The Community of Sant'Egidio: Vatican II made real.

A spring evening in Rome. People, returning from work, pause in one of the city's countless piazzas, chatting amiably. These public spaces seem expressly designed for such conviviality, luring individuals and families into the forum of the res publica. Then at seven, as the bell of the baroque church in this ancient Roman district of Trastevere tolls, they enter the church for vespers, not to leave the world, but to concentrate it at its still point. The Community of Sant'Egidio comes together in prayer.

The community takes its name from the old Carmelite convent in that small piazza in Trastevere where its members have gathered each evening since the early seventies and which still remains the heart of a community now numbering 15,000 members. Half the members live in Rome and come together for prayer, worship, and social service in local groups, large and small, in various zones of the sprawling metropolis. Another 5,000 live in other Italian cities; and the rest in various European countries, as well as in Africa and Latin America. A first initiative in the United States has just begun in New York.

The community's origins recall the Gospel's "mustard seed." A group of Roman high school students, meeting together in the fateful year 1968, in the midst of ecclesial and social turmoil, pledged to live their lives in the light of the gospel and the service of the poor. From such inconspicuous seeds has grown a spiritually vibrant community that is now recognized canonically by the Holy See as a Public Association of Laity (though a small number of members are priests and religious). The president of Sant'Egidio, who must be a lay person, is elected every four years by delegates, themselves chosen by the more than three hundred local communities.

Impressions abounded during that first vesper service and in subsequent visits and exchanges with community members. I was struck most forcefully by the evangelical spirituality that directs the members' vision and commitment. One sensed the task of evangelization to be so urgent, the harvest so ripe, that little time could be spared for ecclesiastical polarization and contestation. The profound spiritual renewal, desired and charted by Vatican II, seems here to have brought forth nature fruit.

The community's service to the poor, for example, takes multiple forms according to local needs. Members visit the elderly and shut-ins. They minister to the handicapped and to those afflicted with AIDS. They organize classes for children and staff soup kitchens, including the central one in Trastevere that serves 1,500 dinners a day. The community sponsors advocacy forums in Rome to support the new immigrants from Africa and Eastern Europe. As Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milan has written: "What impresses about Sant'Egidio is its unique integration of a profound sense of prayer and Scripture with an intelligent commitment to the poor and to difficult issues of social justice."

This ongoing commitment of Sant'Egidio to the poor and to social justice works daily, barely perceptible miracles in the lives of countless people. But, without doubt, the most dramatic of these miracles occurred on October 4, 1992, when, through the patient mediation of members of Sant'Egidio, a historic peace accord was signed between representatives of the government and rebels of Mozambique. Several years of intense negotiations, shepherded by the community, overcame the suspicion and hostility that had wrought untold suffering and death (one million dead, over a million refugees) and opened the way of hope for a more just and peaceful future.

Sant'Egidio's long presence and service in Mozambique and the relationships of trust it had cultivated with the contending parties lent it credibility to promote this dialogue of peace. During the protracted and often tense negotiations, the community's representatives often repeated John XXIII's dictum: "Let us commit ourselves to what unites rather than to what divides us." Sustained by what they call the "strength-in-weakness of faith and prayer," the community's participation also reflected a realistic (even hard-nosed) incarnational sense of the need for concrete institutional forms to guarantee the peace accord.

This continuum of concern, from the regional to the international, from local parish to ecumenical dialogue among the world religions, from fervent liturgical celebration to responsibility in the world, marks the comprehensive vision of Sant'Egidio. Its realization is unimaginable without the inspiration and direction that Vatican II represents for the contemporary church. But it is equally unimaginable without the community's whole-hearted response to both the letter and the spirit of the council. The members of Sant'Egidio accept the council's integral vision: the primacy of God's Word, the centrality of liturgical prayer, the church as sacrament of unity, the world as worthy of respect and theater of responsible action. By doing so, this association of the laity has thrown open the doors of the former Carmelite cloister of Sant'Egidio to embrace the world: it has wed contemplation to action; joined the mystical and the political.

