Dear Brothers and
Sisters
I am pleased to be with you
today, members of Secular Institutes whom I am meeting for the first
time since my election to the Chair of the Apostle Peter. I greet
you all with affection. I greet Cardinal Franc Rodé, Prefect of the
Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of
Apostolic Life, and I thank him for his words of filial devotion and
spiritual closeness, also on your behalf. I greet Cardinal Cottier
and the Secretary of your Congregation.
I greet the President of the
World Conference of Secular Institutes, who has expressed the
sentiments and expectations of all of you who have gathered here
from different countries, from all the continents, to celebrate an
International Symposium on the Apostolic Constitution Provida
Mater Ecclesia.
Sixty years have passed, as
has already been said, since that 2 February 1947, when my
Predecessor Pius XII promulgated this Apostolic Constitution,
thereby giving a theological and juridical basis to an experience
that matured in the previous decades and recognizing in Secular
Institutes one of the innumerable gifts with which the Holy Spirit
accompanies the Church on her journey and renews her down through
all the ages.
That juridical act was not
the goal but rather the starting point of a process that aimed to
outline a new form of consecration: the consecration of faithful lay
people and diocesan priests, called to live with Gospel radicalism
precisely that secularity in which they are immersed by virtue of
their state of life or pastoral ministry.
You are here today to
continue to mark out that path plotted 60 years ago, which sees you
as increasingly impassioned messengers in Jesus Christ of the
meaning of the world and of history.
Your fervour is born from
having discovered the beauty of Christ and of his unique way of
loving, healing and meeting the needs of life and of enlivening and
comforting it. And your lives aim to sing the praise of this beauty
so that your being in the world may be a sign of your being in
Christ.
Indeed, it is the mystery of
the Incarnation that makes your integration in human events a place
of theology: ("God so loved the world that he gave his only Son", Jn
3: 16). The work of salvation was not wrought in opposition to the
history of humankind but rather in and through it.
In this regard, the
Letter to the Hebrews notes: "In many and various ways God
spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days
he has spoken to us by a Son" (1: 1-2a).
This redeeming act was
itself brought about in the context of time and history, and implies
obedience to the plan of God inscribed in the work that came from
his hands.
It is once again this same
text from the Letter to the Hebrews, an inspired text,
which points out: "When he said, "You have neither desired nor taken
pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin
offerings' - these are offered according to the law -, he then
added, "Lo I have come to do your will'" (Heb 10: 8-9a).
These words of the Psalm and
the Letter to the Hebrews, expressed through
intra-Trinitarian dialogue, are words of the Son who says to the
Father: "I have come to do your will". Thus, the Incarnation comes
about: "Lo, I have come to do your will". The Lord involves us in
his words which become our own: here I am, Lord, with the Son, to do
your will.
In this way, the process of
your sanctification is clearly marked out: self-sacrificing
adherence to the saving plan manifested in the revealed Word,
solidarity with history, the search for the Lord's will inscribed in
human events governed by his Providence.
And at the same time, the
characteristics of the secular mission are outlined: the witness to
human virtues such as "righteousness and peace and joy" (Rom 14:
17), the "good conduct" of which Peter speaks in his First Letter
(cf. 2: 12), echoing the Teacher's words: "Let your light so shine
before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your
Father who is in Heaven" (Mt 5: 16).
Also part of the secular
mission is the commitment to build a society that recognizes in the
various environments the dignity of the person and the indispensable
values for its total fulfilment: from politics to the economy, from
education to the commitment to public health, from the management of
services to scientific research.
The aim of every specific
reality proper to and lived by the Christian, his own work and his
own material interests that retain their relative consistency, is
found in their being embraced by the same purpose for which the Son
of God came into the world.
Therefore, may you feel
challenged by every suffering, every injustice and every search for
truth, beauty and goodness. This is not because you can come up with
the solution to all problems; rather, it is because every
circumstance in which human beings live and die is an opportunity
for you to witness to God's saving work. This is your mission.
