rallegratevi-lettera-consacrati_en


rallegratevi-lettera-consacrati_en

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Congregation
for Institutes of Consecrated life
and Societies of Apostolic life
year of the Consecrated life
R e joice!
A letter
to consecrated men and women
A message from the teachings of Pope Francis
LIBRERIA EDITRICE VATICANA

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© Copyright 2014 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
00120 Città del Vaticano
Tel. 06 69 88 10 32 - Fax 06 69 88 47 16
www.libreriaeditricevaticana.com
www.vatican.va
ISBN 978-88-209-9325-2

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“I want to say one word
to you and this word is joy.
Wherever consecrated people are,
there is always joy!”.
Pope FRANCIS

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Dear brothers and sisters,
1. “The joy of the Gospel fills the heart and
lives of all who encounter Jesus. With Jesus
Christ joy is constantly born anew.”1
The beginning of Evangelii Gaudium, within
the fabric of the teaching of Pope Francis, rings
out with surprising vitality, proclaiming the won-
derful mystery of the Good News that trans-
forms the life of the person who takes it to heart.
We are told the parable of joy: our meeting with
Jesus lights up in us its original beauty, the
beauty of the face on which the Father’s glory
shines (cf. 2 Cor 4:6), radiating happiness.
This Congregation for Institutes of Conse-
crated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life in-
1 FRANCIS, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium
(24 November 2013), LEV, Città del Vaticano 2013, n. 1.
All the cited texts of Pope Francis, with the exception of the
morning meditations, are published in English on the Vatican
website (http://w2.vatican.va/content/vatican/en.html).
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vites us to reflect on the graced time we have
been given to live, at the special invitation that
the Pope addresses to those in consecrated life.
To accept this teaching means to renew our
existence in accordance with the Gospel, not in a
radical way understood as a model of perfection
and often of separation, but by adhering whole-
heartedly to the saving encounter that trans-
forms our life. “It is a question of leaving every-
thing to follow the Lord. No, I do not want to
say ‘radical’. Evangelical radicalness is not only
for religious: it is demanded of all. But religious
follow the Lord in a special way, in a prophetic
way. It is this witness that I expect of you.
Religious should be men and women able to
wake the world up.”2
In their finite humanity, on the margins, in
their everyday struggles, consecrated men and
women live out their fidelity, giving a reason for
the joy that lives in them. So they become splen-
did witnesses, effective proclaimers, companions
and neighbours for the women and men with
whom they share a common history and who
want to find their Father’s house in the Church.3
2 ANTONIO SPADARO, “Wake up the World!”. Conversation
with Pope Francis About the Religious Life, in: La Civiltà
Cattolica, 165 (2014/I), 5 (English translation by Fr. Donald
Maldari, S.J.).
3 Cf. FRANCIS, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium
(24 November 2013), LEV, Città del Vaticano 2013, n. 47.
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Francis of Assisi, who took the Gospel as his way
of life “made faith grow and he renewed the
Church, and at the same time he renewed soci-
ety, he made it more fraternal, but he always did
it with the Gospel and by his witness. Always
preach the Gospel and if necessary use words!”4
Numerous suggestions come to us from lis-
tening to the words of the Pope, but we are
particularly challenged by the absolute simplicity
with which Pope Francis offers his teaching, in
tune with the appealing sincerity of the Gospel.
Plain words sown from the open arms of the
good sower, who trustingly does not discrimi-
nate between one sort of soil and another.
An authoritative invitation is offered to us
with gentle trust, an invitation to do away with
institutional arguments and personal justifica-
tions. It is a provocative word that questions our
sometimes apathetic or sleepy way of life, as we
often live on the margins of the challenge: if you
had faith as big as this mustard seed (Lk 17:5).
It is an invitation that encourages us to impel our
spirits to acknowledge the Word living among
us, the Spirit who creates and continues to renew
the Church.
This Letter is motivated by this invitation, in
the hope of initiating a shared reflection. It is
4 FRANCIS, Meeting with the Young People of Umbria,
Assisi (Perugia), 4 October 2013.
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offered as a simple tool for examining our lives
honestly in the light of the Gospel. This Dicast-
ery therefore presents a shared itinerary, a space
for personal, communal and institutional reflec-
tion as we journey towards 2015, the year the
Church has dedicated to consecrated life, with
the desire and the intention of making coura-
geous evangelical decisions leading to revitaliza-
tion, bearing fruits of joy. “The primacy of God
gives full meaning and joy to human lives, be-
cause men and women are made for God, and
their hearts are restless until they rest in him.”5
5 JOHN PAUL II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Vita
consecrata (25 March 1996), n. 27, in: AAS 88 (1996),
377-486.
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BE GLAD, REJOICE,
RADIATE JOY

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Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her,
all you who love her; rejoice greatly with
her all you who mourn over her.
For this is what the Lord says: “I will ex-
tend peace to her like a river, and the
wealth of nations like a flooding stream;
you will nurse and be carried on her arm
and dandled on her knees.
As a mother comforts her child, so will
I comfort you; and you will be comforted
over Jerusalem.
When you see this, your heart will rejoice
and you will flourish like grass; the hand
of the Lord will be made known to his
servants.”
Isaiah 66:10-14

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Listening
2. In sacred Scripture the term joy (in He-
brew: s´imh. â/s´amah. , gyl) is used to express a
multiplicity of collective and personal experi-
ences connected in a particular way to religious
ceremonies and feasts, and to recognise the sense
of the presence of God in the history of Israel.
There are indeed thirteen different verbs and
nouns found in the Bible to describe the joy of
God, of people and also of creation itself, in the
dialogue of salvation.
In the Old Testament, these recurrences are
most numerous in the Psalms and in the prophet
Isaiah. With creative and original linguistic
variations, there are many invitations to joy.
The joy of the nearness of God is proclaimed,
the delight in what God has created and made.
Hundreds of times in the Psalms there are effec-
tive expressions to indicate that joy is both the
fruit of the benevolent presence of God and the
jubilant echo that it gives rise to, as well as a
declaration of the great promise that lies in the
future for the people. As for the prophet, it is
the second and third parts of the book of Isaiah
that pulse with this frequent call to joy, pointing
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to the future: it will be overflowing (cf. Is 9:2),
the heavens, the desert and the earth will leap for
joy (Is 35:1; 44:23; 49:13), the liberated prisoners
will enter Jerusalem shouting for joy (Is 35:9 f.;
51:11).
In the New Testament the preferred vocabu-
lary is linked to the root kar (kàirein, karà), but
other terms are found such as agalliáomai, euph-
rosy´ne¯. It usually implies total exultation em-
bracing the past and the future together. Joy is
the messianic gift par excellence, as Jesus himself
promised: ...that my joy may be in you and that
your joy may be complete (Jn 15:11; 16:24; 17:13).
