{"id":1386,"date":"2014-06-01T21:09:08","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T01:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nuntiatura.ca\/en\/?p=1386"},"modified":"2015-02-25T15:49:51","modified_gmt":"2015-02-25T20:49:51","slug":"general-assembly-canadian-religious-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/general-assembly-canadian-religious-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"General Assembly – Canadian Religious Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

Homily of the Apostolic Nuncio, Msgr. Luigi Bonazzi<\/strong>
\nSolemnity of the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ
\nMontr\u00e9al, June 1, 2014<\/p>\n

OPENING GREETING<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Men and Women Religious,<\/p>\n

With this Eucharistic Celebration, we wish to live the moment which brings to a conclusion\u00a0the 2014 Assembly of the Canadian Religious Conference and at the same time, the moment\u00a0giving to this Conference its true beginning. Indeed, by communicating to us the Holy Spirit, the\u00a0Eucharistic Jesus sows within us that grace which, despite our own personal poverty, enables us\u00a0to flower and to bear the fruit of that which we have received in these days.<\/p>\n

The Ascension is not a celebration of farewell of the Lord who leaves us. On the contrary,\u00a0it is the celebration of a presence, of a new beginning. From this time onward, the Crucified and\u00a0Risen Lord is no longer bound to space and time; He is with us always and everywhere. There is\u00a0not a moment, nor a place where He is not with us.<\/p>\n

Dear religious, the Ascension of the Lord is especially your Feast. In fact the Consecrated\u00a0Life is \u201can abiding re-enactment in the Church of the form of life which the Son of God made his\u00a0own when he came into the world\u201d (LG 44). Therefore, if the Consecrated Life prolongs at all\u00a0times and in all places the living example of the life of Christ, then the Ascension of the Lord\u00a0marks the beginning of your vocation and your mission. This is your Feast: Let us live it with this\u00a0this Faith!<\/p>\n

HOMILY<\/strong><\/p>\n

The event that we celebrate and which we want to bring into our lives is described in the\u00a0Acts of the Apostles with these simple words: \u201c\u2026as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a\u00a0cloud took him out of their sight\u201d (Acts 1:9). In the letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul states that\u00a0upon the heights the Father of glory \u201cseated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above\u00a0all rule and authority and power and dominion\u2026 And he has put all things under his feet\u201d (Eph.\u00a01:21-22). In the Gospel of St. Matthew, Jesus confirms His heavenly inauguration, saying: \u201cAll\u00a0authority has been given me in heaven and on earth\u201d (Mt. 28:18).<\/p>\n

What does this Feast of the Ascension of the Lord tell us? It does not mean that the Lord\u00a0has gone to a place remote from men and from the world. In teaching us \u201cOur Father who art in heaven\u201d Jesus helps us to understand that in returning to heaven He returns to the Father. The\u00a0Ascension of Christ means that He no longer belongs to our world of corruption and death that\u00a0affects our lives; it means that He belongs completely to God. And since God embraces and\u00a0sustains the entire Cosmos, the Ascension means that Christ is not far from us but that now, thanks\u00a0to His Being-with-the-Father, He is close to each of us forever. Everyone can turn to Him;\u00a0everyone can call upon Him. The Lord is always within \u2018earshot\u2019 of us. We can separate ourselves\u00a0from Him inwardly; we can live by turning our backs on Him. But He ever awaits us; He is always\u00a0close to us.<\/p>\n

He is not only with us, but He is relying upon us. He entrusts to the Church His own\u00a0\u2018powers\u2019, which are in a special way His Word and the Sacraments, and He says to His disciples and to each one of us: \u2018Now, carry out what I myself have done\u2019, and He says \u201cI am with you\u00a0always\u201d (Mt. 28:20).<\/p>\n

With the Ascension begins the mission of the Church called to be in Christ, \u201ca sacrament,\u00a0that is, a sign and instrument of communion with God and of unity among all men\u201d (LG 1). In the\u00a0mission of the Church, with the Church and through the Church, the mission of Consecrated Life\u00a0also begins. For indeed, Consecrated Life belongs ‘strongly’ (LG 44) to the life and holiness of\u00a0the Church. This is so true that as history shows, when the Consecrated Life flourishes, then the\u00a0Church flourishes and grows, whereas when the Consecrated Life withers, the Church also suffers.\u00a0And vice versa.<\/p>\n

