[Address of the Most Rev. Henryk M. Jagodzinski, Apostolic Nuncio to Ghana, During the Opening Ceremony of the CMSRMWG, Koforidua 12th October 2022]
Rev. Sister Mercy Boateng, the President of the Conference of Major Superiors of Religious Men and Women in Ghana, Very Rev. Msgr. Francis Twum-Barimah, Vicar General of Koforidua Diocese, dear Fathers, Brothers and Sisters from the different Religious Congregations in Ghana, Good morning.
It is my joy and pleasure to be with you again, Members of the Conference of Major Superiors of Religious in Ghana. As a representative of His Holiness Pope Francis in this beautiful country of Ghana, it is my honour to bring to you his warm greetings and blessings whom I have an audience in the past July of this year. So to each one of you, I give his blessing.
Today, I have the pleasure to share with you words of encouragement to Religious Men and Women by our Holy Father Pope Francis from one of his homilies and from his Apostolic Exhortation.
During his Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica on February 2, 2022, the Pope encouraged consecrated persons to reflect on the essence of consecrated life by posing three questions that should encourage consecrated persons to reflect on their personal, dedicated lives. They are the questions What, Who and When.
Let me start with the question WHAT. What really moves our hearts? And Pope Francis said that what really should move the hearts of consecrated persons is LOVE.
According to him, consecrated life is Love put into practice; a hymn to God sung by a man in love with God. The essence of consecrated life is love for the Triune God, expressed through following Christ on the path of the evangelical counsels, that is, through a life of chastity, poverty and obedience. It is true that all the faithful are called to follow Christ, but consecrated persons are called to a special intimacy with Jesus and to give themselves to him in an “indivisible” way. ” Seduced” by the Lord’s love, by his beauty, he wants to make Christ the center of his life. Man, in his freedom, responds to God “yes” and wants to unconditionally dedicate his own life to Him with the past, present and future. The whole life – the consecrated person – wants to place in the hands of the Master in order to become like him. Fascination with the Master leads the person called to the path of life with the evangelical counsels. Living in obedience, chaste, and poor, possessing nothing and maintaining purity of heart, the consecrated person embarks on the path of the most radical form of living the Gospel on earth. The consecrated person, listening to the Holy Spirit, wants to serve and love with an undivided heart the One from whom he received his vocation. He chooses Christ as the only love of his life and voluntarily renounces married life without denying its value. Carrying the image of Jesus in his heart, he wants to give himself to him in purity, so that through this devotion he may be even closer to man.
Consecrated life consists in showing, that the incarnate Son of God is the eschatological goal toward which all things are moving; the brilliance at which all other light fades; an infinite beauty capable of satisfying all the desires of the human heart (Vita consacrata). The love of the consecrated person gives hope to the world that there is “a new earth and a new heaven” and is a visible sign of God’s kingdom here on earth. Giving ourselves to God through the service of others causes flowers to grow in the desert of the human heart, and the dry trees of our soul to flourish.
Looking at the Master’s face, the consecrated person wants to become poor every day. Having everything with God, in His love, he does not want to be attached here to anything that cannot be compared with God. Having nothing for himself, he also has everything, because by “losing” life for God, he gains another dimension of life – life in Him, with Him and for Him. Following the radical path of poverty, the consecrated person can feel poor together with the poorest on earth: the lonely, the despised, the misunderstood.
The question Who points to – WHO mostly moves us? Is it the Holy Spirit, or the spirit of this world? This a question that everyone, consecrated persons in particular, needs to ask. “The Spirit moves us to see God in the littleness and vulnerability of a baby, yet we at times risk seeing our consecration only in terms of results, goals and success: we look for influence, for visibility, for numbers.” –the Holy Father warned.
Brothers and sisters, we can ask, what moves our days? What is the love that makes us keep going? Is it the Holy Spirit, or the passion of the moment, or something else? “Sometimes, even behind the appearance of good works, the cancer of narcissism, or the need to stand out”.
The Pope warned religious communities against falling into routine as he noted that the world often sees consecrated life as “squandering” and something anachronistic, useless.
He said that nuns and religious should not look back longing for what no longer exists. He encouraged religious to cultivate a renewed vision of consecrated life according to the signs from Jesus. He made an appeal to open our eyes: ‘the Spirit is inviting us amid our crises – and these crises are our decreasing numbers – “Father, there are no vocations, now we will go to the ends of the earth to see if we can find one”. Seeing our diminishing forces, we have to renew our lives and our communities.’
WHEN: And when the arms of consecrated man or woman do not embrace Jesus, they embrace a vacuum which they try to fill with other things, but it remains a vacuum. To take Jesus into our arms is the sign, the journey, the recipe for renewal. When we fail to take Jesus into our arms, our hearts fall prey to bitterness. It is sad to see religious who are bitter, closed up in complaining about things that never go right, in a rigidity that makes them inflexible, in attitudes of supposed superiority.
We have to embrace Jesus in adoration and ask for eyes capable of seeing the goodness and discerning the ways of God. If we embrace Christ with open arms, we will also embrace others with trust and humility. Then conflicts will not escalate, disagreements will not divide, and the temptation to domineer and to offend the dignity of others will be overcome”. ‘… let us joyfully renew our consecration! Let us ask ourselves what “moves” our hearts and actions, what renewed vision we are being called to cultivate, and above all else, let us take Jesus into our arms.” the Holy Father said.”
My dear Religious Men and Women, let us heed the call of our Holy Father for renewal and conversion. In fact, from the start of his pontificate, in his first Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis already expressed his desire for a profound missionary renewal and conversion of the entire Church, and certainly, you priests and religious have an important role to this renewal (cf. EG31). In that encyclical, Pope reminds missionaries, priests and religious of the centrality of joy in your apostolates; that priests and religious should be true apostles, persons who transmit joy everywhere they go.
One of the Church’s renewals that Pope Francis launched is the Church Synodal Journey. Talking of the significance of this Church Synodal Journey to the Religious, Pope Francis addressed the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) on 5th May of this year that “In addition to actively participating in the synodal process at the local Church level, it is very important that communities, congregations, make their own synodal journey.” The Pope is counting that the synodal process being experienced in the local Church may also take place in every institution where everyone listen to each other, to hear what God is saying to all of them. He said that Synodal process provides an opportunity for ‘young and old to exchange their wisdom and visions of consecrated life.” I reiterate the call of Pope Francis to each one of you here to let the synodal process take place in your communities and in your conference.
As you are also aware, on March 19 of this year, Pope Francis, promulgated a new Apostolic Constitution, Praedicate Evangelium, concerning the reform of the Roman Curia. At the beginning of this document, the Holy Father speaks of the Missionary conversion of the Church: “The Church’s “missionary conversion” aims to renew her as a mirror of Christ’s own mission of love. For you religious, it is a call for renewal that you will truly be a shining mirror of Christ’s own mission of love. Reflecting on those inspiring words of Pope Francis being said above can help you for this renewal.
I also encourage you to be faithful to your Rule and Constitutions and to your Charism. “It is very good to remember the need for constant reference to the Rule, because in the Rule and in the Constitutions, there is a map for the whole journey of discipleship in accordance with a specific charism of your congregation confirmed by the Church. This way of following translates the particular interpretation of the Gospel given by the founders and foundresses as the result of a particular prompting of the Spirit and it helps the members of the Institute live concretely according to the Word of God (# 24: Starting Afresh From Christ). God bless you all. May you have a successful meeting.
Photo Credit: Newswatchgh.com
