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Joie de Vivre
“Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”
By Molly Mulqueen
A French religious association whose primary mission is contemplative prayer opened its first house in the United States just 18 months ago, yet already the group needs to expand its facilities in order to accommodate the numerous people who have felt drawn to take part in their spiritual life.
In 1999, seven members of the Catholic Community of the Beatitudes moved into a vacant 14-room convent adjacent to St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Denver, Colorado. Today their small chapel and dining room often overflow with people who come to pray with them, attend their retreats, and participate in their third-order organizations.
The group’s theology is orthodox, but their lifestyle would not exactly be considered traditional among Catholic religious communities in the United States. The Denver Community, which has now grown to include eight adult members, includes two religious sisters, a seminarian, a married couple and their children, and two single women and one single man who are preparing to take vows for the consecrated life. All of them live together and devote their time to prayer, parish ministries around the archdiocese, and service of the poor. Their unique living arrangements raised a few questions at first, but the monastic structure of their daily lives and their consistently joyful witness to the Gospel have dispelled most concerns. In fact, their blend of fraternal camaraderie and open-door hospitality has been a magnet for Catholics seeking spiritual enrichment.
An unusual community
One of the members of the Denver Community, Brother Hans-Otto, is a German attending a seminary in Austria. He is spending a year in Colorado as part of his training. He explained how events evolved for the Community to gather people in all states of life under one roof:
Two couples formed the Community 27 years ago, and after some lay people desired to live the consecrated life to Christ, one of them received the vocation to the priesthood. So, little by little, the Community grew, and it is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is not a human work, which is the first thing to say. We have the spirit of family. We live like a big family. Our model is the apostles, who lived together and shared everything, and our first vocation is prayer.
Francis X. Maier, the chancellor of the Archdiocese of Denver, recalled that the initial reaction to the Community from many Denver Catholics was, “Who are these people?”
“But since they arrived, I don’t think I have heard a single criticism,” Maier commented. “Their internal life is not like anything we have run across.” He added, “It produces a very dynamic appeal to a lot of people. In terms of recruitment, they have been very successful.”
Father Robert P. Meznar is pastor of St. Catherine of Siena parish in Denver, where the Community set down American roots. He described the members of the group as “a breath of fresh air, as far as faith goes.”
“It is a little bit different lifestyle, but their main focus is prayer,” Father Meznar said. “The people have taken a real liking to them. You can’t help it, they are so vivacious and lively in their faith.”
“I had heard of this community before, so when they came here, I was on their doorstep the same day,” stated Deano Gonzales. He and his wife Karen have become lay associates of the Community, known as “Beatitudes of the Holy Family.” They are considered members of the Community, but do not live in the Community house. They meet with the Community several times a month for prayer, fellowship, and instruction.
Gonzales explains what drew him to the Beatitudes:
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Since the early 1990s, I really felt a call to live in community, in large respect due to the way our society is now —build your pension, invest in the stock market: all of these false trusts. I want to be detached enough to depend on God, and I think I could only do that in a community with brothers and sisters to help me.
From France to Denver
The Community of the Beatitudes was founded in France by Gerard Croissant, a Protestant minister in the French Reformed Church and a renowned preacher. As a young man, he had studied theology in France and Israel and later participated in the charismatic renewal movement, even spending some time in Pentecostal churches in the United States. He and his Catholic wife, Jo, and another Protestant couple, Jean-Marc and Mireille Hammel, began a community in 1973 which was described as “Protestant but open to the Holy Spirit.” Shortly thereafter, Croissant had a dream in which Jesus spoke to him about the Blessed Mother. That dream was the catalyst for a spiritual journey that led him and the other Protestant members of the Community to convert to Catholicism. He took the name Brother Ephraim, and was ordained a deacon in the Catholic Church in 1978.
In 1985, the late Archbishop Coffy of Albi, France (who would later become the Archbishop of Marseilles, and receive a cardinal’s red hat) granted the Beatitudes canonical recognition as a Private Association of the Faithful. They are currently preparing their statutes to submit for formal recognition by the Holy See. To date, there are over 1,200 members living in 70 Beatitude communities scattered across 29 countries on five continents. The Beatitude Community came to Denver at the invitation of Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, OFM Cap.
“This all began in 1998 at a Pentecost gathering in Rome of laity and religious movements around the world, which was convened by Cardinal [J. Francis] Stafford,” explained Maier. “Cardinal Stafford introduced [the Community of the Beatitudes] to Archbishop Chaput and told him, ‘This would be a wonderful group for Denver.’”
