WORLD CONGRESS FOR RELIGIOUS LIFE

Dear Sisters and Brothers!  

Good Morning!

With immense joy and a very full heart we welcome you to this Congress for Consecrated Life.

And here we are – coming from all corners of our planet aware of our thirst for depth and renewal to drink the water from the well of life and hope. 

The world, especially the poor, expect us - religious women and men -  to be persons of hope, a hope which is able to enlighten their lives and strengthen them, while they continue to struggle for recognition of their human dignity and for a more significant and happy life.  We may say that this is Christian hope, with faith and charity  as companions. A hope, which was born from the Resurrection of Jesus and which – in face of oppression and death – creates a new space for life.

We are representatives of Consecrated Life from the whole world.  Those participating in this Congress are: 95 from the African Continent; 250 from the Americas (South, Central and North America); 92 from the Asian Continent; 16 from Oceania and 394 from the European Continent, which totals 850 religious members – male and female – from the five continents: members of the General Curias, Presidents of the National and Continental Conferences, Theologians, young religious, Directors of Spirituality Centers and some magazines.

We are also have some special guests: Bishops,  members of the Congregation of Institutes of Religious and of Apostolic Life, and of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and representatives of various ecclesiastical movements. 

To each and every one a hearty welcome.

We are aware that the outcome of this Congress will depend on each one of us. It will depend on our active and effective participation irrespective of our category.  For this reason  we invite you to feel at home, thus contributing to an atmosphere of openness, simplicity, spontaneity, joy and active participation. For our work together it is very important to listen active and attentively to the  Spirit, who will reveal to each participant through our dialogue with our different cultures and expressions of Consecrated Life.  Our attentive listening will lead us to welcome and make the necessary changes that are required today.

Welcome to share the pain, frustration, insecurities, fears, the searching and success, dreams and hopes, which fill your hearts. 

Welcome to be open to new horizons and to give dynamic life to our future, to our history with the conviction and prophetic courage of our Founders and Foundersess.

We do not yet know the fruit of this Congress.  However, we know that we want to discover alternative ways to our present reality.  To walk courageously so that our presence may nourish hope for a future of greater justice and solidarity, where political, economic, affective, religious and other relationships will be according to the Plan God’s Kingdom.

Aware that those who follow in the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth,  also challenge the empire of death and the power of the oppressors of this world, will risk and accept the loss of their own lives for the others, so that they may have “life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10).

Following the example of Christ, Who, “though he was in the form of God, emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:5-11), Consecrated Life is invited to rid itself of everything which may impede its prophetic power. Starting from our ideas about God which are often far away from the concrete reality and the life experience of the people.  Consecrated Life needs to let go the image that has of itself, that image that is so often imprisoned in secure walls, walls that separates and alienates the members from the suffering and the cry of the poor.

If we contemplate today’s world, many questions arise:

What is the Holy Spirit raising up in Consecrated Life today?

How do we identify it, describe it, and live it?

How do we discover the obstacles to its existence?

To what new “wells” and paths is this consecrated life leading us?  (Instrumentum Laboris)

These days we will ask ourselves similar questions. We want to be attentive to the answers that the Spirit will inspire and open ourselves to the questions not yet asked.

The Instrumentum Laboris points out many challenges.  “We, as consecrated persons, are living through crucial moments for humanity and for the Church.  We have to make decisions of great importance for the immediate future. We are urged to have attitudes of hope, justice and solidarity for all peoples of our times so that they can live in dignity.  We are being presented with decisive options: we can gladden life or make it difficult; grow in communion or create greater distances between us; be conquered by difficulties or face them.  We do not have time to spare.  New realities demand new responses”.  ( nº 56)

For this reason we are invited to participate in this great assembly through dialogue and discernment, sharing our gifts and inspirations in order to  “manifest the gift of the Spirit for the common good”. (1 Cor 12:7).

The theme of his Congress Passion for Christ, Passion for Humanity, takes its inspiration for discernment and action proposals from a double icon contained in the Gospel, The Samaritan Man and the Samaritan Woman. 

Both personalities from Samaria were accepted as inspiring symbols because they can be a significant response for Consecrated Life in our times.

The story of the Samaritan Woman gives us the insight that, in Jesus’ reply to his followers, He includes all.  Jesus came to eliminate all division, which is often created in the name of a religion or of God, with the disastrous consequences that we all know.  The Samaritan woman’s dialogue with Jesus touches her personal intimate life and that of her people, causing her to enter into a conversion process.  

