Tag Archives: Religious Life

Rome Reports

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I have been in Rome for nearly a month now, working on the details of my studies. Nothing definite to report there.

On Sunday a group of us were privileged to attend the Holy Father’s Mass for the Feast of the Presentation, which was also the 18th World Day for Consecrated Life.  You can read his homily here.

I found Pope Francis’ simple and yet significant notice of the Presentation as a meeting between the young and the old—between the Holy Family and the Simeon and Anna—to be remarkably astute, as it is a revealing and accurate exegesis of St. Luke’s gospel reading. The youth are  in the Temple to observe the Law.  The old are there under the spirit of Prophecy.  The Holy Father goes on to reiterate what he has said before, religious must preserve their traditions in the fervor of youth and at the same time be open to the wisdom of prophetic grace:

And in the consecrated life we live the encounter between the young and the old, between [observance] and prophecy. Let’s not see these as two opposing realities! Let us rather allow the Holy Spirit to animate both of them, and a sign of this is joy: the joy of observing, of walking within a rule of life; the joy of being led by the Spirit, never unyielding, never closed, always open to voice of God that speaks, that opens, that leads us and invites us to go towards the horizon.

It’s good for the elderly to communicate their wisdom to the young; and is good for the young people to gather this wealth of experience and wisdom, and to carry it forward, not so as to store it in a museum, but to bring it forward addressing the challenges of life, to carry it forward for the sake of respective religious orders and of the whole Church.

Here are some recent photos:

L-R: Fr. Gennaro, Fra Faustino, Fra John Girard, Fra Fiacre
From my cell at Via Boccea
Vatican Museum with St. Peter’s in background
The Battle of Lepanto from the map section of the Vatican Museum
Not a great shot but gives an idea of where we were for the Mass.

From the publication…

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From the publication—authorized—of data from the questionnaire it becomes clear that there are serious internal problems in the Institute. It also becomes clear how pretentious is the campaign organized by those who have cried foul on account of the Vatican’s appointment of a Commissioner to the Institute and on account of the decision made at that time by the Pope to limit their faculty to celebrate the old Mass, submitting it to the authorization of the Superior, that is, of the Commissioner. This campaign culminated in public appeals to the friars encouraging them to disobey the directives of the Holy See, and in verbally violent attacks against the presumed small group of “traitors” within the Institute. Finally, one must not forget that the old Mass continues to be authorized in churches under the care of the Franciscans of the Immaculate where there are stable groups of faithful that desire to attend that form of the Mass, as per the provisions of Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum.

—Andrea Tornielli

The hour of the law’s fulfillment…

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“The hour of the law’s fulfillment, is when the law reaches its maturity when it becomes the law of the Spirit. Moving forward on this road is somewhat risky, but it is the only road to maturity, to leave behind the times in which we are not mature. Part of the law’s journey to maturity, which comes with preaching Jesus, always involves fear; fear of the freedom that the Spirit gives us. The law of the Spirit makes us free! This freedom frightens us a little, because we are afraid we will confuse the freedom of the Spirit with human freedom. ”

Pope Francis continued, the law of the Spirit, “takes us on a path of continuous discernment to do the will of God” and this can frighten us. The Pope warned that this fear “brings two temptations with it.” The first, is to “go backwards” to say that “it’s possible up to this point, but impossible beyond this point” which ends up becoming “let’s stay here”. This, he warned, “is the temptation of fear of freedom, fear of the Holy Spirit.” A fear that “it is better to play it safe.” Pope Francis then told a story about a superior general who, in the 1930’s, went around compiling a list of regulations for his religious, “a work that took years.” Then he travelled to Rome to meet a Benedictine abbot, who, upon hearing all he had done, replied that in doing so he “had killed his Congregation’s charism”, “he had killed its freedom” since “this charism bears fruit in freedom and he had stopped the charism”.

“This is the temptation to go backwards, because we are ‘safer’ going back: but total security is in the Holy Spirit that brings you forward, which gives us this trust – as Paul says – which is more demanding because Jesus tells us: “Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law”. It is more demanding! But it does not give us that human security. We cannot control the Holy Spirit: that is the problem! This is a temptation. ”

Pope Francis noted that there is another temptation: that of “adolescent progressivism”, that de-rails us. This temptation lies in seeing a culture and “not detaching ourselves from it”.

“We take the values of this culture a little bit from here, a little bit from there , … They want to make this law? Alright let’s go ahead and make this law. Let’s broaden the boundaries here a little. In the end, let me tell you, this is not true progress. It is adolescent progressivism: just like teenagers who in their enthusiasm want to have everything and in the end? You slip up … It’s like when the road is covered in ice and the car slips and go off track… This is the other temptation at the moment! We, at this moment in the history of the Church, we cannot go backwards or go off the track! “

—Pope Francis, June 12, 2013