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  Testimony of conversion and renewal

+ Piergiorgio Silvano Nesti Secretary of CIVCSVA

The Great Jubilee of 2000 has arrived after three years of intense preparation, in which the Holy Father, with his Apostolic Letter “Tertium Millennium Adveniente, has accompanied us by proposing the Mystery of the Trinity, the foundation of the Christian identity as the theme of reflection and of interior renewal and of ecclessial renewal. It is evident that the first people who are committed to a radical renewal, in a serious walk towards the highest Christian perfection are the people who are consecrated. They must witness in our society the “wonders of God” and make His figure visible with a life that is transfigured in Christ Jesus. In this way, in all honesty, can we affirm that consecrated life is one of the great gifts of the Father of the Church and of the world. To demonstrate this gift, which reverberates in consecrated life, it is necessary to connect ourselves to Baptism, where we all became children of God, in the chosen son. In the tradition of the Church, in fact, religious consecration is considered like a full and singular appreciation of the Baptismal consecration, although this should not be the necessary consequence! “This call should be corresponded by a special gift of the Holy Spirit, so that the consecrated person corresponds to his vocation and to his mission,” so affirms the statement in the Apostolic Exhortation “Consecrated Life.” (30 c). Consecrated life through the evangelical councils of chastity, poverty and obedience proposes to the world the fundamental challenges which – in a different way – involve each person in their own vocation. It is the threefold aspect of freedom from the slavery of passion (chastity), of things (poverty), from pride (obedience). The “radical” choices that each person makes in their consecrated life, for many are incomprehensible. In reality they are gifts of the Holy Spirit and we cannot understand if everything is simply reduced to a human scale. When the consecrated person commits themselves to “the joyous practice of chastity that perfects that witness of the power of the love of God in the fragility of the human condition” (VC 88a), they effectively respond to the provocation of a hedonistic culture “that unleashes secularity from every moral norm” and renders it a slave to “a sort of idolarity of instinct.” The fundamental reason of his choice, however, is the contemplation of the trinitary love that Christ reveals. In the strength of this experience “he feels capable of a radical and universal love that gives him mastery of himself and of the necessary discipline that prevents him from falling into the slavery of the senses and of instincts. Consecrated chastity appears therefore as an experience of joy and of liberty” (VC 88b), that appears in the hearts of those brothers who are animatedly serving Charity. “In the same way the profession of evangelical poverty, experienced in different forms and often accompanied by an active commitment in the promotion of solidarity and of charity” (VC 89a), is the answer and the provocation “to materialism for possessions, inattentive towards the needs and the sufferings of the weakest and those who lack every consideration for the equal distribution of human resources.” (VC 89a). “His first priority is witnessing God as the real richness of the human heart. But, it is precisely with this that he contests the strength of idolarity, by putting himself forward as the prophetic appeal in the face of a society that in many prosperous parts of the world, risks losing the sense and the measure of the meaning of things” (VC 90a). “this witness is naturally accompanied by the preferential love of the poor and is demonstrated in a special way in the sharing of the condition of life of the most desirous” (VC 90b). Evidently, though these different and complementary forms of consecrated life: participating in extreme poverty, embracing the Lord and living its specific role in the saving mystery of His incarnation and in his redeeming death” (VC 90c). Since freedom and authentic values are intimately connected with the identity of the person, it is comprehensible that obedience, if it is not considered in the liberating light of the Holy Spirit, is instead considered as a beginning of maturity of the person and their creative freedom. Today, however, the defense of one’s own pseudo-freedom is continually conditioned by the overlapping of emotions and the weakness of thoughts, which largely exchange the concept of freedom with the “doing that which I want to do!” with continuous actions towards the slavery of passion, for weakness, for ignorance, for the thirst of an easy life, for knowledgeable dependency or subconscious actions. We must turn to look at Christ in his mystery of death and resurrection to understand which freedom obedience offers us “The attitude of the Son reveals the mystery of the human liberty as a walk in obedience to the will of the Father – who wants nothing more than the full accomplishment of his creatures – and the walk of obedience as a progressive victory of true freedom” (VC 91b). Whoever consecrates themselves to God, within the knowledge of his filial relationship with the Father, chooses to welcome his will as “daily food, as his rock, as his happiness, as shield and banner” (VC 91b) His life is founded and is nurtured on the Truth that God offers continuously through his Word and his meditations that the situations in his life bring. He knows that “fraternal life is the privileged place to discern and welcome the will of God and walk together in union with heart and mind” (VC 92a) to achieve his will. It is the community which provides the territory where the great realism flourishes with the verification of the love of God. There is no other road. For this reason, the commitment of perfecting charity in ‘common life’ remains always vigilant, so that it becomes a ‘fraternal community.’ Within the community there is the “beginning of the fatigue and the joy of living together. Within fraternity each person learns to life with those whom God has put next to us, accepting them and their positive characteristics and together, with the diversities and the limits. In particular he teaches us to share the gifts received for the building of everyone so that each person is given a particular demonstration from the Spirit for common use” (1 Corinthians 12,7). We must not forget, therefore, that fraternal community – with evangelical advice is the second founding element of consecrated life – is build on personal prayer and communal prayer which confirms the spirit of faith.

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