Starting with the events that precede the birth
of the Saviour, it is Luke who signals the ex-
ultant diffusion of joy (cf. Lk 1:14.44.47; 2:10;
cf. Mt 2:10) and then accompanies the spread of
the Good News with this effect that expands
(cf. Lk 10:17; 24:41.52) and is a typical sign of
the presence and the spread of the Kingdom
(cf. Lk 15:7.10.32; Acts 8:39; 11:23; 15:3; 16:34;
cf. Rom 15:10-13; etc.).
According to Paul, joy is a fruit of the Spirit
(cf. Gal 5:22) and a typical, constant feature
of the Kingdom (cf. Rm 14:17) that is strength-
ened by trials and tribulations (cf. 1 Titus 1:6).
The source of joy must be found in prayer, char-
ity and unceasing thanksgiving (cf. 1 Titus 5:16;
Phil 3:1; Col 1:11 f.). In his difficulties the apostle
to the gentiles felt full of joy and a sharer of
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the glory that we all await (cf. 2 Cor 6:10; 7:4;
Col 1:24). The final triumph of God and the
marriage of the Lamb will complete every joy and
exultation (cf. Rev 19:7), setting off an explosion
of a cosmic Alleluia (Rev 19:6).
Let us look at the meaning of the text: Rejoice
with Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you who
love her; rejoice greatly with her (Is 66:10). This is
the end of the third part of the prophet Isaiah.
It is necessary to be aware that chapters 65-66
are closely united and mutually complementary,
as was already evident in the conclusion of the
second part of Isaiah (chapters 54-55).
In both these chapters the theme of the past
is evoked, sometimes with crude imagery, as
if to invite them to forget it because God wants
to make a new light shine out, a trust that
will immediately heal infidelity and cruelty.
The curse, a result of their disregard for the
Covenant, will disappear because God is about
to make Jerusalem a delight and its people a joy
(cf. Is 65:18). This will be demonstrated in the
experience that God’s answer comes even before
the request is voiced (cf. Is 65:24). This context
persists through the first verses of Isaiah 66,
resurfacing here and there through signs show-
ing the insensitivity of their hearts and ears in
the face of the Lord’s goodness and his Word
of hope.
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Here the likeness of Jerusalem as mother
seems evocative. It is inspired by the promises of
Isaiah 49:18-29 and 54:1-3: the land of Judah is
unexpectedly filled with those returning from
the diaspora, after their humiliation. You might
almost say that the rumours of “liberation” had
“made Sion pregnant” with new life and hope,
and that God, the lord of life, will bring this
pregnancy to fulfilment, effortlessly giving birth
to new children. Thus mother Sion is sur-
rounded by newborn children and generously
nourishes and tends them all. This gentle image
fascinated St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who found
it a crucial key for the interpretation of her
spirituality.1
An accumulation of intense words: be glad,
rejoice, radiate, as well as consolation, delight,
abundance, prosperity, caresses, etc. The relation-
ship of fidelity and love had failed, and they had
ended in sadness and sterility. Now the power
and holiness of God restores meaning and ful-
ness of life and happiness, expressed in terms
that belong to the affective roots of every human
being, arousing unique feelings of tenderness
and security.
1 With more references: cf. SAINT THÉRÈSE OF THE CHILD
JESUS, Opere complete, LEV - Ed. OCD, Città del Vaticano -
Roma 1997: Manoscritto A, 76vº; B, 1rº; C, 3rº; Lettera 196.
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It is a gentle but true profile of a God who
radiates maternal vibrations and deep, conta-
gious emotions. A heartfelt joy (cf. Is 66:14)
that comes from God – with maternal face and
supportive arm – and radiates through a people
who have been crippled, whose bones have be-
come brittle through a thousand humiliations.
It is a freely-given transformation that spreads
out joyfully to the new heavens and the new earth
(cf. Is 66:22), so that all the people might come
to know the glory of the Lord, the faithful re-
deemer.
Joy, the beauty of consecration
3. “This is the beauty of consecration: it is joy,
joy...”.2 The joy of bringing God’s consolation to
all. These are the words spoken by Pope Francis
during his meeting with seminarians and nov-
ices. “There is no holiness in sadness”,3 the Holy
Father continued. Do not grieve like others who
have no hope, wrote St. Paul (1 Thess 4:13).
Joy is not a useless ornament. It is a necessity,
the foundation of human life. In their daily
struggles, every man and woman tries to attain
joy and abide in it with the totality of their being.
2 FRANCIS, Meeting with Seminarians and Novices, Rome,
6 July 2013.
3 Ibidem
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In the world there is often a lack of joy.
We are not called to accomplish epic feats or to
proclaim high-sounding words, but to give wit-
ness to the joy that arises from the certainty of
knowing we are loved, from the confidence that
we are saved.
Our short memories and flimsy experiences
often prevent us from searching for the ‘lands
of joy’ where we can relish God’s reflection.
We have a thousand reasons for remaining in
joy. Its roots are nourished by listening with faith
and perseverance to the Word of God. In the
school of the Master we hear: may my joy be
in you and may your joy be complete (Jn 15:11)
and we are taught how to practise perfect joy.
“Sadness and fear must give way to joy: Re-
joice... be glad... rejoice with her in joy, says the
prophet (Is 66:10). It is a great invitation to joy.
[…] Every Christian, and especially you and I,
we are called to be bearers of this message of
hope giving serenity and joy, God’s consolation,
his tenderness towards all. But if we first experi-
ence the joy of being consoled by him, of being
loved by him, then we can bring that joy to
others. […] I have occasionally met consecrated
persons who are afraid of the consolations of
God. They were tormented, because they were
afraid of this divine tenderness. But be not
afraid. Do not be afraid, because the Lord is
the Lord of consolation, the Lord of tenderness.
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The Lord is a Father and he says that he will be
for us like a mother with her baby, with a moth-
er’s tenderness. Do not be afraid of the consola-
tions of the Lord.”4
Your calling
4. “In calling you God says to you: ‘You are
important to me, I love you, I am counting on
you’. Jesus says this to each one of us! Joy is
born from that! The joy of the moment in which
Jesus looked at me. Understanding and hearing
this is the secret of our joy. Feeling loved by
God, feeling that for him we are not numbers
but people; and we know that it is he who is
calling us.”5
Pope Francis directs our attention to the
spiritual foundations of our humanity, to see
what is given to us gratuitously by free divine
sovereignty and free human response: Then Jesus
looked at him and loved him. “One thing you
lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and
give to the poor, and you will have treasure in
heaven. Then come, follow me” (Mk 10:21).
4 FRANCIS, Homily for Holy Mass with Seminarians and
Novices, Rome, 7 July 2013.
5 FRANCIS, Meeting with Seminarians and Novices, Rome,
6 July 2013.
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The Pope recalls: “Jesus, at the Last Supper,
turns to the Apostles with these words: You did
not choose me, but I chose you (Jn 15:16). They
remind us all, not only those of us who are
priests, that vocation is always an initiative of
God. It is Christ who called you to follow him in
the consecrated life and this means continuously
making an ‘exodus‘ from yourselves in order to
centre your life on Christ and on his Gospel, on
the will of God, laying aside your own plans, in
order to say with St Paul: It is no longer I who
live, but Christ who lives in me (Gal 2:20).6
The Pope invites us on a pilgrimage in reverse,
a pathway of knowledge to discover ourselves
on the streets of Palestine or near the boat of the
humble fisherman of Galilee. He invites us to
contemplate the beginnings of a journey or
rather, of an event initiated by Christ, when
the nets were left on the lake shore, the tax-
collector’s desk by the side of the road, the
ambitions of the zealot among discarded plans.