On the one hand, your
consecration highlights the special grace that comes to you from the
Spirit for the fulfilment of your vocation, and on the other, it
commits you to total docility of mind, heart and will to the project
of God the Father revealed in Jesus Christ, whom you have been
called to follow radically.
Every encounter with Christ
demands a profound change of attitude, but for some, as it was for
you, the Lord's request is particularly demanding: you are asked to
leave everything, because God is all and will be all in your lives.
It is not merely a question of a different way of relating to Christ
and of expressing your attachment to him, but of an option for God
that requires of you constant, absolute and total trust in him.
Conforming your own lives to
the life of Christ by entering into this words, conforming your own
life to the life of Christ through the practice of the evangelical
counsels, is a fundamental and binding feature which, in its
specificity, demands the concrete and binding commitment of
"mountaineers of the spirit", as venerable Pope Paul VI called you (Address
to Participants in the First International Congress of Secular
Institutes, 26 September 1970; L'Osservatore Romano
English edition [ORE], 8 October, p. 5).
The secular nature of your
consecration brings to the fore, on the one hand, the means you use
to fulfil it, that is, the means proper to every man and woman who
live in ordinary conditions in the world, and on the other, the form
of its development, that is, a profound relationship with the signs
of the times which you are called to discern personally and as a
community in the light of the Gospel.
Your charism has been
authoritatively recognized several times precisely in this
discernment in order for you to be a workshop of dialogue with the
world, that "experimental workshop in which the Church ascertains
practical ways for her relations with the world" (Pope Paul VI,
Address to the Council of the Sacred Congregation for Religious and
the International Union of Male and Female Superiors General, 6
November 1976;cf. ORE, 18 November, p. 3).
The enduring timeliness of
your charism derives precisely from this, for this discernment must
not take place from outside reality but from within it, through full
involvement. This takes place in the daily relationships that you
can weave in family and social relations, in professional activity,
in the fabric of the civil and ecclesial communities.
The encounter with Christ
and the act of following him, which impels and opens people, "must
necessarily be reflected "ad extra' and expand naturally" in an
encounter with one and all, for if God fulfils himself only in
communion, it is also only in Trinitarian communion that human
beings are fulfilled.
You are not called to
establish special forms of living, of apostolic commitment or social
intervention, but rather, forms that can come into being through
personal relations, a source of prophetic riches. May your lives be
like the yeast that leavens all the dough (cf. Mt 13: 33), sometimes
silent and hidden, but always with a positive and encouraging
outreach capable of generating hope.
The place of your apostolate
is therefore the whole human being, not only within the Christian
community - where the relationship materializes in listening to the
Word and in sacramental life from which you draw to sustain your
baptismal identity - I say the place of your apostolate is the human
being in his entirety, both within the Christian community and in
the civil community, where relationships are formed in the search
for the common good, in dialogue with all, called to witness to that
Christian anthropology which constitutes a sensible proposal in a
society bewildered and confused by its multicultural and
multireligious profile.
You come from different
countries and the cultural, political and even religious situations
in which you live, work and grow old are different. In all of these
situations, may you be seekers of the Truth, of the human revelation
of God in life. We know it is a long journey, distressing at the
present time, but its outcome is certain. Proclaim the beauty of God
and of his creation.
Following Christ's example,
be obedient to love, be men and women of gentleness and mercy,
capable of taking to the highways of the world, doing only good. May
yours be a life that is focused on the Beatitudes, that contradicts
human logic to express unconditional trust in God, who wants human
beings to be happy.
The Church also needs you to
give completeness to her mission. Be seeds of holiness scattered by
the handful in the furrows of history. Rooted in the freely given
and effective action with which the Lord's Spirit guides human
events, may you bear fruits of genuine faith, writing with your life
and your witness trajectories of hope, writing them with the actions
suggested by "creativity' in charity" (John Paul II, Apostolic
Letter
Novo Millennio Ineunte,
n. 50).
With these hopes, as I
assure you of my constant prayers in support of your apostolic and
charitable projects, I impart a special Apostolic Blessing to you.
© Copyright 2007 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
