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Homilies | Saturday, February 02, 2019

Thank you for your lives of self-giving love

Archbishop Wenski's homily for World Day of Consecrated Life

Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily at the annual celebration of the World Day of Consecrated Life, during which the archdiocese honored men and women celebrating silver, golden and diamond anniversaries of their profession into religious life. The Mass was celebrated Feb. 2, 2019, at St. Mary Cathedral, Miami.

Today, the 2nd of February, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, is observed as a day of grateful prayer to the Lord for the gift of Consecrated Life to the Church. We thank God for you, men and women religious who, in following the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience, seek to follow Christ by living lives of self-giving love and generous service after the example of Christ himself, who came “not to be served but to serve.” We also honor today our jubilarians celebrating significant milestones in their lives. In good times and in bad, when convenient and when inconvenient, you seek to love with the heart of Christ.

Archbishop Thomas Wenski poses with members of two religious communities, the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary and the Carmelites of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles, at the dinner that followed the annual Mass for the World Day of Consecrated Life, Feb. 2 at St. Mary Cathedral.

Photographer: COURTESY

Archbishop Thomas Wenski poses with members of two religious communities, the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary and the Carmelites of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles, at the dinner that followed the annual Mass for the World Day of Consecrated Life, Feb. 2 at St. Mary Cathedral.

We also celebrate this evening the vigil of the Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time. The Scriptures today speak to us of God’s call, a call that demands of us a single-minded response, indeed a radical response. For in responding to this vocation, one no longer seeks to please no one except God alone. In the life of Jeremiah – as we see in the first reading – and also in the life of Jesus, this single-minded, this radical devotion to pleasing God above all others can result in the utter incomprehension of those around us, even at times it results in their opposition, sometimes a fierce opposition. As Simeon foretold to Mary when the Child Jesus was presented in the temple, he will be a “sign of contradiction.” Religious life today is certainly a sign of contradiction in our secularized and sexualized world. Often even family members who share the faith find it hard to understand why anyone would choose to live a vowed life marked by poverty, obedience and perfect chastity.

I am sure that many of you might recall how your own families and friends reacted when you first told them that you were discerning a vocation to the religious life. Like when the young Jesus, when found teaching in the Temple, perhaps your own parents may have responded as Mary did to Jesus when she said to him, “Son, why have you done this to us?”

Yet, it was not so much that you chose this vocation, but that the Lord chose you for this vocation. It is always God who takes the initiative. In the words of Jeremiah in this evening’s first reading: “The word of the Lord came to me, saying: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.”

St. Paul, in the second reading, presents us with his beautiful hymn to love. Your vocation as consecrated religious is a vocation to love with the heart of Christ and to carry out the mission of your institutions or congregations with the sentiments of Christ according to their particular charisms.

As when he called his first disciples, Jesus calls us to his side to form us for a definitive mission. In doing so he establishes a new family – “who is my mother, my brothers and my sisters?” he asks, and then replies: “Those who do the will of my Father in heaven is mother, brother and sister to me.”

And the different forms of consecrated life or the different families of consecrated persons – well represented here this evening – are the ecclesial development of the form of life of this “new family.” Your lives as vowed men and women reflect the very nature of the Church, the family of God reconciled to the Father and enlivened by the Holy Spirit through participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in baptism.

As I said, today is a day of grateful prayer. We thank God for the gift you are to the Church; we thank God that you responded to his initiative in accepting his call. And we pray for your continued perseverance. May the Virgin Mary remain for each one of you “the sublime example of perfect consecration to the Father, union with the Son and openness to the Spirit.” She did the “will of the Father, ever ready in obedience, courageous in poverty and receptive in fruitful virginity.”

Like the Apostle John who took Mary into his own home, you are called to find in her a true mother. It is this filial relationship with Mary that is “the royal road” to fidelity to one’s vocation.

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