At noon today (6:00am EST), in the Clementine Hall inside the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father, Pope Francis received in audience the Religious from the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy (Mercies) on the eighth centenary of their foundation.
Dear brothers and sisters,
I welcome you to this meeting. I am grateful for the words of Father Juan Carlos Saavedra Lucho, Master General of the Order, and may God preserve his enthusiasm. You are concluding the Jubilee for the eighth centenary of the foundation of your Order; a time of grace in which you have had the opportunity to experience the merciful love of God along the path that you have traveled, as well as to examine the present and to establish guidelines that will allow you to continue with renewed spirit.
In this meeting, I want to place before your eyes the first love that was expressed with the vow of redemption. In this vow you promised to give life as Christ gave it for us, if necessary, to save Christians who are in extreme danger of losing their faith, in new forms of captivity (Constitutions, 14). Very recently, I said to one of you: How many problems do you have there? Well, I have the vow to give my life, came the reply. These words remind us all, and especially those who are religious, that following Christ means giving your life to save souls.
We all know the importance of following Christ, but sometimes instead of following him we propose our life as if He were the one who has to follow us - the tendencies of religious to change our minds often make life difficult, my God, such changes cause many difficulties - and Christ has to accommodate the plans and projects that we make and create. It's a constant temptation, is it not?
Following Jesus is not a matter of methodology; it is a matter of letting Him precede us, to set the pace of personal and community walking. The charism of the Sisters and Brothers of Mercy is current and is called to allow itself to be challenged by new fields of action and redemptive service, such as the promotion of the dignity of the human person, the prevention of physical or spiritual slavery, accompaniment and reintegration of the most vulnerable in our society. Redemption of captives: be assured that today there are many more captives in our world, more than twice as many captives as there were at the time of the founding of the Order. The Mercedarian family, consecrated and lay people, needs to be inspired by this creativity of God, even if that means having to break away from your own schemes that, over time, were added to the founding charism. That always happens to us: departure from the founding charisms, as time goes along, our founding ideals become increasingly opaque or we end up creating husks; and if we are not alert to removing those peels, and afterwards, our charisms become the stone of a large coconut, and it is hard to get back to the stone. Your task is to remove those husks of time and to return to the initial intuition, which is a call from God.
He who follows Christ does so by giving his life; there is no such thing as partial following. The poor rich young man wanted to follow only partially and he could not. This puts us before the core truth of our religious consecration. To trust in the Lord means to give ourselves to Him without keeping anything in our pockets; not only giving material things or what we have left over, but giving everything we consider as our own, including our tastes and opinions. The surrender of one's life is not optional, but is the consequence of a heart that has been touched by the love of God.
Please, I ask you not to allow yourselves to be tempted to consider your sacrifice and surrender as an investment destined toward personal gain, to achieve a position or security. No, not that. Strive rather to make this oblation and consecration to the service of God and of His people real by living the joy of the gospel through the charism of redemption. Those who let themselves be saved by the Lord are freed from sin and, above all, from sadness, interior emptiness and isolation (cf Evangelii Gaudium, 1). To give life is to find it in those who have been redeemed by the Lord through our example and our witness.
The Order of Mercy echoes the gospel of salvation that says: The Lord has visited and redeemed his people (Lk 1:68). Thus, the gesture of visiting and redeeming marks the entirety of your vocation and missionary action. You are called to go out and to save Christians who are in danger of losing their faith, those who have been demeaned in their dignity as persons and entangled in principles and systems that are opposed to the gospel. This concept of entangled Christians causes you to work hard because it is a form of slavery that ends up entangled in a thousand mundane things or that presents God's people with society, all the while not knowing how to get out, while your task is to free entangled Christians from such confusion.
