Today we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, when our Lord Jesus Christ was presented to God in the temple by our Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph. It is also the day we observe the World Day for Consecrated Life. Just as Mary and Joseph brought their Son to the temple to offer Him to the service of God, so too do men and women offer their entirety to the service of God and His Church through the vows of the consecrated life, choosing to mold themselves most intimately to Christ the poor, Christ the chaste, Christ the obedient.
You might hear some argue that such concepts as vowed religious life are "out of date" or "medieval" or "no longer necessary" to the modern world we live in today. With iPods and computers and connectivity and the world literally at our fingertips, why choose to live such an austere and seemingly pointless life? What those nay-sayers don't realize is that the consecrated life is exactly what the world needs. And quite frankly, the consecrated life is the secret to what has kept the Church ticking through 2000 years of joys and sufferings, of successes and hardships.
Nuns and Sisters, Friars and Brothers throughout history have done marvelous things. With lives totally devoted to the service of the Church, they have a unique availability to the matters of God. Countless Saints were religious, serving in so many apostolates: for the poor, for the elderly, for the sick, for children, for the orphaned--and the list goes on. And while this seems to be the most recognized facet of the lives of religious in history, it actually is not the crux of who they are and why they exist. The reality is that the apostolate--the work in the world--is secondary in the life of a religious person.
A consecrated person's primary obligation is union with God--a radical embrace of the life of Christ, living out fully the evangelical councils, and hence serving as eschatological signs to the world of what we should expect in Heaven. If we reduce the religious life to simply a renunciation of marriage for a greater availability to the business of the Church, we are selling the life short of what it truly is.
And so, in a world so in need of workers in the Lord's vineyard, with so many poor and sick and abandoned and lonely people needing the hand of Christ to serve them--what the world needs above all is hope. Hope that there is a reason to get out of bed each morning besides the next paycheck and the next fad. Hope that our lives have meaning and purpose beyond social status and popularity. Hope that there is a place beyond the turmoil and suffering of our fallen humanity.
And where will society find this hope? In the heart of every Christian, radically serving as an alter Christus, another Christ, on earth. And most especially, we find that hope in the heart of every person consecrated to the Lord Jesus Christ, through their unwavering fidelity to prayer, their fixation on the heart of Christ, and the sacrifice of their entire lives for the sake of the Kingdom. May God continue to anoint all religious around the world, today and everyday, that they all remain faithful to their way of life and that we all might benefit from their vocations.
"Virginity is not espousing a cause; but a person."
Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
Preacher to the Papal Household
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