Homily of Pope Leo XIV at the Mass for the Jubilee of Consecrated Life

Pope Leo

Below is the homily of Pope Leo XIV:

“Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you.” (Lk 11,9). With these words, Jesus invites us to confidently turn to the Father in all our needs.

We heard them in the framework of the celebration of the Jubilee of Consecrated Life, which has brought them together here in large numbers, coming from many parts of the world—religious men and women, monks and contemplatives, members of secular institutes, those belonging to the Order of Virgins, hermits and members of “new institutes”—who arrived in Rome to live together the jubilee pilgrimage, to entrust our lives to that mercy. of which, through religious profession, they have committed themselves to being a prophetic sign, because living the vows is abandoning oneself like children in the arms of the Father.

“Ask”, “seek”, “call” – the verbs of prayer used by the evangelist Luke – are familiar attitudes for you, accustomed by the practice of the evangelical counsels to ask without demanding, docile to the action of God. It is no coincidence that the Second Vatican Council speaks of vows as a useful means “to bring abundant fruit from baptismal grace” (Dogmatic Const. Lumen Gentium 44). “To ask,” in fact, is to recognize, in poverty, that everyone is a gift from the Lord and to give thanks for everything; “Search” is to open ourselves, in obedience, to discovering every day the path we must follow to achieve holiness, according to God’s designs; “To call” is to ask for and offer the gifts received to the brothers with a pure heart, striving to love everyone with respect and gratuitousness.

We can read in this sense the words that God addresses to the prophet Malachi in the first reading. He calls the inhabitants of Jerusalem “my exclusive property” (Ml 3:17) and tells the prophet: “I will have compassion on them, as a man has compassion on his son” (ibid.).

They are expressions that remind us of the love with which the Lord, in calling us, has preceded us: an occasion, in particular for you, to remember the gratuitousness of your vocation, starting from the origins of the congregations to which you belong to the present moment, from the first steps of your personal itinerary until this moment.

All of us are here, above all, because He has always loved and chosen us. “Asking”, “seeking”, “calling”, then, also means looking back at one’s own existence, bringing to mind and heart everything that the Lord has done, over the years, to multiply talents, to increase and purify faith, to make charity more generous and free.

Sometimes this has happened in joyful circumstances, other times through paths more difficult to understand, perhaps through the mysterious crucible of suffering. Always, however, in the embrace of that paternal goodness that characterizes his action in us and through us, for the good of the Church (cf. Cost. dogm. Lumen Gentium, 43).

And this leads us to a second reflection, about God as the fullness and meaning of our life: for you, for us, the Lord is everything. It is in different ways, whether as Creator and source of existence, as love that calls and challenges, as a force that drives and encourages donation.

Without Him nothing exists, nothing has meaning, nothing is worth, and your “asking”, “seeking” and “calling”, both in prayer and in life, refer to this truth. Saint Augustine, for this purpose, describes the presence of God in his existence with beautiful images. He speaks of a light that transcends space, of a voice that is not overwhelmed by time, of a flavor that is never clouded by voracity, of a hunger that is never quenched by satiety, and concludes: “This is what I love when I love my God” (St. AUGUSTINE, Confessions, 10,6.8).

They are words of a mystic, and yet they are close to us, since they manifest the need for infinity that lives in the heart of every man or woman in this world. Precisely for this reason the Church entrusts them with the task of being, by stripping away everything, living witnesses of the primacy of God in their existence, also helping as much as they can the other brothers and sisters they will encounter to cultivate their friendship with Him.

Furthermore, history teaches us that from an experience of God, generous impulses of charity always spring forth, as has happened in the lives of its founders and foundresses, men and women in love with the Lord and therefore willing to become “all things to all people” (1Co 9:22), without making distinctions, in the most varied ways and areas.

It is true that today, as in Malachi’s time, there are those who say: “It is useless to serve God” (Ml 3:14). It is a way of thinking that leads to a true paralysis of the soul, whereby one is content with a life made up of fleeting moments, superficial and intermittent relationships, passing fashions, all of them things that leave the heart empty.

To be truly happy, man does not need that, but consistent, lasting, solid experiences of love, and you, with the example of your consecrated life, like the exuberant trees of which we have sung in the Responsorial Psalm (cf. Ps 1:3), can spread the oxygen of that way of loving in the world.

There is, however, one last dimension of his mission on which I would like to dwell. We have heard the Lord say to the inhabitants of Jerusalem: “the sun of justice will shine, bringing health in its rays” (Ml 3:20). That is, it invites them to hope in the realization of their destiny that goes beyond the present.

This evokes the eschatological dimension of the Christian life, which wants us committed in the world, but at the same time constantly oriented towards eternity. It is an invitation for you to extend the “asking”, the “seeking” and the “calling” of prayer and life to the eternal horizon that transcends the realities of this world, to guide them towards the “sunday without sunset in which humanity will enter into your rest” (Roman Missal, Sunday Preface X of Ordinary Time).

The Second Vatican Council, in this regard, entrusts them with a specific mission, when it states that consecrated persons are called in a particular way to be witnesses of “future goods” (cf. Dogmatic Const. Lumen Gentium 44).

Dear brothers and sisters, the Lord, to whom you have given everything, has reciprocated you with such beauty and richness, and I would like to exhort you to treasure and cultivate them, evoking in conclusion some expressions of Saint Paul VI: “preserve,” he wrote to the religious, “the simplicity of the “least” of the Gospel.

Know how to find it in the intimate and most cordial relationship with Christ or in direct contact with your brothers. You will then know “the overflowing of joy through the action of the Holy Spirit” that belongs to those who are introduced into the secrets of the Kingdom. Do not seek to become part of those “wise and prudent”, (…) for whom such secrets are hidden. Be truly poor, meek, hungry for holiness, merciful, pure of heart; be those, thanks to whom the world will know the peace of God” (St. PAUL VI, Exhort. ap. Evangelica testificatio, 54).