Religious Are Called to Intimate Union with Jesus

By Bishop Paul S. Loverde
Bishop of Arlington
(From the issue of  7/10/03)

The following homily was delivered at the Sisters’ Jubilee Mass at Marymount Chapel, in Arlington on May 12, 2003.

First, a word of heart-felt congratulations and sincere gratitude, accompanied by the pledge of prayerful support – in all our names – to our Sister Jubilarians! Yes, we are grateful to the Lord for choosing you to live the consecrated life; we are likewise grateful to you for saying "yes" and for the many blessings so many have received from God through your living out the charism of your individual community in the various apostolates in which you have served and are now serving.

Both scripture readings reflect a basic theme central to our living as disciples, especially as disciples vowed to the Lord in poverty, chastity and obedience. That theme is intimate union with Jesus. "I will allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart. I will espouse you to me forever" (cf. Hosea 2:16, 21). "Remain in my love … It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will last" (cf. Jn 15:16).

Yes, each of us is called to an intimate union with Jesus. As I inferred moments ago, if every disciple is called to this relationship of love, how much more this is true for a person called to live the baptismal consecration as a vowed religious? For 75 years and for 50 years, our Jubiliarians have been responding to the call to remain in Jesus’ love, to hear Him speak to their hearts, to be drawn into ever-deepening intimacy with Him. Then renewed by His love and strengthened in their union with Him, they have gone forth "to bear fruit that will last."

In these Jubiliarians, we find encouragement and support. We too have each been called to intimate union with the Lord. We too, transformed by divine grace, must remain in Jesus’ love, hearing Him speak to our hearts and then going forth to reveal His love to those to whom we are sent on mission.

Actually, by the vows which those living the consecrated life are bound to the Lord, you who are religious are made free to love and to serve. Our Holy Father reminds us of this when he spoke to religious this past February. "Poverty, chastity and obedience are distinctive features of the redeemed person, inwardly set free from the slavery of egotism. Free to love, free to serve: this is the way the men and women are who renounce themselves for the Kingdom of Heaven. Following in the footsteps of the crucified and risen Christ, they live this freedom as solidarity, taking on the spiritual and material burdens of their brothers and sisters. This is the multiform ‘service of charity’ that is exercised in the cloister, in hospitals, parishes and schools, among the poor and immigrants, in the new meeting places of the mission. In thousands of ways consecrated life is a manifestation of God’s love in the world (cf. Apostolic Exhortation, Vita Consecrata, chapter III)" (L’Osservatore Romano, February 5, 2003, p. 2, para. 5).

I pray that you who are vowed to the Lord will continue to grow in true intimacy with Jesus. Permit me to point you to Jesus in the Eucharist and to Mary His Mother as you seek to listen to Him speaking to you and to remain in His love.

In his most recent encyclical, Ecclesia in Eucharistia, Pope John Paul II describes so beautifully and so fully how "the church draws her life from the Eucharist" (no. 1). In our union with Jesus in the Eucharistic mystery, we find the source of our intimacy with Him and of our strength to bring Him to others. "At the dawn of this third millennium, we, the children of the Church, are called to undertake with renewed enthusiasm the journey of Christian living. As I wrote in my Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, ‘it is not a matter of inventing a "new program". The program already exists: it is the plan found in the Gospel and in the living Tradition; it is the same as ever. Ultimately, it has its center in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved and imitated, so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity, and with him transform history until its fulfillment in the heavenly Jerusalem.’ The implementation of this program of a renewed impetus in Christian living passes through the Eucharist. Every commitment to holiness, every activity aimed at carrying out the Church’s mission, every work of pastoral planning, must draw the strength it needs from the Eucharistic mystery and in turn be directed to that mystery as its culmination. In the Eucharist we have Jesus, we have his redemptive sacrifice, we have his resurrection, we have the gift of the Holy Spirit, we have adoration, obedience and love of the Father. Were we to disregard the Eucharist, how could we overcome our own deficiency?" (no. 59).

And the Mother of God, who is also our mother, desires nothing more than that we be drawn ever more closely to her Son. "No one can acquire an intimate union with Jesus and a perfect fidelity to the Holy Spirit without being greatly united to Mary. Mary is the echo of God. If we say ‘Mary,’ she will answer ‘God.’ For this reason, union with her is always followed by union with God" (St. Louis de Montfort in Two Months with Mary, p. 19). "Devotion to the Mother of the Lord becomes for the faithful an opportunity for growing in divine grace … For it is impossible to honor her who is ‘full of grace’ without thereby honoring in oneself the state of grace, which is friendship with God, communion with Him and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit … Mary shows forth the victory of hope over anguish, of fellowship over solitude, of peace over anxiety, of joy and beauty over boredom and disgust, of eternal vision over earthly ones, of life over death" (Pope Paul VI in Two Months with Mary, p. 20).

Yes, united to Jesus, especially in the Eucharistic mystery, and following the advice of His Mother Mary: "Do whatever He tells you" (cf. Jn. 2:5), let us be renewed in our love for the Lord and for the people to whom He sends us. As we congratulate once again our Sister Jubiliarians, we pledge that we, like them, will remain in the Lord’s love and remain generous in our service to His people.

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