All are inappropriate means for staying with him.
He invites us to remain for a long time, on an
interior pilgrimage, before the dawn, when, in a
warm environment of friendly relationships, the
intellect is led to open itself to mystery, the
6 FRANCIS, Address to the Participants at the Plenary As-
sembly of the International Union of Superiors General (Rome,
8 May 2013), in: AAS 105 (2013), 460-463.
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decision is made that it is good to set out to
follow this Master who alone has the words of
eternal life (cf. Jn 6:68). He invites us to make
our whole “life a pilgrimage of loving transfor-
mation.”7
Pope Francis calls us to pause at that opening
scene: “The joy of the moment when Jesus
looked at me”8 and to recall the important and
demanding, underlying meaning of our vocation:
“It is a response to a call, a call of love”.9 To stay
with Christ requires us to share our lives, our
choices, the obedience of faith, the happiness of
poverty, the radicality of love.
It is about being reborn through vocation.
“I invite all Christians […] at this very moment,
to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus
Christ today, at least to an openness to letting
him encounter them; I ask all of you to do this
unfailingly each day.”10
Paul brings us back to this fundamental vi-
sion: no one can lay any foundation other than the
one already laid (1 Cor 3:11). The word ‘vocation’
7 FRANCIS, Message to the Prior General of the Order of
Brothers of the Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel, on the Occasion
of the General Chapter, Rome, 22 August 2013.
8 FRANCIS, Meeting with Seminarians and Novices, Rome,
6 July 2013.
9 Ibidem.
10 FRANCIS, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium
(24 November 2013), LEV, Città del Vaticano 2013, n. 3.
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indicates a free gift, like a reservoir of life that
never ceases renewing humanity and the Church
in the depths of their being.
In the experience of vocation, God is in-
deed the mysterious subject of an act of calling.
We hear a voice that calls us to life and dis-
cipleship for the Kingdom. Pope Francis in re-
calling “You are important to me”, uses direct
speech, in the first person, so that awareness
might emerge. He calls to consciousness my
opinion and my judgement, requiring behaviour
consistent with my self-awareness, with the call
that I hear addressed to me, my personal call.
“I would like to say to those who feel indifferent
to God or to faith, and to those who are far from
God or who have distanced themselves from
him, and to us also, with our ‘distancing’ and
our ‘abandonment’ of God, that may seem insig-
nificant but are so numerous in our daily life:
look into the depths of your heart, look into your
own inner depths and ask yourself: do you have
a heart that desires something great, or a heart
that has been lulled to sleep by things? Has your
heart maintained a restlessness searching or have
you let it be suffocated by things that will finally
harden it?”11
11 FRANCIS, Homily for the Opening of the General Chapter
of the Order of St. Augustine, Rome, 28 August 2013.
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The relationship with Jesus Christ asks to be
nourished by this restless searching. This makes
us aware of the gratuity of the gift of a vocation
and helps us to explain the reasons for our
initial choice and for our perseverance. “Letting
Christ make us his own always means straining
forward to what lies ahead, to the goal of Christ
(cf. Phil 3:14)”.12 To continue listening to God
requires that these questions become the coordi-
nates guiding the rhythm of our daily life.
This inexpressible mystery, leading us within,
sharing in the indescribable mystery of God,
can only be interpreted in faith. “Faith is our
response to a word that engages us personally, to
a ‘Thou’ who calls us by name”13 and “as a
response to a word which preceded it, would
always be an act of remembrance. Yet this re-
membrance is not fixed on past events but,
as the memory of a promise, it becomes capable
of opening up the future, shedding light on
the path to be taken”.14 “Faith contains our
own memory of God’s history with us, the
memory of our encounter with God who always
takes the first step, who creates, saves and trans-
forms us. Faith is remembrance of his word that
12 FRANCIS, Homily at the Holy Mass on the Feast of
St. Ignatius Loyola, Rome, 31 July 2013.
13 FRANCIS, Encyclical Letter Lumen fidei (29 June 2013),
n. 8, in: AAS 105 (2013), 555-596.
14 Ivi, n. 9.
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warms our heart, and of his saving work which
gives life, purifies us, cares for and nourishes us.
[…] The one who is mindful of God, who is
guided by the memory of God in his or her
entire life is able to awaken that memory in the
hearts of others.”15 It is the memory of being
called here and now.
Found, touched, transformed
5. The Pope asks us to re-read our own per-
sonal story and to scrutinise it in the light of
God’s loving gaze, because if a vocation is always
his initiative, it is up to us freely to accept the
divine-human economy as a relationship of life
in agape, the path of discipleship, the “beacon on
the Church’s journey”.16 Life in the spirit is never
completed, but is always open to mystery, as we
discern in order to know the Lord and to per-
ceive reality beginning with him. When God
calls us he lets us enter into his rest and invites us
to repose in him, in a continuous process of
loving understanding. We hear the Word you are
worried and upset about many things (Lk 10:41).
15 FRANCIS, Homily at the Holy Mass for the Day for Cat-
echists, Rome, 29 September 2013.
16 FRANCIS, Address to the Participants at the Plenary As-
sembly of the International Union of Superiors General (Rome,
8 May 2013), in: AAS 105 (2013), 460-463.
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On the path of love we go forward through
rebirth: the old creation is born anew. Therefore,
if anyone is in Christ, that person is a new cre-
ation (2 Cor 5:17).
Pope Francis points out the name of this
rebirth. “This path has a name and a face: the
face of Jesus Christ. He teaches us to become
holy. In the Gospel he shows us the way, the
way of the Beatitudes (cf. Mt 5:1-12). This is
the life of the Saints, people who for love of
God did not place conditions on him during
their life”.17
Consecrated life is a call to incarnate the
Good News, to follow Christ, the crucified and
risen one, to take on “Jesus’s way of living and
acting as the Incarnate Word in relation to the
Father and in relation to the brothers and sis-
ters”.18 In practical terms, it is a call to take up
his way of life, to adopt his interior attitude,
to allow oneself to be invaded by his Spirit,
to absorb his surprising logic and his scale of
values, to share in his risks and his hopes.
“Be guided by the humble yet joyful certainty of
those who have been found, touched and trans-
17 FRANCIS, Angelus, Rome, 1 November 2013.
18 JOHN PAUL II, Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Vita consecrata (25 March 1996), n. 22, in: AAS 88 (1996),
377-486.