Today, as it was in other eras of history, Christians are threatened by this triple enemy: the world, the devil and the flesh. This is not something from the past; It is something very current. These dangers are sometimes camouflaged; we do not recognize them, but their consequences are obvious, they numb our consciences and provoke a spiritual paralysis that leads to inner death. These enemies sometimes come face to face, but most of the time they go slowly, slowly, numbing and one does not realize, does not realize it, and it takes the grace of God to say: "Where am I? How have I come to fall from there to here? It is anesthesia. Watch, watch so you do not end up anesthetized. We must also be careful not to fall into that state of lacking spiritual vitality. Let's think about the spiritual worldliness that enters in a subtle way into our lives and causes the beauty and strength of that first love of God in our souls to vanish (see Gaudete et exsultate, 93-97). From the Book of Revelation we remember this: I have against you that you have lost the first love (Rev 2:4). And at times, the Lord reproaches his people: I remember the love of your youth, that has followed me through the desert, in Jeremiah (Jer 2:2). That is, the memory, the memory of the first love. Let us not be reproached by the words: What a pity, the Order is well organized, it is going well and everything, but what a pity, they lost the first love. Never give such a reproach. A while ago in an audience in the square, while greeting people, there was an old married couple ... but they were very young at heart, they were celebrating sixty years of marriage and yet they did not seem that old. And I asked them: Do you still love each other? And they looked at each other, they looked at me again and their eyes were moist, and they told me: We are in love. I want to leave you with this image, so that each one of you can say: I'm in love, I have not lost my first love.
As members of a redemptive Order, you must first experience in yourselves the redemption of Christ, so that you in turn can help your brothers discover the God who saves. Redeemed in order to redeem, is a good definition for your life and your vocation. I invite you to continue being the bearers of the Lord's redemption to prisoners, refugees and migrants, to those who fall victim to human trafficking, to vulnerable adults, to orphaned and exploited children ... Show everyone - especially those who are discarded by society - the tenderness and mercy of God.
Dear brothers and sisters: I encourage you in your vocation and mission, never grow tired of being instruments of freedom, joy and hope. May this eighth centenary of your existence produce an abundant fruit of grace and holiness. May grace and holiness be sources o constant encouragement for you to follow Christ by giving your lives for all people in the times in which we live. And may the Virgin of Mercy and Saint Peter Paschal, whose memory we celebrate today, intercede for all of you and accompany you along the way. And, please, do not forget to pray for me.
Thank you.
(Original text in Spanish)
Greetings of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
offered to Religious from the
Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy
Dear brothers and sisters,
I welcome you to this meeting. I am grateful for the words of Father Juan Carlos Saavedra Lucho, Master General of the Order, and may God preserve his enthusiasm. You are concluding the Jubilee for the eighth centenary of the foundation of your Order; a time of grace in which you have had the opportunity to experience the merciful love of God along the path that you have traveled, as well as to examine the present and to establish guidelines that will allow you to continue with renewed spirit.
In this meeting, I want to place before your eyes the first love that was expressed with the vow of redemption. In this vow you promised to give life as Christ gave it for us, if necessary, to save Christians who are in extreme danger of losing their faith, in new forms of captivity (Constitutions, 14). Very recently, I said to one of you: How many problems do you have there? Well, I have the vow to give my life, came the reply. These words remind us all, and especially those who are religious, that following Christ means giving your life to save souls.
We all know the importance of following Christ, but sometimes instead of following him we propose our life as if He were the one who has to follow us - the tendencies of religious to change our minds often make life difficult, my God, such changes cause many difficulties - and Christ has to accommodate the plans and projects that we make and create. It's a constant temptation, is it not?
Following Jesus is not a matter of methodology; it is a matter of letting Him precede us, to set the pace of personal and community walking. The charism of the Sisters and Brothers of Mercy is current and is called to allow itself to be challenged by new fields of action and redemptive service, such as the promotion of the dignity of the human person, the prevention of physical or spiritual slavery, accompaniment and reintegration of the most vulnerable in our society. Redemption of captives: be assured that today there are many more captives in our world, more than twice as many captives as there were at the time of the founding of the Order. The Mercedarian family, consecrated and lay people, needs to be inspired by this creativity of God, even if that means having to break away from your own schemes that, over time, were added to the founding charism. That always happens to us: departure from the founding charisms, as time goes along, our founding ideals become increasingly opaque or we end up creating husks; and if we are not alert to removing those peels, and afterwards, our charisms become the stone of a large coconut, and it is hard to get back to the stone. Your task is to remove those husks of time and to return to the initial intuition, which is a call from God.
