit:
Together we share one baptism and follow the sarne Christ,
whose spirit is the bond that unites us as Christians and
members of t he same religious famil y.
The role of bapt ism within our religious consecration is treated i n
Dossier II, p. 55 and Dossier III, pp. 20-1.
united through .. . . the profession of
the evangelical counsels
There was an earlier draft that was devoted to the cornrnunity aspect
of the vows and expressed what is intended in this brief phrase:
Our personal decision to live in cornrnunity rnakes us especially
sensitive to the fraternal dirnensions of our religious vows .
Thus, as celibates, we promise to be cornpletely available in
love to our brothers. As followers of the poor Christ, we
ask the Father to ernpty us of any will to dominate or possess
people or things, and to fill us instead with the spirit of
free and total self-giving. And like Christ who was obedient
unto death, we wholeheartedly accept the service of obedience
so that we may become more united in the freedom of the Children
of God .
A great and powerful Wlity can be created when the three great
drives in life are surrendered to others in a cornrnunity. Tue commitment
to love the others in community is a choice to love not only
those to whom we are humanly drawn, but rather to love those whom
we are convinced the Father has given usto love in and throughthis
communi ty. Because God has gi ven them to us in a special way 1
we
cornrnit ourselves to a special love for them - a priority through a
covenant made with the corrmunity. Poverty is often called the "vow
of sharing" - a corrununion is born of this sharing that proclairns
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