Year III, Number 31

You already knew that laborers would be scarce, and so you asked us to pray to the Father to send us laborers, priestly vocations for the Church. What a great, unfathomable mystery is a priestly vocation! A boy, a young man, or a mature man senses the transcendent presence of God which bursts into his life; God looks at them and calls them. Because you do call, Lord; you never stop calling. The problem is ours, for we are not always willing to hear your voice.

So I dare to ask you now to move to generosity the hearts of those you have chosen for the priesthood or consecrated life. You ask of them complete renunciation: they must leave behind human bonds of affection, their family, friends, personal plans and, at times, their homeland... And you ask them to follow you. You appear unannounced in their lives, calling with your authority as Lord: “Follow me.” You want them at that very instant to drop all their pre-conceived plans and dreams, leaving them there on the lakeshore of their lives.

How difficult it must be for them to leave everything, yet what joy to feel in their souls your loving, preferential gaze! What an honor to be your specially chosen and intimate friends! And from the very moment you call them, you have already assigned them the great adventure of preaching your Gospel.

Grant them generosity, Lord. May they never avoid your eyes and hold on like cowards to their riches, as did the young man in the Gospel who didn't have the courage to give up his many material possessions. May those you call, Lord, follow you joyfully, unrestrained by things. May they be courageous, unentangled in the seduction of the world's easy pleasures. May they follow you decisively, the Truth and the Life.

I pray to you, Lord, for all the young people of the world who right now need an extra push of generosity to say “yes” to you as Mary did when you asked her through the angel to be your Mother here on earth. May their faith show them that beyond what they leave is the eternal salvation they will bring to many thousands of people, thanks to their humble but infinitely important “yes.”

I. Vertical and horizontal love

The second part of the great commandment focuses on love of neighbor. Jesus tells us that it is not enough simply to love God with totality; we must also love our neighbor as ourselves. In fact, these two,-love for God and love for neighbor-are so closely connected that they appear as one single command: loving God also means loving others as we love our- selves. If it is to be true, our love must be both vertical (for God) and horizontal (for others).

To love another person as much as we love ourselves is the Old Testament's way of saying "to the maximum degree possible." Yet as we know, Jesus Christ takes this one step further in the New Testament by commanding us to fulfill not only the ideal of love for neighbor as we love ourselves but also of loving ''as he has loved us"; in other words, of loving to the point of total self-sacrifice for one's neighbor without seeking anything in return. This is Jesus' "new commandment" on which depends our identity as his disciples. Authentic Christianity has always been identified by the way believers have practiced the charity of Jesus Christ.

II. Loving my neighbor

What does it mean to "love our neighbor" as ourselves? It means to feel responsible for the long-term good of that person. Loving our neighbor means feeling that person's good as a personal responsibility. It means not looking with cowardly indifference on the multiple sufferings and misfortunes of my neighbor, even a neighbor whom I might find it difficult to accept. It means doing something concrete to alleviate the physical, moral and spiritual sufferings of others. In a word, it means seeing myself in my neighbor and then acting accordingly.

The rampant spread of materialism has led many to focus exclusively on man's material needs and sufferings. The materialist thinks the world would be a perfect place if only each person were free from material want. A perfect world would be a world free from material poverty.

The viewpoint of Jesus Christ goes beyond the material and embraces the whole of the human person. Christ constantly calls attention to man's deeper needs. He cautions us against a poverty that is above all spiritual and moral. Over and over again we see Jesus giving first priority to the spiritual and moral needs of those he encounters along his path, without failing to address their material needs as well.

One story illustrating this point has been recounted of the late Mother Theresa of Calcutta. When asked by a reporter where she had seen the world's worst poverty, she answered, "In your American suburbs. Those who are materially poor still have God, but the spiritually poor have only their material possessions. Truly, spiritual poverty is much worse than material poverty."

When Jesus tells us to love our neighbor, he invites us to feel personally responsible for that person's spiritual, moral and material well being. Wherever there is a needy person in this broader sense of the word, there is my neighbor whom Christ asks me to love. We need to ask ourselves each day if we are really even aware of the needs of our neighbors. Maybe we are so focused on ourselves that we fail to see the obvious needs of those around us. Or perhaps we have adopted a materialistic outlook that has made us indifferent to the moral and spiritual misery of our neighbors and our culture in general. We should take a look at our lives to see what we are doing now to build world.

