Pope
Francis to consecrated youth: service without stint
(Vatican
Radio) Pope Francis received a group of young people in consecrated life on
Thursday morning. The special audience was the highlight of the International
Congress for Young People in Consecrated Life taking place in Rome this week,
in the context of the ongoing Year of Consecrated Life, which will close on the Feast of
the Presentation of the Lord (Feb. 2nd), 2016.
Putting
his prepared remarks aside, the Holy Father answered a series of three
questions from the participants. The questions covered areas ranging from the
Holy Father’s own first calling to religious life, to the mission of
consecrated young people in the Church today, to the advice the Holy Father
might have for young people who have completed their formation and lived some
time in religion and are anxious not to lose the impetus of their original
vocation – the “fire in the belly” as it were.
Pope
Francis listened to each of the three questions – posed by a priest from
Aleppo, Syria, named Pierre, a religious sister named Sara, and another sister
named Mary Hyacinth, from India – and then answered generally, beginning
however with a reflection on the dangers of “comfort” in religious life. The
key, he explained, is, “[To have a] heart always open to that, which the Lord
tells us, and to bring that, which the Lord tells us, to dialogue with our
[religious] superior, with one’s spiritual maestro or maestro,
with the Church, with the bishop,” together with a properly ordered and healthy
understanding of the nature and purpose of rules, structures and discipline in
religious life.
The
Holy Father went on to renew his repeated warning against the danger of gossip
in religious life. “Never!” he said, “Never: gossip is the plague of community
life,” once again comparing the gossiping person in religious life to a
terrorist who throws a bomb into the midst of the community.
Speaking
of the role of young people in consecrated life – especially and particularly
women in religious life – Pope Francis said, “You have this desire to be on the
front line: why? Because you are mothers – you have this maternal quality of
the Church herself, which unites you.” Then, the Holy Father offered a
reflection based on his own experience in Buenos Aires. “I recall a hospital in
Buenos Aires that was left without sisters, because the sisters were few,
elderly – and their Congregation was nearly at its end.” The Holy Father went
on to say, “Because religious institutes are all temporary [It.provvisori]:
the Lord chooses them for a time, then He lets go and makes another one.”
Still, the charism lives on, and is needed as much today as ever, if not more.
“Always [be] on the front line,” said Pope Francis. “The Church is the Bride of
Christ, and religious sisters are brides of Christ – they draw their whole
strength from there: before the sanctuary, before the Lord, in prayer with
their Bridegroom, in order to carry His message,” to the world.
In
a particularly candid moment of the particularly frank and unguarded exchange,
Pope Francis returned to the first question, about his memory of his first
conscious experience of a vocation to religious life. “Memory,” he said. “You
asked me to share my memory – how it was – that first call on September 21st,
1953 – but I don’t know how it was: I know that, by chance, I walked into
church, I saw a confessional, and I came out different.”
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét