By: PaxCare Staff
Recovering from addictions is a painful process. It isn’t unusual for a serious addict to have to go through a treatment program 3 or more times before they can maintain sobriety. One of the biggest challenges of recovery is changing your life and your social network after you get out of treatment. If the addict keeps the same friends or stays in the same environment post recovery as he or she did before seeking help, there are just too many temptations.
A Solution…
Comunita Cenacolo (Community of the Cenacle) is a Catholic program designed to assist those who desire to live a life free of addictions. It is not so much a treatment program as an opportunity to rebuild one’s life centered around God, service, and healthy friendships. The Community requires a minimum 3-year commitment and offers support to both the addict and their parents. They accept men 18-40 and women 18-30. From their website:
…founded in Italy in 1983 by a dynamic, vibrant, and faith-filled religious sister named Elvira Petrozzi. Mother Elvira felt certain that God was calling her to serve the poor of the modern world: disillusioned young men and women who live in desperation and hopelessness, convinced that life has no meaning or value. Unable to find peace or joy in their lives, they seek to fill the emptiness with the illusory pleasures of the world, only to find themselves steeped in an intense interior isolation.
Trusting unwaveringly in the direction of the Holy Spirit, Mother Elvira proclaims to all those who live in darkness that only Jesus Christ can heal and transform their shattered lives, changing despair into hope, sadness into joy, hatred into forgiveness, and death into life.
Our Way of Life
To everyone we welcome, we propose a simple, disciplined, family style of life, based on the rediscovery of the essential gifts of prayer and work (”ora et labora”), true friendship, sacrifice, and faith in Jesus. The spirituality of the Community is profoundly Eucharistic and Marian. The day is structured around times of prayer (Eucharistic Adoration, the Liturgy of the Hours, the Rosary), work, deep sharing about one’s own life in the light of the Word of God, recreation, and times of celebration. We believe that the Christian life in its simplicity and fullness is the true answer to every restlessness in the human heart and that, in the living encounter with God’s Mercy, man is reborn into hope and is freed from the chains that have enslaved him, thus rediscovering the joy of loving.
If you or someone you love is struggling with addictions of any kind, check out Comunita Cenacolo. It’s a unique resource that can make a profound difference.