“To persevere in this purpose until death”
Constitutions, 1
“The vocation, like faith itself, is a treasure that we carry in earthen vessels[1]; therefore, we must safeguard it, as we safeguard the most precious things, so that no one robs us of this treasure, and so it does not lose its beauty with the passage of time.”[2] With these words, the Holy Father addressed the participants in the 2017 Plenary Assembly of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (CIVCSVA), assembled in order to address the issue of the lack of fidelity and consequent lack of perseverance in the religious life.
A fruit of this meeting was the document that was recently published by the CIVCSVA, entitled: “The Gift of Fidelity. The Joy of Perseverance.” It was presented online on July 7th of this year.[3] On that occasion, Emili Turú (General Secretary of the Union of Superiors General) affirmed that “between 2008 and 2012, the yearly average of those who left religious life is more than 3000 persons, about 10 per day, which represents 0.3% of all religious”[4] and therefore, he continued, it seems to be a bit exaggerated to speak of “a ‘hemorrhage’ that is weakening consecrated life and the very life of the Church,”[5] alluding to Pope Francis’s words in the above-mentioned speech.[6] Without wanting to enter into a debate about the magnitude or scope of the problem, we must affirm with both sides that the lack of perseverance is a dramatic reality, recognized by the CIVCSVA itself. And as the holy Father said well, we have to safeguard this treasure,[7] because both the vocation and perseverance itself are a gift from God. And the one who has received the grace of the vocation to the consecrated life must, therefore, in order to be faithful to such a gift, spare no effort and beseech the Lord for the grace to persevere in it. Analogously, here what Saint Thomas says about perseverance in sanctifying grace is valid, that is to say, that God’s help is necessary in order to persevere in it and be kept from evil until the end of one’s life.[8]
In this regard, it seemed to us that the publication of this document gives all the members of the Institute an opportunity to note once more what has been taught to us from the beginning about faithfulness to the vocation and the means of perseverance, as well as the opportunity to dispel the vain arguments in which some take refuge in order to excuse themselves for their lack of perseverance, and which others use to show as logical something that is not. Finally, we should thank God for his work in our souls day by day; this is imperative.
1. Fidelity to our vocation and means of perseverance
The subject of perseverance is already mentioned in the first point of our Constitutions. And for this reason, after stating our intention as a religious Institute in the Church, it explicitly and literally says, “We ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to grant us the grace to persevere in this purpose until death.”
As a matter of fact, the very formula of profession that we use invokes the Most Holy Trinity, asking for this favor in a very special way: “May the love and grace of the Most Holy Trinity help me to be faithful to the work that He has begun.”[9]
Blessed Giuseppe Allamano said to his religious, “To persevere—and let no one forget it—is an obligation freely assumed when we entered this state; we are bound by solemn promises. We have a duty to God to whom we made these solemn promises and a duty to ourselves.”[10]
The fact is that not all religious persevere in their duty and many leave. Unfortunately, this is a reality in the Church that is not unknown to us.
According to the data that we have, in the period of July 2019 to July 2020, 12 priests of the Institute have obtained the indult to leave. That is to say, fewer than 1.4% of the actual population of members of the Institute.[11] If the number in itself is not alarming, neither is the purpose of this writing to present a somber, nor a mitigated, picture of the reality, if we want it, on one hand, to alert us to a latent danger and prevent us from falling into it, according to the wise warning of the Apostle: whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall.[12] And on the other hand, we would like it to be useful for giving thanks to God and for prioritizing those areas or means that are most conducive to perseverance. Because it is a reality that the Institute, even having lost those members, has grown in the total number of priests with respect to the period of 2018-2019. This is an enormous grace that is impossible not to see in these times of great lack of perseverance, as the aforementioned authorities of the Church affirm! In fact, from July 2019 to September 2020 alone, 27 of our members received Holy Orders. And not only that, but we have received between 90 and 100 new candidates.[13]
For this reason, before enumerating the possible causes of “abandonment,” we would like to recall some basic principles that will help us to remain always faithful and to dispose ourselves for the gift of perseverance.