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formed by the Truth who is Christ, ever to be
proclaimed”.19
Remaining in Christ allows us to grasp the
presence of the Mystery which lives in us and
expands our hearts to the measure of his Son’s
heart. Those who remain in his love, like the
branch attached to the vine (cf. Jn 15:1-8), enter
into intimacy with Christ and bear fruit. “Re-
main in Jesus! This means remaining attached to
him, in him, with him, talking to him”.20
“Christ is the seal on our foreheads, he is the
seal on our hearts: on the forehead because we
always profess him; on the heart because we
always love him; he is the seal on our arms
because we are always working for him.”21 Con-
secrated life is in fact a continuous call to follow
Christ, and to be made like him. “Jesus’s whole
life, his way of dealing with the poor, his actions,
his integrity, his simple daily generosity, and
finally his complete self-giving, all this is pre-
cious and relates to our personal lives.”22
19 FRANCIS, Homily at the Holy Mass with Bishops, Priests,
Religious and Seminarians on the XXVIII World Youth Day,
Rio de Janeiro, 27 July 2013.
20 FRANCIS, Address to the Participants at the International
Congress on Catechesis, Rome, 27 September 2013.
21 AMBROSE, De Isaac et anima, 75: PL 14, 556-557.
22 FRANCIS, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium
(8 November 2013), LEV, Città del Vaticano 2013, n. 265.
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Meeting the Lord gets us moving, urges us to
leave aside self-absorption.23 A relationship with
the Lord is not static, nor is it focussed on self.
“Because when we put Christ at the centre of
our life, we ourselves don’t become the centre!
The more that you unite yourself to Christ and
he becomes the centre of your life, the more he
leads you out of yourself, leads you from making
yourself the centre and opens you to others”.24
“We are not at the centre; we are, so to speak,
‘relocated’. We are at the service of Christ and of
the Church”.25
Christian life is defined by verbs of move-
ment. Even when it is lived in the context of a
monastery or contemplative cloister it is a life of
continual searching.
“It is impossible to persevere in a fervent
evangelization unless we are convinced from
personal experience that it is not the same thing
to have known Jesus as not to have known him,
not the same thing to walk with him as to walk
blindly, not the same thing to hear his word as
not to know it, and not the same thing to con-
23 Cf. FRANCIS, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium
(24 November 2013), LEV, Città del Vaticano 2013, n. 265.
24 FRANCIS, Address to the Participants at the International
Congress on Catechesis, Rome, 27 September 2013.
25 FRANCIS, Homily at the Holy Mass on the Feast of
St. Ignatius Loyola, Rome, 31 July 2013.
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template him, to worship him, to find our peace
in him, as not to do so. It is not the same thing to
try to build the world with his Gospel as to try to
do so by our own lights. We know well that with
Jesus life becomes richer and that with him it is
easier to find meaning in everything”.26
Pope Francis recommends for us restless
searching just like Augustine of Hippo: a “rest-
lessness in his heart which brought him to a
personal encounter with Christ, brought him to
understand that the remote God he was seeking
was the God who is close to every human being,
the God close to our heart, who was more in-
ward than our innermost self”. This is an ongo-
ing search. “Augustine did not stop, he did not
give up, he did not withdraw into himself like
those who have already arrived, but continued
his search. The restlessness of seeking the truth,
of seeking God, became restlessness to know
him ever better and to come out of himself to
make others know him. It was precisely the rest-
lessness of love.”27
26 FRANCIS, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium
(24 November 2013), LEV, Città del Vaticano 2013, n. 266.
27 FRANCIS, Homily for the Opening of the General Chapter
of the Order of St. Augustine, Rome, 28 August 2013.
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Joy, a faithful ‘yes’
6. Anyone who has met the Lord and fol-
lows him faithfully is a messenger of the joy of
the Spirit.
“Thanks solely to this encounter – or re-
newed encounter – with God’s love, which blos-
soms into an enriching friendship, we are liber-
ated from our narrowness and self-absorption”.28
When we are called, we are called to ourselves,
that is, to our capacity for being. Perhaps it is
not unwarranted to say that the crisis of conse-
crated life results from the inability to recognize
such a profound call, even in those who are
already living this vocation.
We are experiencing a crisis of fidelity, un-
derstood as a conscious adherence to a call that
is a pathway, a journey from its mysterious be-
ginnings to its mysterious end.
Perhaps we are also in a crisis of humaniza-
tion. We are experiencing the limitations of
complete consistency, wounded by our incapac-
ity to lead our lives as an integrated vocation and
as a faithful journey.
This daily journey, both personal and com-
munal, marked by discontent and a bitterness
that encloses us in remorse, and almost in a
28 FRANCIS, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium
(24 November 2013), LEV, Città del Vaticano 2013, n. 8.
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permanent longing for unexplored paths and
unfulfilled dreams, becomes a lonely road.
Our call to live in relationship, in the fulfilment
of love, can be transformed into an uninhabited
wilderness. At every age we are invited to revisit
the deep centre of our personal life, where the
motivation of our life with the Master, as dis-
ciples of the Master, finds its meaning and truth.
Faithfulness is the awareness of a love that
points us towards the “Thou” of God and to-
wards every other person, in a constant and
dynamic way when we experience within our-
selves the life of the Risen One. “Those who
accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin,
sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness”.29
Faithful discipleship is grace and love in ac-
tion; it is the practice of sacrificial charity.
“When we journey without the Cross, when we
build without the Cross, when we profess Christ
without the Cross, we are not disciples of the
Lord, we are worldly. We may be bishops,
priests, cardinals, popes, but not disciples of
the Lord”.30
To persevere all the way to Golgotha, to ex-
perience the lacerations of doubts and denial, to
29 Ivi, n. 1.
30 FRANCIS, Homily at the Holy Mass with the Cardinals
(Rome, 14 March 2013), in: AAS 105 (2013), 365-366.
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rejoice in the marvel and wonder of the Paschal
event, up to the manifestation of Pentecost and
the evangelization of the peoples, these are mile-
stones of joyful fidelity because they are about
self-emptying, experienced throughout life, even
in the sign of martyrdom, and also sharing in the
life of the risen Christ. “And it is from the Cross,
the supreme act of mercy and love, that we are
reborn as a new creation” (Gal 6:15).31
In the theological locus in which God, in
revealing himself, reveals us to ourselves, the
Lord asks us to return to the search, fides quaer-
ens. Pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace,
along with those who call on the Lord out of a
pure heart (2 Tm 2:22).
The interior pilgrimage begins with prayer.
“The first thing for a disciple is to be with the
Master, to listen to him and to learn from him.
This is always true, and it is true at every mo-
ment of our lives. […] If the warmth of God, of
his love, of his tenderness is not in our own
hearts, then how can we, who are poor sinners,
warm the heart of others”.32 This is a life-long
journey, as in the humility of prayer the Holy
Spirit convinces us of the Lordship of Christ
31 FRANCIS, Homily for Holy Mass with Seminarians and
Novices, Rome, 7 July 2013.
32 FRANCIS, Address to the Participants at the International
Congress on Catechesis, Rome, 27 September 2013.