III. The example of Christ

Christ gives us a very clear understanding of the lengths to which we should be willing to go for a neighbor in need (cf. Lk 10:29-37). In the parable of the Good Samaritan, it is an unknown foreigner who takes it upon himself to care for the man left for dead on the road- side. Other men, men who should have helped, passed along that same road but remained aloof and indifferent, because they realized that charity comes at a price. It is never easy or comfortable to go out of our way to help another person. True love always hurts. Yet the Samaritan was willing to make that sacrifice. And Christ himself identifies with the Good Samaritan, holding him up to us as an example to be followed.

All of us walk along a road of life strewn with men, women and children in need. Paradoxically, often those same persons fail to realize the depth of their own poverty. Yet Christ has sent each one of us to bring them the healing balm of his salvation, even at the risk of being rejected or ridiculed.

Questionnaire:

1. Is my love for God made real in my love for others, or have I fallen into the trap of thinking that I can love God while remaining indifferent to others?

2. Do I feel a sense of compassion at the sufferings, of others, and do I act on that feeling?

3. Am I doing anything to address the spiritual, moral and material poverty of my neighbor?

Within this harmonious constellation of gifts, each of the fundamental states of life is entrusted with the task of expressing, in its own way, one or other aspect of the one mystery of Christ. While the lay life has a particular mission of ensuring that the Gospel message is proclaimed in the temporal sphere, in the sphere of ecclesial communion an indispensable ministry is carried out by those in Holy Orders, and in a special way by Bishops. The latter have the task of guiding the People of God by the teaching of the word, the administration of the sacraments and the exercise of sacred power in the service of ecclesial communion, which is an organic communion, hierarchically structured.As a way of showing forth the Church's holiness, it is to be recognized that the consecrated life, which mirrors Christ's own way of life, has an objective superiority. Precisely for this reason, it is an especially rich manifestation of Gospel values and a more complete expression of the Church's purpose, which is the sanctification of humanity. The consecrated life proclaims and in a certain way anticipates the future age, when the fullness of the Kingdom of heaven, already present in its first fruits and in mystery,will be achieved, and when the children of the resurrection will take neither wife nor husband, but will be like the angels of God (cf. Mt 22:30).The Church has always taught the pre-eminence of perfect chastity for the sake of the Kingdom,and rightly considers it the "door" of the whole consecrated life.She also shows great esteem for the vocation to marriage, which makes spouses "witnesses to and cooperators in the fruitfulness of Holy Mother Church, who signify and share in the love with which Christ has loved his Bride and because of which he delivered himself up on her behalf".In this perspective, common to all consecrated life, there are many different but complementary paths. Men and women Religious completely devoted to contemplation are in a special way an image of Christ praying on the mountain.Consecrated persons engaged in the active life manifest Christ "in his proclamation of the Kingdom of God to the multitudes, in his healing of the sick and the suffering, in his work of converting sinners to a better life, in his solicitude for youth and his goodness to all".Consecrated persons in Secular Institutes contribute in a special way to the coming of the Kingdom of God; they unite in a distinctive synthesis the value of consecration and that of being in the world. As they live their consecration in the world and from the world,"they strive to imbue everything with an evangelical spirit for the strengthening and growth of the Body of Christ".For this purpose they share in the Church's evangelizing mission through their personal witness of Christian living, their commitment to ordering temporal affairs according to God's plan, and their cooperation in service of the ecclesial community, in accordance with the secular way of life which is proper to them.

At the origin of our lives, we encounter God’s infinite and all-powerful love: pronouncing our name long before our parents ever did he called us into existence: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you.” (Jer. 1:5). In other words, we ourselves did not choose to live nor were we entitled to it, for we didn’t even have an opportunity to do something to provoke his love. We exist simply because Someone wanted us and continues to sustain us, because Someone has loved us gratuitously and forever.

Every man and woman, therefore, created in the image and likeness of God, bears as it were God’s fingerprint. In the words of the Holy Father, “love is the DNA of God’s children” (cf. no. 2). Man’s greatness and deepest dignity lies precisely in God’s personal love for him. Man has an absolute value because he is the only creature that God loves in itself (cf. Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, 24). From the very first moment of his conception, man’s history becomes sacred history, a vital time-span for an uninterrupted and intimate dialogue of love with God.

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