What is the service, the testimony that the Consecrated Life is called to give to the Church?\u00a0Summing up in one word the bi-millennial history of Consecrated Life, Pope Francis has affirmed\u00a0with conviction and determination: \u201cThe consecrated life is prophecy\u2026 men and women religious\u00a0are prophets\u2026 They must be men and women who are able to wake up the world\u201d (cf. Exchange\u00a0of Pope Francis with the Superiors General, November 29, 2013, interview in Civilt\u00e0 Cattolica,\u00a0September 19, 2013).<\/p>\n

This \u201cvision\u201d is shared also by your Conference in the following terms: \u201cThrough various\u00a0activities related to social justice, research and communication, the Conference invites its\u00a0members to read the signs of the times and to respond in a prophetic way to contemporary issues\u00a0concerning religious life, the Church and society.\u201d\u00a0Yes, the religious is a \u2018prophet\u2019. We must understand and live this title not as a \u201cslogan\u201d\u00a0or a theory, nor as a \u2018function or duty\u2019, but as a \u2018gift\u2019 that descends from above, a gift placed with\u00a0confidence into our hands by Him who is the source of every good gift (James 1:17). It is a gift\u00a0which must be received and renewed every day in your Consecrated Life. Thus you will be\u00a0capable \u2013 by grace \u2013 to do things that have the taste and value of Him who, because He is on high,\u00a0is profoundly close to everyone.<\/p>\n

Dear religious men and women of Canada: to you who live the charism of the Consecrated\u00a0Life in this great country, in the name of Pope Francis, I wish today to call and invite you to live\u00a0in a particular way:<\/p>\n

\n

the prophecy of the primacy of God;
\nthe prophecy of the Church as communion;
\nthe prophecy of the preferential option for the poor.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Prophecy of the Primacy of God. At the heart of the Consecrated Life is quaerere\u00a0Deum, to search for God, to live in God.\u00a0It is necessary to reaffirm the primacy of contemplation over action. As Pope Francis said\u00a0to religious women, this requires \u201ccontinuously making an \u2018exodus\u2019 from yourselves in order to\u00a0center your life on Christ and on his Gospel, on the will of God, laying aside your own plans in\u00a0order to say with St. Paul: \u2018It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me\u2019 (Gal. 2:20)\u201d (the\u00a0Superiors General (IUGS), May 8, 2013).<\/p>\n

Pope Francis calls this continuous exodus: to adore, adoration. He recalls that worship,\u00a0or, if you like, prayer, which means \u201cto be in God\u201d is the first movement of the Church which he\u00a0invites to \u2018go out\u2019 and become missionary. The Pope used this incisive formula: \u201cPrayer is the\u00a0first work of the apostle, and the second, is to announce the Gospel\u201d (General Audience of\u00a0October 16, 2013). So first of all, it is necessary to be one with Christ (prayer is precisely coming\u00a0before God, standing in his presence); then to evangelize.<\/p>\n

The primacy of God in the Consecrated Life could be seen as something obvious. It is not\u00a0always so. Indeed, gentrification, the need for social status, the search for returns for the Institute\u00a0and personal autonomy have \u2013 quite often \u2013 strongly undermined the primacy of God in religious\u00a0life. Yet, without this primacy, religious life has no meaning. The essence of consecration lies\u00a0precisely in relation to God, in the recognition of Him as the One and All, in welcoming His love,\u00a0in the total gift of self to Him loved more than anything to the point of saying, as the Council\u00a0reminds us (cf. Lumen gentium 44), that men and women religious \u201clive for God alone\u201d, \u201cgive\u00a0themselves over to God alone\u201d (Perfectae caritatis 5,7).<\/p>\n

Dear men and women religious, I implore you, \u201cBe new wine in new wineskins. Invest\u00a0only into the realities that truly matter. Allow God to be born in your communities so that it is He\u00a0who speaks. And then move aside! When \u201cI\u201d am at the centre, God cannot be found. God alone\u00a0must be at the center. God is the center! Prophecy of “Church as Communion.” It is well known that the “ecclesiology of\u00a0communion” is “the central and fundamental idea within the documents of the Council” (n.19\u00a0ChL). The Church sees itself as “the home and the school of communion” (NMI n. 43).<\/p>\n