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within us. “The Lord calls us to follow him with
courage and fidelity; he has made us the great
gift of choosing us as his disciples; he invites us
to proclaim him with joy as the Risen one, but he
asks us to do so by word and by the witness of
our lives, in daily life. The Lord is the only God
of our lives, and he invites us to strip ourselves of
our many idols and to worship him alone”.33
The Pope identifies prayer as the source of
the fruitfulness of the mission. “Let us cultivate
the contemplative dimension, even amid the
whirlwind of more urgent and heavy duties.
And the more the mission calls you to go out to
the margins of existence, let your heart be the
more closely united to Christ’s heart, full of
mercy and love”.34
Being with Jesus shapes a contemplative ap-
proach to history which knows how to see and
hear the presence of the Spirit everywhere and,
in a special way, how to discern the Spirit’s
presence in order to live in time as God’s time.
When the insight of faith is lacking, “life itself
loses meaning, the faces of brothers and sisters
are obscured and it becomes impossible to rec-
33 FRANCIS, Homily at the Eucharistic Celebration at St. Paul
Outside the Walls, Rome, 14 April 2013.
34 FRANCIS, Homily for Holy Mass with Seminarians and
Novices, Rome, 7 July 2013.
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ognize the face of God in them, historical events
remain ambiguous and deprived of hope”.35
Contemplation expands into prophetic apti-
tude. The prophet is one “whose eye is open-
ed, and who hears and speaks the words of
God; […] a person of three times: the promise
of the past, the contemplation of the present,
the courage to point out the path toward the
future”.36
Fidelity in discipleship occurs through and is
demonstrated by the experience of community, a
theological reality in which we are called to sup-
port each other in our joyful ‘yes’ to the Gospel.
“It is the Word of God that inspires faith and
nourishes and revitalizes it. And it is the Word of
God that touches hearts, converting them to
God and to his logic which is so different from
our own. It is the Word of God that continually
renews our communities”.37
The Pope invites us to renew our vocation
and to fill it with joy and passion, so that the
35 CONGREGATION FOR INSTITUTES OF CONSECRATED LIFE
AND SOCIETIES OF APOSTOLIC LIFE, Instruction Starting Afresh
from Christ: A Renewed Commitment to Consecrated Life in
the Third Millennium (19 May 2002), n. 25, in: EnchVat 21,
372-510.
36 FRANCIS, Daily Meditation in the Chapel of Domus Sanc-
tae Marthae, Rome, 16 December 2013.
37 FRANCIS, Meeting with the Clergy, Consecrated People
and Members of Diocesan Councils, Assisi (Perugia), 4 Octo-
ber 2013.
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increase in loving activity is a continuous process
– “it matures, matures, matures”38 – in a perma-
nent development in which the ‘yes’ of our will
to God’s will unites will, intellect and feeling.
“Love is never finished and complete; through-
out life it changes and matures, and thus remains
faithful to itself”.39
38 FRANCIS, Meeting with Seminarians and Novices, Rome,
6 July 2013.
39 BENEDICT XVI, Encyclical Letter Deus caritas est (25 De-
cember 2005), n. 11, in: AAS 98 (2006), 217-252.
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COMFORT,
COMFORT MY PEOPLE

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Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.
Isaiah 40:1-2

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Listening
7. Using a stylistic peculiarity, also seen later
in the text (cf. Is 51:17; 52:1: Awake, awake!),
the oracles of the second part of Isaiah (Is 40-55)
make a plea to come to the help of Israel in exile,
shut up inside an empty memory of failure.
The historical context clearly belongs to the
prolonged exile of the people in Babylon
(587-538 BC), with all the consequent humilia-
tion and the sense of powerlessness to escape.
However, the disintegration of the Assyrian em-
pire under the pressure of the new emerging
power of the Persians, guided by the rising star
of Cyrus, enabled the prophet to foresee that
an unexpected liberation might come about.
And so it did. The prophet, inspired by God,
voiced this possibility publicly, interpreting the
political and military developments as actions
guided mysteriously by God through Cyrus.
He proclaimed that liberation was at hand and
that the return to the land of their fathers was
about to take place.
The words that Isaiah uses: Comfort... speak
tenderly, are found regularly in the Old Testa-
ment. These recurrences are of particular value
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in dialogues of tenderness and affection. Thus
Ruth recognises that Boaz has “comforted me and
spoken kindly” (cf. Ruth 2:13), or in the famous
page of Hosea who announces to the woman,
Gomer, that he will “allure her and bring her
into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her”
(cf. Hos 2:16) for a new period of fidelity. There
are other similar parallel passages: the dialogue
of Shechem, son of Hamor, who was in love with
Dinah (cf. Gen 34:1-5) and that of the Levite of
Ephraim speaking to the concubine who had
abandoned him (cf. Judg 19:3).
This is a language to be interpreted in the
context of love. Thus action and speech to-
gether, delicate and encouraging, remind us
of the intense emotional bonds of God, the
‘spouse’ of Israel. This comfort must be an
epiphany of reciprocal belonging, an interplay of
intense empathy, ferment and vital connection.
These are not superficial, cloying words, there-
fore, but mercy and deep-seated concern, an
embrace giving strength and patient accompani-
ment in the rediscovery of faithful pathways.
Bringing God’s embrace
8. “People today certainly need words, but
most of all they need us to bear witness to the
mercy and tenderness of the Lord which warms
the heart, rekindles hope, and attracts people
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towards the good. What a joy it is to bring God’s
consolation to others!”1
Pope Francis entrusts this mission to conse-
crated men and women: to discover the Lord
who comforts us like a mother, and to comfort
the people of God.
Service in the Church arises out of the joy of
meeting the Lord and from his call. This mission
is to bring to the men and women of our time
the consolation of God, to bear witness to his
mercy.2
In Jesus’s view, consolation is a gift of the
Spirit, the Paraclete, the Consoler who comforts
us in our trials and awakes a hope that does not
disappoint. Thus Christian consolation becomes
comfort, encouragement, hope. It is the active
presence of the Spirit (cf. Jn 14:16-17), the fruit
of the Spirit. And the fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithful-
ness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:22).
In a world of distrust, discouragement and
depression, in a culture in which men and
women are enveloped by fragility and weakness,
individualism and self-interest, we are asked to
introduce belief in the possibility of true happi-
1 FRANCIS, Homily for Holy Mass with Seminarians and
Novices, Rome, 7 July 2013.
2 Cf. FRANCIS, Meeting with Seminarians and Novices,
Rome, 6 July 2013.
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ness, in the feasibility of hope that does not
depend solely on talent, superiority or knowl-
edge, but on God. All are given the possibility of
encountering him, if they only seek him with a
sincere heart.
The men and women of our time are waiting
for words of consolation, the availability of for-
giveness and true joy. We are called to bring to
everyone the embrace of God, who bends with
a mother’s tenderness over us – consecrated
women and men, signs of the fulness of human-
ity, facilitators and not controllers of grace,3
stooped down in a gesture of consolation.
Tenderness is good for us
9. Since we are witnesses of a communion
beyond our vision and our limits, we are called
to wear God’s smile. Community is the first
and most believable gospel that we can preach.
We are asked to humanise our community.