Not that the community has been altogether immune from criticism. A few pastors in Rome, who respected and praised much about Sant'Egidio, also complained that community members were insufficiently integrated into parish life, in some instances seeming to create parallel structures. Other criticism concerned a perceived tendency by the community to "go it alone," rather than collaborate with other groups, for example, on social justice projects.

Members of the community with whom I raised these questions conceded some validity to the observations. A point they stressed in response was the obvious one that Sant'Egidio is still a young community in the church. Indeed, to exist canonically as a Lay Public Association is itself a pioneering enterprise. Little wonder that, especially in the early years, a good deal of "feeling one's way" was the rule. At times this led to misunderstanding and, perhaps, to too autonomous an attitude.

However, in Rome itself, the community now participates on some fifty parish pastoral councils; it enjoys the active encouragement and support of the pope's vicar for Rome. But, by design, Sant'Egidio reaches out precisely to those not in the mainstream of parish life: the marginalized and the alienated. Their very charism consists in stretching established institutional boundaries.

Bringing the perspective and concerns of a theologian to my encounters, I came away delighted and impressed by the substantive nature of the community's theological foundation. The community's life and mission rest upon the "four pillars" of the Second Vatican Council: the constitutions on divine revelation, the liturgy, the church, and the church in the modern world. The organic and compelling integration of these four dimensions of the Christian life, not some "new breakthrough" or "magic formula," represents, to my mind, the distinctive grace of Sant'Egidio. Those eighteen-year-olds, in 1968, rediscovered the revealed Word of God, the Gospel, in a way similar to its rediscovery by the bishops of Vatican II, culminating in the council's great constitution on revelation, Dei verbum, the "Word of God." This primacy of God's Word effectively impelled the aggiornamento, initiated by the council and embodied concretely in the lives of the members of the Sant'Egidio community. The primacy of the Word was strikingly evident at that vesper service, where reading and preaching from Scripture held symbolic pride of place.

It also appeared in the remark made by one of the leaders of the community with whom spoke in Rome. "Before joining the Sant'Egidio community, I belonged to another group that also studied the Scriptures," he said. "However, I came to see a profound difference of approach. In my group Scripture served as a resource to support our own ideas and agenda. With Sant'Egidio, the process was to receive Scripture as God's Word of life to be discerned and embraced."

The second pillar, both of the council and of the community, is the "Constitution on the Liturgy." The deeper goal of the council's reform of the liturgy has too often been trivialized, both in language and celebration. What ought to be the very font of ongoing renewal, both personal and social, often stagnates through prayerlessness and ideology. By contrast, one experiences at Sant'Egidio the participants' real prayerfulness and heartfelt invocation of God's transforming Spirit.

Other features of the liturgical life of the community deserve noting. One observes a sensitivity to liturgical environment and its importance in evoking a sense of prayer. The place of assembly may be a baroque church or the meeting room of a large urban housing complex. But Eastern icons or a large replica of the cross of Saint Francis command attention and foster contemplation. In addition, the hymns sung sound with evangelical strength and objectivity. The words often are directly scriptural. One hymn enjoins leaving one's gift at the altar if reconciliation is first needed. Another confesses that when we have done all we could, we are but useless servants...a welcome relief from the "we, we, we boosterism" of much post-Vatican II hymnody. Worship is not reduced to workshop.

The third pillar of the council and of the community's life is the recovery of a more profound, more scriptural and patristic, understanding of church: its Magna Carta the "Constitution on the Church," Lumen gentium. Sant'Egidio strikes me as deeply ecclesial, but not narrowly ecclesiastical. Perhaps this is one of the charisms of its being a "lay association." But being ecclesial also allows it to avoid an equally narrow anticlericalism. In Lumen gentium, "people of God" connotes an inclusive whole: clergy, religious, and laity, rooted in a common baptismal dignity and a common call to holiness of life. Any mutual antagonism is only distraction and evasion of responsibility. The members of the church, like the church itself, witness not to self, but to Christ. Christ alone is the "light of the nations"; to witness to him and to announce the gospel in his name is the heart of the church's identity and mission. This real presence of the risen Christ is the only rock upon which church can be securely built and renewed.

