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The
Christian has this name because he believes that Jesus of Nazareth, son
of Mary, born at Bethlehem, the preacher of God’s Kingdom, who died and
rose for the justification and salvation of all men and women, is the
Christ, the awaited Saviour of humanity, the Lord, the son of God made
man. In revealing the mystery of God, Jesus reveals also the mystery of
man; with his life and his doctrine. He teaches us that we are God’s
children and how we must live. He is the living example of God’s
children.
Jesus, a
model of life
Effectively, Jesus led a
life-style that impressed his contemporary men and women, particularly
his disciples. The first thing that strikes us is His celibate life
lived within his apostolic community as itinerant master; he possessed
nothing, not even where to lay his head (poverty). His project was that
of bringing to fulfilment the mission that the Father had entrusted to
Him, in poverty of means and in the power of the Holy Spirit. His life
reflected the message that He proclaimed, thus no wonder if we look at
him as at a model of life.
Along the first
centuries, the testimony of martyrdom sealed the life-style of Jesus. It
was an act of total love for Him who, “…having loved those who were his
in the world, loved them to the end” (John 13,1), namely up to the gift
of his own life: this is a way of loving that, as Jesus himself says,
expresses the greatest love (See John 15,13).
The first Christian
community gathers around the apostles in memory of Jesus, in the
breaking of bread, in common prayer and in the communion of goods. They
are so much united among them as to constitute “one heart and one soul”
(Acts 4, 32). The Church is the extension of this first community: she
intends to continue the life of Jesus and to take Him as a model;
apostolica
vivendi forma!
In the Church, the
life-style of the apostles became the life-model for everybody; they
reserved a particular honour for the virgins consecrated to the Lord.
Imitation
and following of Jesus
When the time of
persecution was over, the faithful tried to imitate the life of Jesus,
first by going far from the world, to the hermitage. The coenobitic
life followed and during the monastic movement it became structured in
different forms, which went on standardising with the profession of the
evangelical counsels, assumed with the vows of celibacy, poverty and
obedience. These signs show the total gift of one’s life to the service
of the Lord as self-offering and renunciation of possessions, such as
family, wealth and the freedom of realising one’s own personal project
of life. This kind of life represented the greatest love when martyrdom
was no longer the perspective of Christian vocation. It was the origin
of a life-style that the Church calls Religious Life.
We know that each person
receives the call to have and to live a religious life. However, the
expression “Religious Life” has gone on referring particularly to those
Christians who assume the life-style marked by the public profession of
the evangelical counsels through the vows. They belong to religious
institutes approved by the Church and, guided by a Rule, they live a
community fraternal life, under the responsibility and guidance of a
superior; they are the religious par excellence. Their Institutes
are the so-called Institutes of perfection and the religious commit
themselves to reach the perfection of Christian life in the school of
Jesus.
This introduces also a
certain language: at general level we speak of special vocation to
imitate and follow Christ. The sequela connotes the way Jesus lived the
earthy life in the practice of the evangelical counsels; the imitation
underlines the interior reality of Jesus, beyond his concrete
life-style.
Post-Council reflection
In the dogmatic
Constitution
Lumen
Gentium,
Vatican II begins a
theological reflection on the religious life, beyond the juridical forms
in which it is realised in history and is today. The fundamental
statement is in relation with Jesus Christ. This life cannot help
concerning the vocation of each believer, being it the form of life that
Jesus led on earth, characterised by the beatitudes. However, the
Council does not say the reason why Jesus chose this form of life. The
Council does not say the reason why this life is essential for the life
of the Church and why it concerns the life of every Christian. Neither
does she make a confrontation among the different vocations that the
Church traditionally identifies in the known three states of
life(religious, priestly and married life).
It is indeed on these
further problems that the post-council debates develop. They question
the distinction among the three states of life in the Church and the
identity of the religious life in relation with the other two. They
discuss whether it is a specific vocation in the life of the Church and
ask about its relation with the laity and the clergy. They discuss on
the question whether the profession of the evangelical counsel of
perfect continence in celibacy is a constitutive element of the same
profession of the evangelical counsels. Doctrinal trends call to
discussion the particular excellence of consecrated life.