- The first of these is that “a religious vocation is a gift, freely given and freely accepted. It is a profound expression of the love of God for us and, on our part, it requires in return a total love for Christ.”[14] That is to say, the religious vocation is born of the divine initiative and what is important is to respond to it.[15] Therefore, a religious’s entire life should be aimed at strengthening this bond of love with God, love that is unequivocally consummated on the cross. Hence, all that takes me away from it, that wants to change the focus of my attention, or said in another way, that makes us put something ahead of Christ’s love and Cross, this is simply not the will of God.
- The second principle can be deduced from what our Constitutions call the foundation of our Religious Family and, therefore, our consecration’s reason for being: “We want to be established in Jesus Christ, who has come in the flesh,[16] and only in Christ, and always Christ, and Christ in all things, and Christ in all men, and Christ wholly, because the rock is Christ[17] and no one can lay any other foundation.[18]”[19] That is to say, I want to persevere? I want to remain firm before the vicissitudes of life, before the crises that will arrive, sooner or later? Then, the foundation, the bedrock of my life must be Christ, and none other. Perseverance is not given by superiors, nor by studies, nor by years of experience, nor by the responsibilities that I have or have had…. Fidelity to one’s religious vocation has to be founded in Christ, if we indeed want to remain firm when the rains fall and the floods come and the winds blow.[20] And in a first and fundamental consideration, it is a grace of God. All this requires of us a continual adhesion to our Lord, seeking His Most Holy Will in everything, and the responsibility of a pure and irreproachable life. It is a vain illusion to think that one is persevering or will persevere in his vocation by muscle power (by one’s own merits, by one’s natural or supernatural virtues), or because one comes from a good family, because one’s superiors are supportive or because one’s subjects follow, because one’s good works guarantee it, etc.
- And as a third principle, we would like to make explicit here something that is implicit in the two anterior ones, and that is the faith. Only by faith were we able to embark on the path of following the Incarnate Word and put ourselves at God’s disposition, according to the vows we profess. That is to say, in the faith we have pronounced our fiat for all that God decrees and for always. In faith, we also have to persevere. “Only God can keep the gift of the vocation alive in us. Only He, through His Spirit, can overcome the weaknesses that we experience time and time again.”[21] Therefore, also by faith, we have to remember that God is faithful and that, if He has called us to the religious life in this Institute in particular, He will not stop providing us with all the means that we need to persevere in this holy vocation and to advance to the end according to His demands. Did God not say: Though a thousand fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, near you it shall not come?[22]
2. Vain arguments—True causes
Having established these principles, let us now say what some of the causes are for some abandoning the religious vocation, but not without clarifying beforehand that we are not referring here to those who recognize, after serious discernment, made at the right moment, that they simple do not have a vocation (whether because they are not idoneous, or because they recognize that God calls them to sanctify themselves in another vocation or in another Institute). Rather, we are referring to those who, after having seriously and conscientiously discerned their vocation to the religious life, knowing that it was God’s will for them, professed their religious vows forever in the Institute, and in time of desolation, they made a change,[23] some only a few years after their perpetual profession or almost immediately after ordination, others after many years of religious and priestly life.
With respect to this group of religious—but at the level of the entire Church—we read in a 2013 report prepared by the secretary of the CIVCSVA: “it is almost impossible to pinpoint such causes. The motive? It is very simple: we do not have totally trustworthy data. Sometimes, what one writes is different from what one is living. Furthermore, in many cases, what the documents (those that are available at the end of a procedure) say does not necessarily coincide with the real cause of the abandonment.”[24] Nevertheless, according to the documentation that the Dicastery does possess, the principal causes of the abandonment of religious life are: crisis in the faith, crisis in community life, and crisis in affectivity.[25] The same Prelate reaffirmed this recently when Rome Reports interviewed him on August 7th, 2020, on the occasion of the presentation of the aforementioned document.[26]
For his part, the Holy Father, as early as 2017, in his speech to the CIVCSVA, summarized in a paragraph some sociocultural factors that contribute to the problem: “We live immersed in the so-called culture of fragmentation, of the provisional, which leads us to live in an ‘à la carte’ way, and to be slaves to what is fashionable. This culture fosters the need to always have ‘side doors’ open to other possibilities; it feeds consumerism and forgets the beauty of the simple and austere life, very often causing a great existential emptiness. A strong practical relativism has also spread, according to which everything is judged in relation to a self-realization that is often extraneous to the values of the Gospel. We live in a society in which economic rules substitute moral ones, dictate the laws, and impose their own systems of reference at the expense of the values of life; a society where the tyranny of money and profit promotes a vision of existence in which those who do not produce are discarded.”[27]
But we should add that all these factors—very true and influential—are not the only cause, and that we cannot refer to them to tranquilize ourselves, when trying to understand this phenomenon, until coming to see as “normal” or “logical” what is not. Emili Turú mentioned something about this in his presentation of the book when he said that “consecrated life is in crisis not only because the society is in crisis, but because the Church is in crisis.”[28] Unfortunately, the document did not deal with this subject, but is certain that the lack of clear ideas and of leadership capacity affect the perseverance of religious.