“Archbishop Chaput invited them on an experimental basis and that experiment is still going on,” Maier said. “So far, our experience of their community here has been extremely positive.”
Adapting to America
Even with the cooperation and support of the archdiocese, opening a new house for a religious community is a formidable task—made all the more difficult by the cultural and language differences the Community members encountered. Three of the eight members of the Community in Denver are from France, one from Morocco, one from England, one from Germany, one from Belgium, and one from Spain. The Community’s rule is to pray and conduct all business in the language of the country where they are living. The Community’s Denver house is only the second in the world, after the New Zealand house, whose official language is English.
“It’s a change when your community life is all in French, and you show up here and decide to do everything in English,” said Jim Mackin. He and his wife Connie are also members of the Beatitudes of the Holy Family.
“Imagine that the next time you go to Mass it’s all going to be done in French. So is the rosary, all your favorite hymns, and Bible readings. It’s quite a large undertaking,” Mackin commented. He adds:
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Adjustment to the American culture has been an adventure. We are much more fast-paced. They eat all their meals in courses, and take a long time; we put everything on the table at once and eat it all in 10 minutes.
It did not take long for the Community to involve itself in a long list of service projects around the archdiocese. In their mission statement, the Beatitude communities throughout the world are called to respond in a “concrete manner” to the various needs of the Church and of the world. That directive plays out in a different way for each of the 70 communities; their projects include operating a hospital in Zaire, running orphanages in Mexico and the Philippines, safeguarding one of the holy sites in Israel, and maintaining a shrine to St. Thérèse in France.
In Denver, they have become highly popular as liturgical musicians; as catechists for confirmation, marriage preparation, and adult-education programs; as youth ministers; and as parish retreat masters. They volunteer on a regular basis at a food bank, a home for the handicapped, and a nursing home. And a day does not go by without people knocking on their door, calling them on the phone, or sending them email messages with prayer requests. They manage all of this work on top of their daily schedule of prayer that includes Mass, the rosary, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, the Liturgy of the Hours, and spiritual reading. They also devote a great deal of time to the study of the Jewish roots of Christianity.
Public witness
Every member of the Beatitude order takes vows of “prayer, obedience, and poverty,” all to be lived out in the spirit of chastity. In order to enter the Community of the Beatitudes, one must first complete a year of discernment living in a Community house, then one to two years of postulancy and three years of novitiate before professing a permanent commitment to the Community in a ceremony usually witnessed by the local bishop. Permanent members of the Community renounce personal ownership of any property and share all their goods with the Community as a whole. The Moderator General of the order and the superior of each house, known as the “shepherd,” are elected by the membership to four-year terms of service.
The Community members are immediately recognizable in their simple habits: white blouses and brown skirts for the lay women, white shirts and tan slacks for the lay men, and white habits for the priests, women religious, and seminarians. All wear brown crosses around their necks. The two religious sisters have taken to bicycling around their section of the city, a practice that has charmed so many Denver citizens that it made the local newspaper.
“I am amazed the way the parishioners love me and welcome me in a very kind way,” said Sister Marie-Liesse, who joined the Beatitude Community 18 years ago in her native France and has been in the Denver house since it began. “I am always surprised when people in the street or in the supermarket stop me and talk to me. Most of them are so happy to see a nun wearing a habit.”
“It’s so easy to wear the habit in America. In Europe it’s not like that,” according to Sister Mary of the Visitation, who is originally from Belgium. She continues:
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What is different is the fact that people are so easy to talk to. They will come at once asking you who you are, where you are from, what do you do, and if you are a teacher. I smile... here it seems nuns are immediately teachers.
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The first time I went downtown, a young boy came and asked me if I was a “real sister.” I laughed, telling him I was one, and he replied, “Aren’t you supposed to be dressed in black?” So it was a great opportunity to let him know why I’m dressed in white: our baptismal dress, the resurrection, purity, my vow of chastity; and in brown because we are dust and will return to dust, we were created with mud, and of course the Cross of our Lord.
“People are coming from everywhere and the Community is international, so we have different cultures, “ said Laurence, a lay woman from France who recently moved to Denver after spending time in Beatitude houses in Israel and France. “Really, it is the desire that we want to follow God and he chooses our brothers and sisters. It is the Lord who gathered everyone. He gave his grace for this. The unity is made by the prayer.”
