Confirming a Christian Community

Commitment to the community emerges through simple promises.  Monsignor Michael de Verteuil relates the beginning of the Covenant Community:

As more and more people came, more and more with the desire to drink more deeply of the Living Water, we were looking for a way to commit ourselves collectively to the Lord.
 

We first spoke of a covenant one weekend ‘down the islands’, Rose, Rhonda, Maureen, Kathleen and I.  We perused various forms of covenants to formulate our own.  It should be simple, we thought, and a commitment to living a true Christian life and, of course, we all should attend prayer meetings of the Living Water Community regularly!  The idea was to satisfy the need of people to belong, and to commit themselves to the Lord through their part in the community. 
 

Soon our covenant was born in December 1980, at the Holy Name Convent, 166 persons made the covenant for the first time.  Since then, every year, twice a year – in July and December – people are invited to join the community.  We also have a community in San Fernando where many people have taken the covenant and committed themselves to the Lord through the Living Water Community.  We now also have a covenant community in Saba, Netherlands Antilles, and more recently, in Barbados.
 

Starting with the first 166 who made the covenant, the community kept growing.  Then it was felt that there was need for smaller sub-groups within the community because people were disappearing for weeks without anyone knowing.  We were losing touch with each other; the family seemed to be getting too big.  To strengthen the community and build relationships, the community was divided into smaller groups on a geographical basis.  These were called “flower groups”.
 

The Lord had spoken a word at a prayer meting, about our being flowers.  Everyone was a flower, and God loved to walk through His garden to see all the different flowers.  Smaller groups of six to twelve persons living in an area have all been given flower names.  We have those in Diego Martin – Petunia; Sunflower in Belmont; in the East – Bachelor’s Button.  We have flower groups spread from Trincity to Carenage; Diego Martin, Port of Spain and San Fernando.
 

Through these flower groups, we allow the Lord to bind us together even more strongly.

Household Members