John Paul II was a great promoter of the consecrated and priestly life, and throughout his 26 years of pontificate, through his writings and on his many trips, he addressed religious and priests with special affection and dedication as “indispensable for the good of the Church and of men.”[29] As early as 1990, Saint John Paul II, whose 1st centenary of birth we celebrated this year, saw it with clarity and declared, “certain signs of deterioration in the discipline of ecclesial life and with respect to the canonical legislation on priestly and religious life, […] as well as certain erroneous conceptions about liberation, do not help to overcome such situations.”[30] “So we sometimes see how those who disturb and weaken the Church on this point [vocational] are not so much its enemies from without, as some of its sons, who pretend to be its free advocates from within.”[31] For this reason, “the vocational crisis,” Pope continues, “should not be principally attributed to a lack of generosity on the part of youth, but rather to the fact that a prophetic sign of God’s presence is not sufficiently perceived in religious life anymore, which is precisely the primary dimension of religious life.”[32]
In this same year, Fr. Benedict Groeschel, founder of the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Renewal, referred to this in his book, The Reform of Renewal: “Beyond [the] apathy [of today’s world towards the clergy], there is a much more serious problem, and that is a growing cynicism. Cynicism has always been an underlying problem of the Christian clergy, because cynics are disappointed idealists. […] When the leaders and teachers of religious faith begin to show signs of confusion and hesitancy, when they sound an uncertain trumpet, who will follow? When there is a diminishing positive response to the clergy and to its ministry, then cynicism is increased by a growing belief that one has been duped by God.”[33]
It is therefore advisable to be forewarned about the dangers and subtle deceits in which not a few religious let themselves be caught, with the consequent abandonment of their vocation. It is not our intention to make and exhaustive list of all of them, but we would like to include those criteria that we considered to be most diametrically opposed to the principles that that we listed at the beginning, and others that are often the most common arguments we hear.
We said that our vocation is a divine invitation to imitate Christ’s way of life, and that of His apostles, which also means embracing the Cross as the means of union with God, through the vows and the inevitable trials that God, in His Providence, permits in order to bring us to heaven. This includes all the temptations and spiritual trials that our spiritual progress and good pass through: apostolic failures, declines in health, moral suffering (calumny, loss of one’s good name, ill-treatment, lack of recognition, humiliations, etc.), loss of family members, loneliness, difficulties in the mission, etc. Each one could make his own list. Which demonstrates–in case we need it—how necessary prayer is (in all its forms) in order to persevere in the struggle, to persevere in the authentic search for the will of God, to not fall into the temptation of discouragement, to obtain divine help, and to overcome difficulties, whatever they may be; ultimately, in order to be strong and to persevere to the end. Saint John of the Cross said it to one of his spiritual daughters: “since prayer is not wanting, God will take care of its possessions; they belong to no other owner, nor should they.”[34] That is to say, prayer is of capital importance when disposing oneself to receive the gift of perseverance in the vocation. Without prayer, it is impossible to fulfill the commandment of the Lord: remain in My love.[35] Because what He said to us in that same discourse will always be true: whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.[36]
Prayer, care of the interior life (applying oneself to work on concrete resolutions in the spiritual life, receiving spiritual direction, having recourse to the sacrament of penance, making an effort to make the Spiritual Exercises every year, etc.) is an inherent part of this care of the vocation that Pope Francis referred to in the abovementioned speech. For this reason, he continued, saying, “This care is first and foremost a task for every one of us, as we are called to follow Christ more closely with faith, hope and charity, nurtured each day in prayer and strengthened by a good theological and spiritual formation, which defends against the fashions and culture of the ephemeral and enables us to walk steadfast in the faith. On this foundation it is possible to practice the evangelical counsels and to have the same sentiments as Christ.[37] The vocation is a gift that we have received from the Lord, who has looked upon us and loved us,[38] calling us to follow him in the consecrated life, and is at the same time the responsibility of those who have received this gift.”[39]