Some interpreters of the
Bible rightly underline that the evangelical counsels and the beatitudes
concern all the faithful, but they exclude, erroneously, that the Bible
speaks of any specific vocation of consecrated life. In reality, we can
and must distinguish effectively and spiritually the practice of the
evangelical counsels and the beatitude, but we cannot level the two ways
of living the Gospel, to the point of no longer mentioning the specific
distinction between them. Particularly through the synods of Bishops,
the Church has felt the need of reflecting again on the states of life:
on the laity (Christifideles
laici), on
the clergy (Pastores
dabo vobis)
and finally on the consecrated persons (Vita
consecrata).
The answers
of
Vita
consecrata
The post-synod apostolic
exhortation
Vita consecrata,
1996, following the 1994 synod of Bishops, was the landing point of this
reflection; we find in it the answers to the debated questions. First,
the exhortation clarifies the sense of Consecrated Life, starting from
Jesus, “The
consecrated life truly constitutes a living memorial of Jesus' way of
living and acting as the Incarnate Word in relation to the Father
and in relation to the brethren. It is a living tradition of the
Saviour's life and message”
(VC 22). It reveals in Jesus the deepest realities of his personality
and his message. It deepens the roots in the mystery of the Holy
Trinity, which is the appropriate place to understand the life-style of
Jesus. «His way of living in chastity,
poverty and obedience appears as the most radical way of living the
Gospel on this earth, a way which may be called divine, for it
was embraced by him, God and man, as the expression of his relationship,
as the Only-Begotten Son with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. This
is why Christian tradition has always spoken of the objective
superiority of the consecrated life”
(VC 18).
The Exhortation frees
the ground from a wrong interpretation of this form of Gospel life. In
reality, if we do not consider the commitment to perfect continence in
celibacy as a constitutive element of the consecrated life through the
profession of the evangelical counsels we would empty of its richness
the form of consecrated life. The Pope invites us to a discernment and
writes, «A fundamental principle, when
speaking of the consecrated life, is that the specific features of the
new communities and their styles of life must be founded on the
essential theological and canonical elements proper to the consecrated
life » (VC 62).
He then specifies in
concrete, “Worthy of praise are those forms of
commitment which some Christian married couples assume in certain
associations and movements. They confirm by means of a vow the
obligation of chastity proper to the married state and, without
neglecting their duties towards their children, profess poverty and
obedience. They do so with the intention of bringing to the perfection
of charity their love, already "consecrated" in the Sacrament of
Matrimony. However, by reason of the above-mentioned principle of
discernment, these forms of commitment cannot be included in the
specific category of the consecrated life”.
(VC. 62).
The Exhortation confirms
and develops the doctrine of the three states of life.
In the unity of Christian life, the various vocations are like many rays
of the one light of Christ, whose radiance "brightens the countenance of
the Church." (VC.
16). The same Spirit presides over the variety of vocations, «By reason
of the justification in Christ all the faithful share a common dignity;
all of them are called to holiness; all of them co-operate for the
edification of the unique Body of Christ, each according to one’s
vocation and one’s gift received from the Spirit” (See Rom 12,3-8).
The equal dignity of all members of the Church
is the work of the Spirit, is rooted in Baptism and Confirmation and
strengthened by the Eucharist. However, diversity is also a work of the
Spirit. He establishes the Church as an organic communion, in the
diversity of vocations, charisma, and ministries”
(VC 31).
Circularity
among paradigmatic vocations
Three vocations have a
particular relevance: “The vocations to the
lay life, to the ordained ministry and to the consecrated life can be
considered paradigmatic, inasmuch as all particular vocations,
considered separately or as a whole, are in one way or another derived
from them or lead back to them, in accordance with the richness of God's
gift” (VC. 31).