“We have to live the Gospel, and one of the major things in the Gospel is forgiveness and fraternal love,” commented Community member Claire Tickell, who grew up in England. “In living this together, of course, we have times when it is a bit tense—somebody is going to get on my nerves, and all of that. But there is fraternal love and forgiveness and we have to exercise them. I think that perhaps that’s why we have lasted so long, because people [in the Community] really want to live the Gospel.”
“Of course the point of joy is very important, and in the Community we laugh a lot, and for me that is a sign of good spiritual health,” said Sister Marie-Liesse.
Children in the Community
And how does a religious community function with young children around the house? The shepherds of the Denver Community are Christian and Christine Meert, who are the parents of five daughters. Their three younger daughters live in the house and attend school in Denver. The family joined the Community in France in 1990. Married couples in the Community are instructed to “live fully the grace of the sacrament of matrimony and at the same time, lead a life totally consecrated to God and his kingdom.”
“Being a family and being part of a religious community is not always easy and is often a challenge, but it’s worth it. It’s not easy because you have to keep the balance between your own family and the Community; you have to spend enough time with your family and enough time with the Community. Of course, family is always first,” Christian said.
Christine Meert added her perspective:
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We try as much as possible to preserve our family’s privacy and have a family room and a little ‘apartment’ within the house. We take breakfast every day in our family room and have dinner together as a family three times a week. As a couple we also take one lunchtime per week, just the two of us. I often have to adapt the Community schedule to my children’s needs. For example, I never go to morning prayer, except during vacations, to be able to help the children get ready for school.
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They are also confronted with all kinds of people, and they mature faster, I think. They have to deal with poor people, suffering people, foreign people and it opens both their minds and their hearts. Even though they don’t go to prayers with us, except if they choose to, they are in a praying environment where they learn about God’s love, forgiveness, and service. Seeing us all deal with all this as well as possible is a very positive teaching for them. They see we are not perfect and have our struggles but that with God all things are possible.
Making ends meet
Only one of the members of the Denver Community has a job outside the house. Claire works part-time for the rector of St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver. Otherwise they have no outside income. The archdiocese helped the Community with living expenses for their first year in Denver, but for most of their needs, Christian explained, “we rely on Divine Providence.”
Many of the Beatitude Communities in other countries are located in rural settings, and so they are able to grow some of their own food and live off the land. That is not possible in their inner-city location in Denver. Financial matters are further complicated by the fact that none of the Community members are citizens of the United States, and the legal status of their visas places some limits on their ability to earn income here.
“They count totally on donations,” Father Meznar explained. “Sometimes, I think their food is rather sparse, but they never complain. I think that people respond if they know their needs.” One of the Community’s needs right now is to obtain adequate health-insurance coverage for all of the members. Families in all of the houses have health insurance, but the single men and women have minimal coverage, often depending on medical professionals who are friends of the Community to donate some services to them.
“The weakness of the movement in this culture is that they have developed and formed where there are more vacant Church buildings for them to occupy and socialized medicine available to them,” explained Fran Maier. “They cannot live without medical insurance. But if they work full-time, they cannot live their Community life. What has not been resolved is how do we get the kinds of social services they require and still allow them to live within their framework?”
“Insurance is a concern, but all the religious orders we know had the same problem and solved it,” observes Christian. “One good solution, God willing, would be to have activities within the Community that would allow us to be employed by the Community.” The Denver Community has even developed a more specific plan, he allows: “Our project is to open a retreat center.”
The Community is currently looking for a facility in the Denver area large enough to sustain a retreat center and also afford them the space to accept new members into the Community house. They have had many inquiries from people interested in spending a discernment year with them.
“I would guess that this house will be the first of many in the US, and I’m sure the lessons they have learned will make it easier on the next Community house. As Americans enter the Community on a permanent basis, that will help things as well,” Jim Mackin said. “We often wonder if the Community will look somewhat different here in the States, if it needs to have an urban character to it to share with the people. It will be fun to watch and see how God unravels the plan.”
“The Archbishop [Chaput] very much wants them to succeed here,” Maier added. “If they were not to succeed, it would not be because the archdiocese has not done everything it could for them.” Christian Meert is fully confident that the Denver Community will flourish. He maintains: “God takes good care of us in all the details of our lives, and he will help us find a way if he wants us to stay here.”
Molly Mulqueen is a free-lance writer based in Colorado. For further information on the Catholic Community of the Beatitudes in the United States, visit their web site at www.archden.org/beatitud.
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