Everyone here is also moved and invited by the Spirit to draw near to the Gospel again, and as Jesus’ followers to accept His loving invitation to change our lives from individualism to solidarity; from rational coolness to sensitivity and humanization of relationships; from prejudice to accepting the dialogue with the differences among us; from war and violence to peace and justice; from the appearance of strength and power to a stronger resemblance with the Servant of Yahweh in order to be worthy of our vocation as missionaries of the Good News!

We are called by the Spirit not to accommodate ourselves to a precise order, or to adjust to a supposed spiritual superiority, or to a belief that our consecration includes us in an automatic process of sanctification and of being witnesses of the sacred.  Often our consecration turns us into Pharisees and counter-witnesses. Thus we remain on the margin of any changes or transformation,  “continuing our lives without calling anyone or proclaiming anything, because we believe our works justify our means and fears”, as is clearly described by Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga, in reaction to the Instrumentum Laboris. He continues by saying: “We are accustomed to believing that we need to appear modest and prudent, and that prophecy shapes only a few among us. We are afraid to appear ridiculous before the ‘foolishness’ of the Gospel. We are afraid to lose our personal or communitarian security. We could annoy certain benefactors, certain authorities or certain hierarchy. We fear the cross and persecution, which cannot be avoided if we wish to radically live our following of Jesus.”

Consecrated Life cannot overcome its crisis if it does not enter into a process of self-evangelization, which obliges us to return to the source that generated our history. We have to touch again the strength and the power of transformation of our charisms. From the very beginning our Founders and Foundresses made it clear that our Charism refers to a powerful Gospel truth, able to transform our own lives and the reality around us. None of our institutions was created to be a continuity of a static situation of non-life, quite to the contrary, they were started by choosing life, and incarnating the option for the poor.

Through her personal encounter with Jesus, the Samaritan woman was able to visualize a new horizon of spirituality and its meaning for her life, and consequently also for her people. She dared to dialogue with an unknown Jew, exposing herself to something new. Thus she went beyond the institution in search of meaning for her emptiness.  And she found a source of Living Water!

The parable of the Samaritan man begins after Jesus’ thanks His Father for “having hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealing them to children” (Cf. Lk 10:21). In reality the first one who tries to confound Jesus is a “wise and learned” expert in Law. St. Luke emphasizes that the lawyer asks a question: “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Lk 10:25), not because he was interested in the truth, but “to confound Jesus”. In returning the question, Jesus makes it clear that the lawyer already knew the reply because he cited the commandment: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind: and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus told him quite simply: “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”(v.28).

But the man insists: “And who is my neighbor”? (v.29). Jesus did not allow himself to be trapped in a theoretical and sterile discussion about who is a neighbor, but suddenly brought the discussion to the practical level, telling the parable of the Samaritan. After having finished, Jesus asks the lawyer “who do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”  Forced to recognize that the person who became the true neighbor of the suffering person, the one who showed mercy, was a Samaritan. At the end, the lawyer hears from Jesus: “Go and do likewise”. (v. 37).

We are invited to form a “Samaritan” Consecrated Life, with a thirst for God and constantly moved by the practice of mercy, ready to move from a place or situation where we are in for the sake of the mission. Such a call puts us in crisis and, if we want, leads us into a process of discernment.  We need courage to read and to welcome the signs of the times; we have to have the boldness to act prophetically. Thus Consecrated Life will have to move from its self-centered concerns to transparency and passionate following of Jesus Christ. The two persons from Samaria made it clear to us that the true expression of Consecrated Live lies in our approach to the world of the excluded and of all those  who are living outside the circle of the globalized societies. Only this expression will give the meaning to Consecrated Life, for which it is searching so insistently!

Dear Sisters and Brothers, I welcome you  “to be immersed in the spirit of this Congress, which is one of welcoming the voice of the Spirit of God, of allowing ourselves to be  transformed and of beginning a new practice.”

To welcome: implies openness, active listening, sharing what the Spirit is offering and being moved by Gospel issues.

To be transformed: is possible if we remain open to learning and discerning those spirits that move us.

We are sensing new horizons and therefore are dreaming of re-launching Consecrated Life in all its dimensions of spirituality, solidarity, Justice and hope for the mission.

We are discovering the validity of new expressions that are arising among us, and we wish to accept and promote these new expressions as a gift of God and as a new commitment.

We want to strengthen a kind of spirituality and mission to be shared with the People of God, as well as to strengthen communion and solidarity among Religious of both genders,  female and male.

We want to commit ourselves to experience Passion for Christ and Passion for Humanity in new contexts. “Consecrated Life is urged to cultivate passion for God and for human beings” and to be the voice of Religious Life which is able to challenge itself everywhere in the world, where it is present.

I welcome you to make this Congress Good News for today’s world. We are here to continue being a gift of the Spirit for the Church and the world!