“Build friendship between yourselves, family
life, love among you. May the monastery not be a
Purgatory but a family. There are and there will
be problems but like in a family, with love,
search for a solution with love; do not destroy
this to resolve that; do not enter competitions.
3 Cf. FRANCIS, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium
(24 November 2013), LEV, Città del Vaticano 2013, n. 47.
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Build community life, because in the life of a
community it is this way, like a family, and it is
the very Holy Spirit who is in the middle of the
community. […] And community life always
with a big heart. Let things go, do not brag, be
patient with everything, smile from the heart.
And a sign of this is joy”.4
Joy is confirmed in the experience of commu-
nity, that theological space where each one is
responsible for their fidelity to the Gospel and
for the growth of all. When a community is fed
by the same Body and Blood of Jesus, it gathers
around the Son of God, to share the journey of
faith, guided by the Word. It becomes one with
him, together in communion, experiencing the
gift of love and festive celebration in freedom
and joy, full of courage.
“A joyless community is one that is dying out.
[…] A community rich in joy is a genuine gift
from above to brothers and sisters who know
how to ask for it and to accept one another,
committing themselves to community life, trust-
ing in the action of the Spirit”.5
4 FRANCIS, Address to the Cloistered Nuns, Assisi (Perugia),
4 October 2013.
5 CONGREGATION FOR INSTITUTES OF CONSECRATED LIFE
AND SOCIETIES OF APOSTOLIC LIFE, Instruction Fraternal
Life in Community. “Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor”
(2 February 1994), n. 28: in EnchVat 14, 345-537.
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In these days when fragmentation justifies
widespread sterile individualism and when the
weakness of relationships breaks up and ruins
the care of the human person, we are invited to
humanize community relationships, to encour-
age communion of heart and spirit in the Gospel
sense, because “there is a communion of life
among all those who belong to Christ. It is a
communion that is born of faith” that makes
“the Church, in her most profound truth, com-
munion with God, intimacy with God, a com-
munion of love with Christ and with the Father
in the Holy Spirit, which extends to brotherly
communion”.6
For Pope Francis, the sign of fraternity is
tenderness, a “Eucharistic tenderness” because
“tenderness is good for us”. Fraternity has
“an enormous power to call people together.
[…] Fraternity, with all its possible diversity,
is an experience of love which goes beyond
conflicts”.7
6 FRANCIS, General Audience, Rome, 30 October 2013.
7 ANTONIO SPADARO, “Wake up the World!”. Conversation
with Pope Francis about the Religious Life, in: La Civiltà
Cattolica, 165 (2014/I), 13 (English translation by Fr. Donald
Maldari, S.J.).
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Closeness as companionship
10. We are called to undertake an exodus
out of our own selves, setting out on a path
of adoration and service.8 “We must go out
through that door to seek and meet the people!
Have the courage to go against the tide of this
culture of efficiency, this culture of waste. En-
countering and welcoming everyone, solidarity
and fraternity: these are what make our society
truly human. Be servants of communion and of
the culture of encounter! I would like you to be
almost obsessed about this. Be so without being
presumptuous”.9
“The ghost to fight against is the image of
religious life understood as an escape and con-
solation in face of an ‘external’ difficult and
complex world”.10 The Pope urges us to “leave
the nest”,11 to live the life of the men and women
8 Cf. FRANCIS, Address to the Participants at the Plenary
Assembly of the International Union of Superiors General
(Rome, 8 May 2013), in: AAS 105 (2013), 460-463.
9 FRANCIS, Homily at the Holy Mass with Bishops, Priests,
Religious and Seminarians on the XXVIII World Youth Day,
Rio de Janeiro, 27 July 2013.
10 ANTONIO SPADARO, “Wake up the World!”. Conversation
with Pope Francis about the Religious Life, in: La Civiltà
Cattolica, 165 (2014/I), 10 (English translation by Fr. Donald
Maldari, S.J.).
11 Cf. ivi, 6.
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of our times, to hand ourselves over to God and
to our neighbour.
“Joy is born from the gratuitousness of an
encounter! […] And the joy of the encounter
with him and with his call does not lead to
shutting oneself in but to opening oneself; it
leads to service in the Church. St Thomas said:
bonum est diffusivum sui. Good spreads. And joy
also spreads. Do not be afraid to show the joy of
having answered the Lord’s call, of having re-
sponded to his choice of love and of bearing
witness to his Gospel in service to the Church.
And joy, true joy, is contagious; it is infectious...
it impels one forward”.12
Faced with this contagious witness of joy,
serenity, fruitfulness, the testimony of tenderness
and love, humble charity, without arrogance,
many people feel the need to “come and see”.13
Many times Pope Francis has pointed out
the path of attraction, of contagion, the path for
the growth of the Church, the path of the new
evangelization. “The Church must be attractive.
Wake up the world! Be witnesses of a different
way of acting, of living! It is possible to live
12 FRANCIS, Meeting with Seminarians and Novices, Rome,
6 July 2013.
13 Cf. FRANCIS, Morning Meditation in the Chapel of Domus
Sanctae Marthae, Rome, 1 October 2013.
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differently in this world. […] It is this witness
I expect from you”.14
Entrusting to us the task of waking up the
world, the Pope urges us to approach the stories
of the men and women of today in the light of
two pastoral categories that have their roots
in the newness of the Gospel: closeness and
encounter, two ways through which God him-
self is revealed in history culminating in the
Incarnation.
On the road to Emmaus, like Jesus with his
disciples, we welcome in daily companionship
the joys and sorrows of the people, giving them
‘heart warmth’,15 while we tenderly care for the
tired and the weak, so that our journey together
has light and meaning in Christ.
Our journey together “matures towards pas-
toral fatherhood, towards pastoral motherhood,
and when a priest is not a father to his commu-
nity, when a sister is not a mother to all those
with whom she works, he or she becomes sad.
This is the problem. For this reason I say to you:
the root of sadness in pastoral life is precisely in
the absence of fatherhood or motherhood that
14 ANTONIO SPADARO, “Wake up the World!”. Conversation
with Pope Francis about the Religious Life, in: La Civiltà
Cattolica, 165 (2014/I), 5 (English translation by Fr. Donald
Maldari, S.J.).
15 Cf. FRANCIS, Meeting with the Brazilian Bishops, Rio de
Janeiro, 27 July 2013.
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comes from living this consecration unsatisfacto-
rily, which on the contrary should lead us to
fertility”.16
The restlessness of love
11. As living icons of the motherhood and of
the closeness of the Church, we go out to those
who are waiting for the Word of consolation and
we bend down with motherly love and fatherly
spirit towards the poor and the weak.
The Pope invites us not to privatise love, but
with the restlessness of the seeker: “Tirelessly
seeking the good of the other, of the beloved”.17
The crisis of meaning of the modern person
and the economic and moral crisis of western
society and its institutions are not temporary
phenomena of the times in which we live but
they outline an historical moment of outstand-
ing importance. We are called now, as the
Church, to go outside in order to arrive at
the margins, geographic, urban and existential
– the margins of the mystery of sin, pain, injus-
tice and misery –, to the hidden places of the
16 FRANCIS, Meeting with Seminarians and Novices, Rome,
6 July 2013.
17 FRANCIS, Homily for the opening of the General Chapter
of the Order of St. Augustine, Rome, 28 August 2013.
