Vatican City. On February 2, 2022, the Church celebrated the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord and the 26th World Day for Consecrated Life. It is a unique date for all of us who are part of this vocation within the Church.
The Holy Father celebrated Holy Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica with a limited capacity due to the pandemic. During this celebration, the Pope usually addresses words of encouragement to the Church to help us to remain faithful to the vocation we have received. This year he posed three questions based on the Gospel proclaimed in which Simeon and Anna appear waiting in the Temple (Lk. 2:26-28).
What is it that moves us?
The Holy Spirit is the center of everything. And in the face of the airs of grandeur and worldly aspirations, he invites us to continue to focus as consecrated persons on the small, the fragile, the last of this world. He says: “Let us think of the cross; there too there is a smallness, a fragility, even a drama.” “We sometimes run the risk of conceiving our consecration in terms of results, goals, and success.”
What do our eyes see?
Two consecrated people can be looking at the same reality and feel and live it in diametrically opposed ways. Our discourse changes depending on what we look at, what we prioritize, and what we give importance to. The Pope invites us to reflect on this point: “Each of us can ask ourselves: what do our eyes see? What vision do we have of consecrated life? The world often sees it as a waste of money: “Look at that good lad, will just become a friar.”
He also encourages us to drink from the wisdom of our older brothers: “[go] to visit our older religious brothers and sisters, to look at them, to converse with them, to ask them, to know what they think.”
What do we clasp in our arms?
And finally, he concludes by reminding us again that we need to guard our capacity to be amazed. “If we lack our sense of wonder, it is not because we are victims of someone or something. The real reason is that we no longer have Jesus in our arms.” “It is sad to see bitter consecrated people, who live closed up in complaining about things that are not going well, in a rigor that makes us inflexible, with airs of apparent superiority.”
Video summary: Vatican News
Full homily: vatican.va
(Written by José Enrique García, CMF. Photo by Edgar Alejandro Salgado Tapia, CMF)
