FOR THE WORLD DAY OF CONSECRATED LIFE:
2 FEBRUARY
Responding fully to the God of love
On Friday evening, 2 February, the 11th World Day of Consecrated Life, the Holy Father spoke to consecrated men and women after the Holy Mass in St Peter’s Basilica.
[…] Dear brothers and sisters, the Feast day we are celebrating reminds us that your Gospel witness, to be truly effective, must stem from a response without reserve to the initiative of God who has consecrated you to him with a special act of love.
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Just as the elderly Simeon and Anna longed to see the Messiah before they died and spoke of him “to all who were looking for the redemption of
Those who are chosen by God for the consecrated life make this spiritual longing their own in a definitive way. In it, in fact, they have one expectation: the
An unconditional response to God
By their example they proclaim to a world which is often bewildered but, in fact, increasingly in search of meaning, that God is the Lord of life and that his “steadfast love is better that life: (Ps 63[62]: 4[3]).
By choosing obedience, poverty and chastity for the Kingdom of Heaven, they demonstrate that any attachment or love for people and things is incapable of definitively satisfying the heart; that earthly existence is a longer or shorter period of waiting for the “face-to-face” encounter with the divine Bridegroom, an expectation to be lived with an ever vigilant heart, to be ready to recognize and welcome him when he comes.
Consecrated life, therefore, is by its nature a total and definitive, unconditional and passionate response to God (cf. Vita Consecrata, n. 17). And so, when one renounces everything to follow Christ, when one gives to him all that one holds most dear, braving every sacrifice as did the divine Teacher, the consecrated person who follows in Christ’s footsteps necessarily also becomes “a sign of contradiction”, because his/her way of thinking and living is often in opposition to the logic of the world, as it is almost always presented in the media.
Indeed, in choosing Christ we let ourselves be “conquered” by him without reserve. How many people thirsting for the truth are struck by this courage and attracted by those who do not hesitate to give their life, their own life, for their belief.
Is not this the radical evangelical fidelity to which every consecrated person is called in our time too? Let us give thanks to the Lord so that many Religious men and women in all the corners of the earth may continue to offer a supreme and faithful witness of love to God and to the brethren, a witness that is often marked by the blood of martyrdom. Let us also thank God so that these examples may continue to inspire in the souls of many young people the desire to follow Christ always in an intimate and total way.
Dear brothers and sisters, never forget that the consecrated life is a divine gift and that it is the Lord in the first place who ensures its success in accordance with his plans. This certainty that the Lord leads us to a successful conclusion despite our weakness; this certainty must be a comfort to you, protecting you from the temptation of discouragement in the face of the inevitable difficulties of life and the many challenges of the modern epoch. Indeed, in the difficult period in which we live many Institutes may feel a sense of dismay at the failings they discover within them and the many obstacles they encounter in carrying out their mission.