The most difficult aspect of religious life is community. Living with others, no matter who the others are, is difficult. It is perhaps the most difficult thing we are called to do. I believe that this is the immediate purpose of a life of faith and the grace of the sacraments, because I believe that this is our road to the glory of God. I do not believe in union with God without union with one's neighbor, and union with one's neighbor is not acquired without the grace necessary for living in tension with one's neighbor. This tension is a natural component of human life as a subject among subjects each with his or her own will. This is to say that tension is an existentiel of all subjective alterity, in other words, when we human beings meet we bring tension to the meeting. This existentiel tension is not to be understood as conflict or negative tension, but rather as a kind of dynamic energy which must be consciously and intensionally employed to keep it from becoming destructive. I also believe that the only way this tension can be harnessed creatively for the purpose of building ever greater unity among the people of God is through the grace of God. Baptism calls us to live with and not flee from the tension of social existence, grace provides us with the means of doing so, and in doing so we move ever deeper into the mystery of God.
Is there an end to this tension? I don't believe so because I believe that where there is life there is tension. As we progress along this path that leads us deeper into the mystery of God we become more and more adept at creatively harnessing the tension, and this is, in fact, the purpose of life, i.e., learning to harness the tension of life in a creative way. Purgatory then would be the realm of those who had not achieved an adequate degree of skill in creatively harnessing the tensions of life prior to earthly death. Hell would be the realm of those who absolutely refuse to engage the tension and so effectively refuse the gift of life, and heaven is the pursuit of ever greater creative harnessing of the tensions of life in the pursuit of ever greater understanding and experience of the love and mystery of God.