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soul where each person experiences the joys and
sufferings of life.18
“We live in a culture of conflict, a culture of
fragmentation, a culture of waste […]. The dis-
covery of a tramp who has died of cold is not
news”. Yet poverty for us is a theological cat-
egory, “because our God, the Son of God,
abased himself, he made himself poor to walk
along the road with us. […] A poor Church
for the poor begins by reaching out to the
flesh of Christ. If we reach out to the flesh of
Christ, we begin to understand something, to
understand what this poverty, the Lord’s pov-
erty, actually is”.19 To experience in one’s own
life the beatitude of the poor means to be a sign
that the anguish of loneliness and limitation
has been conquered by the joy of the person
who is indeed free in Christ and has learned
how to love.
During his pastoral visit to Assisi, Pope Fran-
cis was asked what the Church must strip away.
And he replied: “[Strip away] every action that is
not for God, is not of God; strip away the fear of
opening the doors and going out to encounter
all, especially the poorest of the poor, the needy,
18 Cf. FRANCIS, Vigil of Pentecost with the Movements, New
Communities, Associations and Lay Groups (Rome, 18 May
2013), in: AAS 105 (2013), 450-452.
19 Ibidem.
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the remote, without waiting. Certainly not to
get lost in the shipwreck of the world, but
to bear with courage the light of Christ, the
light of the Gospel, even in the darkness,
where one can’t see, where one might stumble.
Strip away the seeming assurance structures give,
which, though certainly necessary and impor-
tant, should never obscure the one true strength
it carries within: God. He is our strength!”20
This resonates like an invitation for us “not to
be afraid of the newness the Holy Spirit works
within us, not to be afraid of the renewal of
structures. The Church is free. She is sustained
by the Holy Spirit. It is this that Jesus teaches us
in the Gospel: the freedom we need always to
find the newness of the Gospel in our life and in
structures, the freedom to choose new wineskins
for this newness”.21 We are invited to be auda-
cious, frontier men and women: “Ours is not a
‘lab faith,’ but a ‘journey faith,’ an historical
faith. God has revealed himself as history, not as
a compendium of abstract truths. […] You can-
not bring home the frontier, but you have to live
on the border and be audacious.”22
20 FRANCIS, Meeting with the Poor Assisted by Caritas, As-
sisi (Perugia), 4 October 2013.
21 FRANCIS, Morning Meditation in the Chapel of Domus
Sanctae Marthae, Rome, 6 July 2013.
22 ANTONIO SPADARO, Interview with Pope Francis, in:
La Civiltà Cattolica, 164 (2013/III), 474.
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Besides the challenge of the beatitude of the
poor, the Pope invites us to visit the frontiers
of thought and culture, to promote dialogue,
even at the intellectual level, to give reasons
for hope on the basis of ethical and spiritual
criteria, questioning ourselves about what is
good. Faith never restricts the space for reason,
but opens it to a holistic vision of the human
person and of reality, and defends it against
the danger of reducing the human person to
“human material”.23
Authentic culture, constantly called to serve
humanity in all its conditions, opens unexplored
paths, opens doors to allow hope to breathe,
strengthens the meaning of life and watches over
the common good. An authentic cultural process
“promotes an integral humanism and the culture
of encounter and relationship: this is the Chris-
tian way of promoting the common good, the joy
of living. Here, faith and reason unite, the reli-
gious dimension and the various aspects of hu-
man culture – art, science, labour, literature...”.24
Authentic cultural research encounters history
and opens up ways of seeking the face of God.
23 Cf. FRANCIS, Meeting with the World of Culture, Cagliari,
22 September 2013.
24 FRANCIS, Meeting with the Brazilian Leaders, Rio de Jan-
eiro, 27 July 2013.
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The places where knowledge is developed
and communicated are also the places where a
culture of closeness, of encounter and dialogue
can be created that lowers defences, opens doors
and builds bridges.25
25 Cf. FRANCIS, Address to the Community of Writers of
“La Civiltà Cattolica”, Rome, 14 June 2013.
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FOR REFLECTION

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12. As a global network in which we are all
connected, where no local tradition can aspire to
a monopoly of the truth, where technologies
affect everyone, the world throws down a con-
tinuous challenge to the Gospel and to those
who shape their lives in accordance with the
Gospel.
In this historical process, through choices and
ways of living, Pope Francis is building up a
living hermeneutic of the dialogue between God
and the world. We are introduced to a style of
wisdom rooted in the Gospel and in human
eschatology, which interprets pluralism, searches
for equilibrium, invites us to facilitate the capac-
ity of being responsible for change so that the
truth of the Gospel might be better communi-
cated, while we move “within the limits of lan-
guage and of circumstances”.1 Aware of these
limits each one of us becomes weak with the
weak... all things to all people (1 Cor 9:22).
We are invited to promote a generative, not
simply administrative, dynamic to embrace the
spiritual events present in our communities and
1 FRANCIS, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium
(24 November 2013), LEV, Città del Vaticano 2013, n. 45.
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in the world, movements and grace that the
Spirit works in each individual person, viewed as
a person. We are invited to commit ourselves to
dismantling lifeless models, to describing the
human person as marked by Christ, who is never
revealed absolutely in speech or actions.
Pope Francis invites us to a wisdom that
should be demonstrated by flexible consistency,
the ability of consecrated people to respond in
accord with the Gospel, to act and to choose in
accord with the Gospel, without losing ourselves
among the different spheres of life, language or
relationships, maintaining an awareness of re-
sponsibility, of the networks that bind us to-
gether, of the finitude of our limits, of the infi-
nite number of ways in which life is expressed.
A missionary heart is a heart that has known
the joy of Christ’s salvation and shares it as
consolation: “[This heart] realises that it has to
grow in its own understanding of the Gospel
and in discerning the paths of the Spirit, and
so it always does what good it can, even if in
the process, its shoes get soiled by the mud of
the street.”2
Let us welcome the encouragement that the
Pope offers us to see ourselves and the world
with the eyes of Christ and to remain concerned
about it.
2 Ibidem.
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Questions from Pope Francis
• I want to say one word to you and this word
is “joy”. Wherever there are consecrated pe-
ople, seminarians, men and women religious,
young people, there is joy, there is always joy!
It is the joy of freshness, the joy of following
Jesus; the joy that the Holy Spirit gives us,
not the joy of the world. There is joy! but –
where is joy born? 3
• Look into the depths of your heart, look into
your own inner depths and ask yourself:
do you have a heart that desires something
great, or a heart that has been lulled to sleep
by things? Has your heart preserved the rest-
lessness of seeking or have you let it be suffo-
cated by things that end by hardening it?
God awaits you, he seeks you; how do you
respond to him? Are you aware of the situa-
tion of your soul? Or have you nodded off?
