““My friend’s experience reminded me that the search for a perfect religious community is a futile one. As the Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote in The Seven Storey Mountain, “The first and most elementary test of one’s call to the religious life—whether as a Jesuit, Franciscan, Cistercian or Carthusian—is the willingness to accept life in a community in which everybody is more or less imperfect.” That holds for any religious organization.””
![“...to become a Christian one did not have to become a European. [Jesuit mission philosophy]” quote by John W. O'Malley S.J](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/a52/john-w-o-malley-s-j-102355_christian_to-become-a-christian-one-did-not-have-t_1275732.jpg)