They are reciprocally complementary, « These
vocations are also at the service of one another, for the growth of the
Body of Christ in history and for its mission in the world»
(VC. 31). However, each of them has its own specific characteristic, «Everyone
in the Church is consecrated in Baptism and Confirmation, but the
ordained ministry and the consecrated life presuppose a distinct
vocation and a specific form of consecration, with a view to a
particular mission»
(VC 31).
Notwithstanding its
specificity and particularity, the consecrated life fits –it could not
be differently- within the mystery of Christian life. No. 15 on one
side states, « All are equally called to
follow Christ, to discover in him the
ultimate meaning of their lives, until they are able to say with the
Apostle: "For to me to live is Christ" (Phil 1:21). On the other
side it continues,
«But those who are called to the consecrated
life have a special experience of the light which shines forth from
the Incarnate Word».
No. 16 underlines the unity of Christian life, as we have mentioned
above.
Similarly, No 18
outlines the Christian vocation as a programme of life for all the
believers, but on the other side, it brings to evidence a specific
vocation in the consecrated life. «The Son, is the way that leads to
the Father (See John 14,6), calls all those whom the Father has given to
Him (See John 17,9) to a following, which orients one’s existence. He
calls some –the consecrated persons- for a total involvement, which
implies the giving up of everything (See Mt 19, 27), in order to live in
intimacy with Him and to follow Him wherever he goes (See Ap 14,4)».
No. 16 of the
Exhortation explains the specificity of each vocation in the mystery of
Christ and of the Church. "The laity,
by virtue of the secular character of their vocation, reflects the
mystery of the Incarnate Word particularly insofar as he is the Alpha
and the Omega of the world, the foundation and measure of the value of
all created things. Sacred ministers, for their part, are living
images of Christ the Head and Shepherd who guides his people during this
time of "already and not yet", as they await his coming in glory. It is
the duty of the consecrated life to show that the Incarnate Son
of God is the eschatological goal towards which all things tend”.
In the
heart of the Holy Trinity
The Holy trinity:
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is at the origin and at the end of the
Consecrated Life as a community of love. It is One God in the Trinity of
Persons. The second Person, the only begotten son of the Father,
consubstantial and equal to Him, constantly turns to the Father, in
perfect communion with Him in the Holy Spirit (See John 1, 1). Entering
time and history, in the Incarnation, to reveal the mystery of God to
all men and women, together with the dignity and vocation of man and
woman in the mystery of God, He assumes a life-style that reveals his
reality as the only begotten Son of the Father, together with the
doctrine thought by Him.
In fact, the life of
Christ is characterised by celibacy, which unites the Son exclusively to
the Father, and perfect obedience to the life project of the Father, in
poverty. The Gospels narrate this form of life lived by Jesus: a poor,
chaste obedient form of life. The sense of this life reveals itself in
the mystery of the Holy Trinity, where Jesus comes from, in which he
lives and where he returns in glory. Living in time, the Son is and
remains the Son (celibate), adheres totally to the will of the Father
(obedience), in the style of a poor and suffering life, so much as to
identify himself with the servant of Yahweh (poverty), to bring to light
that his power is the power of the Spirit that leads Him.
Jesus has come to
divinise men through the filial adoption: He associates them to his
life, makes them his brothers, teaches them to turn to God with the
words of his own prayer in the strength of the same Spirit, “Abba,
Father”. He associates some of them to his own form of earthly life, as
revelation of the deeper truth of the Christian existence, that of
children. «My dear friends, we are already God’s children, but what we
shall be in the future has not yet been revealed. We are well aware that
when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He
really is» (1 John 3,1-2). The consecrated Life is the initial form of
the definitive life, the filial life.
In the new definitive
Jerusalem, there will no longer be any priesthood or married life, but
only the full joy of children in communion with the Father. This is why
the consecrated life is in the very heart of the Church as a decisive
element for its mission. It expresses the intimate nature of the
Christian vocation and the tension of the whole Church-Spouse towards
union with the unique Spouse (VC 3).
Velasio De Paolis c.s.
Presidente della Prefettura
degli Affari Economici della Santa Sede
Largo del Colonnato 3
00120 Città del Vaticano
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