Becoming Human
Vol. 57 No. 11 The Second Sunday before Lent (Sexagesima) February 8, 2026
Of late there has been a lot of talk about loneliness and the loss of community—and it’s well-founded. Even when we are busy and connected, something can feel insubstantial. Fewer people marry than once did. Friendships are often mediated through screens. Work fills our schedules but does not always sustain our souls. Political and cultural disagreements divide families and friendships that once felt secure. We are, in many ways, more connected than ever—and yet more isolated too.
That’s not just a sociological observation: too often it’s a painful reality. We know that life was meant to be richer, deeper, more shared than it often is. Human beings are not designed to live as isolated individuals. We are made for relationship, for shared life, for belonging. When those bonds weaken, something in us weakens with them.
And yet, anyone who has truly belonged to a community knows that community is not easy. Life together requires patience, forgiveness, humility, and endurance. It asks us to stay when it would be easier to leave, to listen when we would rather speak, to forgive when we would prefer to withdraw. Other people are inconvenient. They disappoint us. Still worse, they show us our faults and failings. But it is precisely through these demands that community becomes a gift. Living with others draws us beyond ourselves and calls forth virtues we would never learn on our own.
This is why community matters so deeply: it is not only something that supports us; it is something that forms us. We do not become fully ourselves in isolation. We become ourselves through faithful relationships over time. It is in community that we become fully human.
Of course, not every community makes us better. Some communities wound rather than heal. They can be held together by fear, pride, resentment, or the need to dominate others. Saint Augustine, one of the great teachers of the Church, made this distinction long ago. He taught that every community is shaped by what it loves most. Some are united by love of self at the expense of others—even at the expense of God. Others are united by love of God, which teaches us how to love one another rightly—even at our expense. Community alone is not enough; the question is what kind of community it is.
This brings us to the Church.
The Church, at its heart, is not simply a place we attend or a program we support. It is a community formed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a fellowship created not by shared interests, political views, or social backgrounds, but by grace. In the Church, people of different ages, histories, and temperaments are drawn together because Christ has drawn them first to himself.
This is why the Church can feel strange at times. It does not sort us by preference or affinity. It brings us into relationship with people we might never have chosen on our own. And yet – as many parishioners will testify, as I would testify – this is part of its gift. In the Church, we learn to love not only those who are easy to love, but those whom Christ loves. Over time, through worship, prayer, shared service, and patient endurance, we are shaped into a different kind of people.
The Church’s mission is often described in terms of what it does—its outreach, its service, its teaching. All of that matters. But beneath those activities lies something even more fundamental: not just what it does, but what it is. The Church is meant to be a living sign of restored human life. It is a place where broken people are gathered, forgiven, and taught how to live again in right relationship—with God and with one another.
This is what earlier Christians meant when they said, “Outside the Church there is no salvation.” They did not mean that God’s grace is confined by walls or membership rolls. They meant that salvation is not merely an individual experience or a private belief. Salvation is communion—life shared with God and with others in common faith, a common hope, a common love. The Church exists to offer that shared life, and to train us in it.
In a world marked by division, loneliness, and exhaustion, this may be one of the Church’s greatest gifts. Not that it is perfect—no parish ever is—but that it is faithful. Week by week, through ordinary acts of worship and care, the Church teaches us how to belong, how to forgive, how to persevere, and how to hope.
In that sense, the Church does not simply help us live better lives. It helps us become more fully human. And that is good news worth sharing.