He who follows Christ does so by giving his life; there is no such thing as partial following. The poor rich young man wanted to follow only partially and he could not. This puts us before the core truth of our religious consecration. To trust in the Lord means to give ourselves to Him without keeping anything in our pockets; not only giving material things or what we have left over, but giving everything we consider as our own, including our tastes and opinions. The surrender of one's life is not optional, but is the consequence of a heart that has been touched by the love of God.
Please, I ask you not to allow yourselves to be tempted to consider your sacrifice and surrender as an investment destined toward personal gain, to achieve a position or security. No, not that. Strive rather to make this oblation and consecration to the service of God and of His people real by living the joy of the gospel through the charism of redemption. Those who let themselves be saved by the Lord are freed from sin and, above all, from sadness, interior emptiness and isolation (cf Evangelii Gaudium, 1). To give life is to find it in those who have been redeemed by the Lord through our example and our witness.
The Order of Mercy echoes the gospel of salvation that says: The Lord has visited and redeemed his people (Lk 1:68). Thus, the gesture of visiting and redeeming marks the entirety of your vocation and missionary action. You are called to go out and to save Christians who are in danger of losing their faith, those who have been demeaned in their dignity as persons and entangled in principles and systems that are opposed to the gospel. This concept of entangled Christians causes you to work hard because it is a form of slavery that ends up entangled in a thousand mundane things or that presents God's people with society, all the while not knowing how to get out, while your task is to free entangled Christians from such confusion.
Today, as it was in other eras of history, Christians are threatened by this triple enemy: the world, the devil and the flesh. This is not something from the past; It is something very current. These dangers are sometimes camouflaged; we do not recognize them, but their consequences are obvious, they numb our consciences and provoke a spiritual paralysis that leads to inner death. These enemies sometimes come face to face, but most of the time they go slowly, slowly, numbing and one does not realize, does not realize it, and it takes the grace of God to say: "Where am I? How have I come to fall from there to here? It is anesthesia. Watch, watch so you do not end up anesthetized. We must also be careful not to fall into that state of lacking spiritual vitality. Let's think about the spiritual worldliness that enters in a subtle way into our lives and causes the beauty and strength of that first love of God in our souls to vanish (see Gaudete et exsultate, 93-97). From the Book of Revelation we remember this: I have against you that you have lost the first love (Rev 2:4). And at times, the Lord reproaches his people: I remember the love of your youth, that has followed me through the desert, in Jeremiah (Jer 2:2). That is, the memory, the memory of the first love. Let us not be reproached by the words: What a pity, the Order is well organized, it is going well and everything, but what a pity, they lost the first love. Never give such a reproach. A while ago in an audience in the square, while greeting people, there was an old married couple ... but they were very young at heart, they were celebrating sixty years of marriage and yet they did not seem that old. And I asked them: Do you still love each other? And they looked at each other, they looked at me again and their eyes were moist, and they told me: We are in love. I want to leave you with this image, so that each one of you can say: I'm in love, I have not lost my first love.
As members of a redemptive Order, you must first experience in yourselves the redemption of Christ, so that you in turn can help your brothers discover the God who saves. Redeemed in order to redeem, is a good definition for your life and your vocation. I invite you to continue being the bearers of the Lord's redemption to prisoners, refugees and migrants, to those who fall victim to human trafficking, to vulnerable adults, to orphaned and exploited children ... Show everyone - especially those who are discarded by society - the tenderness and mercy of God.
Dear brothers and sisters: I encourage you in your vocation and mission, never grow tired of being instruments of freedom, joy and hope. May this eighth centenary of your existence produce an abundant fruit of grace and holiness. May grace and holiness be sources o constant encouragement for you to follow Christ by giving your lives for all people in the times in which we live. And may the Virgin of Mercy and Saint Peter Paschal, whose memory we celebrate today, intercede for all of you and accompany you along the way. And, please, do not forget to pray for me.
Thank you.
(Original text in Spanish)
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