Exploring your vocation with the Congregation of the Passion
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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.
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 Jerusalem" (cf. Lk 2:26,38)
so also in our time, especially among young people, there is a widespread need to
encounter God.
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 Kingdom of God: that God reign in our will, in our hearts, in the world. In them
burns a unique thirst for love which can be quenched by the Eternal One alone.
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 than 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-
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.
May Mary, the Tota Pulchra, teach you to transmit
to men and women today this divine fascination that must transpire from your words
and actions. As I express to you my grateful appreciation for the service you render
to the Church, I assure you of my constant remembrance in prayer and I warmly bless
you all.
© Copyright 2007 -
Extract from Papal Address on World Day of Consecrated Life.
"That God Reign in Our Will, in Our Hearts,
in the World"
February 2, 2007
Pope Benedict XVI
FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION OF THE LORD.
11th WORLD DAY OF CONSECRATED LIFE
ADDRESS
OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
TO CONSECRATED MEN AND WOMEN
Vatican Basilica