Sant'Egidio, founded in Rome by young Roman students, shows the marks of the church of Rome at its best: deep local roots, wide outreach and concern. If, as many hold, the council's vision of church is that of a communion of local churches, then Sant'Egidio embodies this vision in miniature. Its own internal organization seeks to keep institutional structure at a minimum, relying on bonds of friendship and spiritual discernment and communion to unite its members.

Community liturgies, Scripture study, service projects bring together members who retain ultimate responsibility for their everyday lives, vocational commitments, and level of involvement. As a lay community, Sant'Egidio places a premium upon individual responsibility in community. Members of the community are married and single, mothers and fathers of families, students, professionals, and workers. Further, the hundreds of small communities scattered through the world take on distinct configurations and respond to the specific needs of their local cultures and regions. Sant'Egidio is a community of communities.

The great ecclesiologist, Yves Congar, so important an influence in the drafting of Lumen gentium, is a "spiritual associate" of Sant'Egidio. He has helped shape the community's ecclesial vision through his theology of the lay person in the church, as well as through his pioneering ecumenical commitment. In the ecumenical sphere, Sant'Egidio has taken up and extended the initiative of Pope John Paul II in bringing together leaders of the world religions at Assisi in 1986 in a day of prayer for peace. With the pope's encouragement, in each succeeding year the community has sponsored international ecumenical gatherings for prayer and reflection, with a particularly poignant gathering in Warsaw in 1989, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the World War II.

The fourth pillar of the council's achievement and Sant'Egidio's life finds authoritative expression in the "Constitution on the Church in the Modern World," Gaudium et spes. Openness toward and concern for "the world" remains a defining characteristic of Vatican II, reversing the too parochial comportment (however historically understandable) of Roman Catholicism since at least the French Revolution.

Integral to the spirituality of Sant'Egidio is the outreach to the poor, the marginalized, the homeless. In this regard, the figure of Francis of Assisi is clearly central to the spiritual vision and values of the community. Francis too discovered the gospel anew and lived it radically in the circumstances of his own age. The community honors Francis not merely by placing his cross in a prominent spot in its places of worship, but even more by making a privileged option for the poor in imitation of him.

In the "mother church" of the community in Piazza Sant'Egidio it comes as no surprise to find a chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in which the sacrament of Christ's Real Presence is reserved for adoration and prayer. But directly across from it stands another chapel. It represents Christ's Real Presence in the form of graphic icons of the poor, the homeless, the outcast of society. And it bears the stark scriptural reminder: "He had no place."

Sant'Egidio represents a remarkable and hopeful sign of spiritual renewal in the post-Vatican II church. The very young students of '68 are the still relatively young men and women of '94. In twenty-five years, they have navigated numerous shoals with amazing maturity and grace; though not, of course, without cost. Were I to venture a view as to how they have managed to hold so much in creative tension, I would point to their centering on the Real Presence of Christ. Jesus Christ present in the Scriptures and in the Eucharist; present in the community and in the poor: Lord of the church and Light of the world. The spirituality of the community seeks to realize ever more fully the varied modes of that Presence. Thus, when members of the community speak of the "soup kitchen" in Trastevere that serves 1,500 hearty meals a day, they use the richly evocative word mensa: table. It is also a word used to refer to the altar upon which the Eucharist is celebrated. Perhaps nothing better testifies to the eucharistic spirituality of Sant'Egidio than this catholic commitment to realize the body of Christ.

Robert P. Imbelli, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, teaches systematic theology at Boston College. For the current academic year he is visiting professor at Saint Joseph Seminary, Dunwoodie, New York.