Communion has an essential relationship with the core of the Consecrated Life which is\u00a0the search for God and his primacy. In fact, the God who calls and to whom religious men and\u00a0women devote themselves is the God of Jesus Christ, a God of love, of relationship, a Trinity,\u00a0which, in its very dynamic, calls for a life of love and unity. How could one belong to the God\u00a0who is communion if not sharing in that communion and not expressing in practical and concrete\u00a0ways a life of unity?<\/p>\n

As consecrated persons, you must be \u2018critics\u2019, willing to confront that individualism which\u00a0is one of the fundamental causes for the actual difficulties we face in all sectors of social life and\u00a0which has even inserted itself into the life of men and women religious, who are also children of\u00a0the present age. All too often, the witness of the consecrated limits itself only to personal witness.<\/p>\n

On the contrary, witness to the faith always has a communitarian and a public dimension. I invite\u00a0you to ask yourselves: how can religious life be ordered so that religious institutes witness publicly\u00a0to an authentic communitarian faith through assiduity to prayer, in listening to and proclaiming\u00a0the Word of God, in the breaking of the Eucharistic Bread, in fraternal union and in service to the\u00a0poor? Then you will become a “living prophecy” of the Church as Communion. This is precisely\u00a0what the Church expects of you: “The Church entrusts to communities of Consecrated Life the\u00a0particular task of spreading the spirituality of communion, first of all in their internal life and\u00a0then in the ecclesial community, and even beyond its boundaries, by opening or continuing a\u00a0dialogue in charity, especially where today’s world is torn apart by ethnic hatred or senseless\u00a0violence\u201d (Vita consecrata, n. 51).<\/p>\n

Prophecy of the preferential option for the poor. Saint John Paul II has warned us that\u00a0\u201cas the unequivocal words of the Gospel remind us, there is a special presence of Christ in the\u00a0poor, and this requires the Church to make a preferential option for them\u201d (NMI, 49).\u00a0For this reason, no less than individualism, it is necessary today to \u201cshake up\u201d the consumer\u00a0society that abandons the poor and the weak to their destiny, obscuring the sense of the gratuity\u00a0and primacy of \u201cbeing\u201d over \u201chaving.\u201d You can do this by living the \u201cprophecy\u201d of the Church\u00a0of the poor, by a lifestyle lived as poor, with the poor and for the poor.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh! How I would like a Church which is poor and for the poor\u201d, said Pope Francis\u00a0when speaking to journalists after his election.\u00a0In Evangelii gaudium: “We have to state without mincing words, that there is an\u00a0inseparable bond between our faith and the poor. May we never abandon them\u201d (48). Naturally, the preferential option for the poor on the part of religious must be evangelical\u00a0(that is to say, practised by living detachment from everything in order to follow Christ, the\u00a0Crucified and Risen Lord), and ecclesial (lived in the Church, in communion).<\/p>\n

With this in mind, religious congregations who are more favoured financially are invited \u2013\u00a0for example \u2013 to open themselves to help those who are less fortunate by assisting in particular\u00a0new religious families (I think of those in Central America, Latin America and Africa\u2026) who are\u00a0blessed with numerous, generous and authentic vocations, but are deprived of the necessary\u00a0means.<\/p>\n

Dear men and women religious, as the Gospel of today reminds us, we are debtors of the\u00a0Gospel for humanity. The Church was born for this: to bring the Gospel to all humanity and thus\u00a0fulfill the aspiration of Jesus: “That all may be one” (John 17:21). This must create a dynamic\u00a0tension within you: to be evangelizers, heralds of the love of God for all. You are Consecrated\u00a0Persons – according to the different charisms proper to each congregation – precisely for this: to\u00a0proclaim the gospel of God, Three in One.<\/p>\n

You can be assured that precisely by \u2018going outside\u2019, by loving, proclaiming and living the\u00a0prophecy of the primacy of God, the prophecy of the Church-Communion, and the prophecy of\u00a0the Church for the poor, you will grow in your identity as Consecrated Persons and you will realize\u00a0the purpose for which each Congregation is born: the glory of God and the salvation of the world.\u00a0This is the commitment to which Pope Francis calls you on the threshold of the Year of the Consecrated Life. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Homily of the Apostolic Nuncio, Montr\u00e9al, June 1, 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[45,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1386"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1386"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1654,"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1386\/revisions\/1654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}