Without a doubt, care of the spiritual life is like the center and support of the consecrated life. Therefore, Blessed Paolo Manna explained, “The missionary who wants to live and remain at the height of his vocation must constantly nourish this spirit of faith, enlightening and inspiring himself by meditation on the great truths of our holy religion. By continual prayer he must receive from God (whose instrument he is) the grace which he needs for his ministry and without which he can do nothing in regard to the eternal salvation of his own soul and that of the people to whom he has gone to evangelize. Meditation then, and prayer: these constitute the power of the missionary, the only true sources and reasons for his zeal, his perseverance and his success!”[40]
And so often the abandonment of religious life implies a prior neglect of the life of prayer, which little by little leads to a rupture in our relationship with our Lord. We should not be surprised, then, if those who do not have a solid life of piety do not persevere in our Institute.
Unfortunately, those who tend to diminish the importance of this are not lacking. They instead prefer to argue that fault is with their superiors, who did not give them the necessary support, who did not discern in time that they did not have a vocation, or because they sent them to a very difficult mission, etc. There are even some who, without any serious foundation, easily blame the formation and Seminary, and forget to look at the lack of fidelity to grace in themselves. All these “arguments,” although they could be true in some cases and, of course, possible—because superiors are certainly fallible, and sometimes very fallible—, this does not mean that if one really does have a vocation, they will lack the means to persevere in the even most difficult situations and most adverse circumstances. This “would be an affront to Him.”[41] Because “you may be sure that God will never desert those who love Him, when they incur danger solely for His sake.”[42] Let us think of our beloved John Paul II, of the difficulties that he had in his formation and in his “Seminary,” and how, through his faithfulness to God, he succeeded in amazing us as the man we all know. Therefore, it is no less true that “if God calls and if there is true love in devoting oneself to him, he will also give the graces to work out every difficulty that must be overcome on the road towards heaven. This is why, amid the crosses, good religious are the happiest people on earth.”[43] In fact, examples abound in Christian hagiography of those who became saints in the midst of great difficulties within their own communities: they persevered in their holy resolutions and were faithful until death to the word given to God on the day of their vows. The rest are excuses.
We must be convinced that the “cross of Christ, with all that Christ did and suffered on it, is at the beginning, development, and final perseverance of every consecrated vocation. That many consecrated fear the cross of Christ is a more than eloquent sign of the decadence of the consecrated life and of the cause of the lack of vocations in many communities.”[44]
For this reason, we would like to reemphasize that one has to dedicate oneself in a special way to prayer, to the practice of charity and piety, to denying oneself, to a better fulfilment of the obligations of one’s state.[45] Because the lack of perseverance often indicates a lack of love of the cross or a desire to escape precisely from labor, humiliations… and giving in to the spirit of the evil world; causing the religious to forget that union with God, for which we have been created, is obtained by the cross, is consummated on the cross, and is sealed for all eternity with the cross.[46]
In time of trial, each of us should know how to accept purification and self-emptying as essential aspects of following Christ crucified and as an integral part of his vocation. The cross is part of the plan. And if we really think about it, the trial itself is like a providential formative instrument that God uses to draw us more to Himself.