Do you believe God is waiting for you or does
this truth consist only of “words”? 4
• We are victims of this culture of the tempo-
rary. I would like you to think about this: how
3 FRANCIS, Meeting with Seminarians and Novices, Rome,
6 July 2013.
4 FRANCIS, Homily for the opening of the General Chapter
of the Order of St. Augustine, Rome, 28 August 2013.
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can I be free, how can I break free from this
“culture of the temporary”? 5
• This is a primary responsibility of all adults,
of formators: to set an example of consistency
to the youngest. Do we want consistent young
people? Are we consistent? On the contrary,
the Lord will say to us what he said to the
People of God about the Pharisees: “Do what
they say but not what they do!” Consistency
and authenticity! 6
• We may ask ourselves: am I anxious for
God, anxious to proclaim him, to make him
known? Or do I allow that spiritual worldli-
ness to attract me which impels people to do
everything for love of themselves? We conse-
crated people think of our personal interests,
of the functionality of our works, of our ca-
reers. Well, we can think of so many things...
Have I, so to speak, made myself ‘comfort-
able’ in my Christian life, in my priestly life,
in my religious life, and also in my commu-
nity life? Or do I retain the force of restless-
ness for God, for his Word that makes me
“step out” of myself towards others? 7
5 FRANCIS, Meeting with Seminarians and Novices, Rome,
6 July 2013.
6 Ibidem.
7 FRANCIS, Homily for the Opening of the General Chapter
of the Order of St. Augustine, Rome, 28 August 2013.
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• Do we feel the restlessness of love? Do we
believe in love for God and for others? Or are
we unconcerned by this? Not in an ab-
stract manner, not only in words, but the real
brother we come across, the sister who is
beside us! Are we moved by their needs or do
we remain closed in on ourselves, in our com-
munities which are often “comfortable com-
munities” for us? 8
• This is a beautiful, beautiful way to holiness!
Do not speak badly of others. “But father,
there are problems...”. Tell the superior, tell
the Bishop, who can rectify them. Do not tell
a person who cannot help. This is important:
brotherhood! But tell me, would you speak
badly of your mother, your father, your
siblings? Never. So why do you do so in
the consecrated life, in the seminary, in your
priestly life? Only this: think, think... Broth-
erhood! This brotherly love.9
• At the foot of the Cross, Mary is at the same
time the woman of sorrow and of watchful
expectation of a mystery far greater than
sorrow, which is about to be fulfilled. It seem-
8 Ibidem.
9 FRANCIS, Meeting with Seminarians and Novices, Rome,
6 July 2013.
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ed that everything had come to an end;
every hope could be said to have been extin-
guished. She too, at that moment, remember-
ing the promises of the Annunciation could
have said: they did not come true, I was
deceived. But she did not say this. And so
she who was blessed because she believed,
sees blossom from her faith a new future and
awaits God’s tomorrow with expectation.
At times I think: do we know how to wait for
God’s tomorrow? Or do we want it today?
For her the tomorrow of God is the dawn of
Easter morning, the dawn of the first day of
the week. It would do us good to think, in
contemplation, of the embrace of mother and
son. The single lamp lit at the tomb of Jesus
is the hope of the mother, which in that
moment is the hope of all humanity. I ask
myself and I ask you: is this lamp still alight
in monasteries? In your monasteries are you
waiting for God’s tomorrow? 10
• The restlessness of love is always an incentive
to go towards the other, without waiting for
the other to manifest his need. The restless-
ness of love gives us the gift of pastoral fruit-
10 FRANCIS, Celebration of Vespers with the Community of
Camaldolese Benedictine Nuns, Rome, 21 November 2013.
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fulness, and we must ask ourselves, each one
of us: is my spiritual effectiveness healthy, is
my apostolate fruitful? 11
• An authentic faith always involves a profound
desire to change the world. Here is the ques-
tion we must ask ourselves: do we also have
great vision and impetus? Are we also daring?
Do our dreams fly high? Does zeal consume
us (cf. Ps 68:10)? Or are we mediocre and
satisfied with our “made in the lab” apostolic
programmes? 12
11 FRANCIS, Homily for the Opening of the General Chapter
of the Order of St. Augustine, Rome, 28 August 2013.
12 FRANCIS, Homily at the Holy Mass in the Church of
the Gesù on the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, Rome,
3 January 2014.
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Hail, Mother of Joy
13. Rejoice, full of grace (Lk 1:28), “the greet-
ing of the angel to Mary is an invitation to joy, to
a deep joy, announcing the end of sadness […].
It is a greeting that marks the beginning of the
Gospel, the Good News”.1
Alongside Mary joy expands. The Son she
carries in her womb is the God of joy, of conta-
gious, engaging delight. Mary throws open the
doors of her heart and runs to Elizabeth.
“Joyful in achieving her desires, sensitive in
her duty, thoughtful in her joy, she hurries to-
wards the mountain. Where, if not towards the
1 BENEDICT XVI, General Audience, Rome, 19 Decem-
ber 2012.
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summit, should she set out so kindly, she who
was already full of God?”2
She went in great haste (Lk 1:39) to bring the
happy news to the world, to bring all the uncon-
tainable joy she held in her womb: Jesus, the
Lord. In great haste: it is not only the speed with
which Mary went. We are told of her diligence,
the careful attention with which she undertakes
the journey, her enthusiasm.
Behold the servant of the Lord (Lk 1:38).
The Lord’s servant ran in great haste, to become
the servant of all people.
In Mary the Church is all who journey to-
gether: in the love of those who go out to the
most fragile; in the hope of those who know that
they will be accompanied in their going out and
in the faith of those who have a special gift to
share. In Mary each one of us, driven by the
wind of the Spirit, fulfils our own vocation to
move out!
Star of the new evangelisation,
help us to bear radiant
witness to communion,
service, ardent and generous faith,
justice and love of the poor,
2 AMBROSE, Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam, II, 19:
CCL 14, p. 39.
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that the joy of the Gospel
may reach to the ends of the earth,
illuminating even the fringes of the world.
Mother of the living Gospel,
wellspring of happiness for God’s little ones,
Pray for us.
Amen. Alleluia! 3
Rome, 2 February 2014
Feast of the Presentation of the Lord
João Braz Card. de Aviz
Prefect
✠ José Rodríguez Carballo, O.F.M.
Archbishop Secretary
3 FRANCIS, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium
(24 November 2013), LEV, Città del Vaticano 2013, n. 288.
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INDEX
Dear brothers and sisters . . . . . . . . . 7
Be glad, rejoice, radiate joy . . . . . . . . 11
Listening . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Joy, the beauty of consecration . . . . . . 19
Your calling . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Found, touched, transformed . . . . . . . 26
Joy, a faithful ‘yes’ . . . . . . . . . . 31
Comfort, comfort my people . . . . . . . 37
Listening . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Bringing God’s embrace . . . . . . . . 42
Tenderness is good for us . . . . . . . . 44
Closeness as companionship . . . . . . . 47
The restlessness of love . . . . . . . . 50
For reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Questions from Pope Francis. . . . . . . 59
Hail, Mother of Joy . . . . . . . . . . 65
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TIP. DETTI − ROMA

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