And so, perseverance is ultimately a question of faith. “Do we not believe that Christ sanctified and sent us? Do we not believe that He dwells with us, even if we carry this treasure in fragile vessels and we ourselves have need of His mercy, of which we are ministers to others? Do we not believe that He acts through us, at least if we carry out His work, and He will give growth to what we have laboriously sown according to his Spirit? And do we not believe that he will also grant the gift of the priestly vocation to all those who will have to work with us and relieve us, especially if we are able to revive the gift that we have received by the imposition of hands? […] Christ will not abandon those who have given themselves to Him, those who give themselves to Him each day.”[47]
The rock is Christ. How many religious, priests, monks, and brothers there are who, because of the crucible of spiritual and apostolic trials, because of a certain immaturity and psychological fragility, because they did not “remember that life in common requires sacrifice and can become a form of maxima poenitentia,”[48] begin to feel “a certain unease regarding the regularity of ‘life in common,’ which can seem to them to be too rigid, distant, and outdated with regard to certain demands of the contemporary mentality and sensibility; and therefore, to judge as legitimate and valid the opportunity to share conceptions, lifestyles, and behavior that are, rather, opposed to that austere but wise regimen that the vows you professed and your consecration to God with undivided hearts for the sake of the kingdom of heaven require of us in every circumstance.”[49] They forget that “if we are religious, it is to imitate the Incarnate Word: chaste, poor, obedient, and son of Mary,”[50] and that it is implied in our religious profession that we become “victims with the Victim.”[51] Then they begin to reread the Rule, which “brings with it the risk of substituting the text of the Rule itself with their own interpretation or, at least, to obscure the simplicity and purity with which it was written.”[52]
We should not be naïve: the enemy of our souls is very clever at “exploiting” this community or apostolic discomfort and uses a variety of situations to cause division and, sometimes, irreparable separation. For example, the promise of something better—which is in reality a caprice—can distance and, in fact, separate us, from what truly deserves our most faithful adherence. We have to be attentive and realize that the evil one always seeks to lay another foundation that is not Jesus Christ. His most common objective is to distract us from the focal point of our lives, that is, Jesus Christ, and he seeks, with incredible cunning and subtlety, to take us away, or at least divert us little by little, from our mission. For this reason, the holy Father pointed out how necessary it is to “keep our gaze fixed on the Lord, being ever careful to walk according to the logic of the Gospel, and not to give in to the criteria of worldliness. Very often great infidelities begin with minor deviations and distractions.”[53]
The devil will use tricks of the imagination, the shrinking of our sensitivity, the suggestion of the world, in order to try by every means to discourage us in our vocation: that there is no spiritual progress, that we have not been able to accomplish what we had planned (in terms of apostolate, of spiritual life, of studies, etc.); he will even use the ideal of religious life or community life, our driving force, in order to divert us from our commitments (vows), and will make the fatigue, misunderstandings, and possible injustices that can and do occur in the Christian life, as means to make us conclude that there is no future, that there is no potential, that everything is a disaster, that the best thing to would be to go somewhere else, etc., and what began as discouragement, ends up with an abandonment of one’s total donation to God.
We have to “be men of discernment,”[54] and not fall in the pessimistic attitude that “by looking at the tree of difficulties, we lose sight of the forest of good things.”[55] Many have fallen into this!
Faced with these possible temptations, and without the intention of offering a simplistic solution, we should remember and fix in our souls the fifth rule of the discernment of spirits that Saint Ignatius offers for the first week of the Spiritual Exercises: “in time of desolation we should never make any change, but remain firm and constant in the resolution and decision which guided us the day before the desolation, or in the decision to which we adhered in the preceding consolation.” And reread what the saint continues saying in the following rules: “it will be very advantageous to intensify our activity against the desolation [… and] make an effort in a suitable way to do some penance.” “Be mindful that […] he can resist [the different agitations and temptations of the enemy] with the help of God, which always remains, though he may not clearly perceive it.” “Strive to persevere in patience.”
These rules, which we consider each year, which we preach to others, which we have heard since we have set foot in the Institute, have to be applied to each one’s life and situation, knowing that the enemy, with his great power of suggestion, sows deceits in one’s understanding and “subtly deceiving with verisimilitudes, he gradually brings about their ruin.”[56] We should not let ourselves be deceived. Things will not get better if there is not, on the part of each member of the Institute, of each Province, and of each community in particular, an ever-greater fidelity to Jesus Christ.
For this reason, preparing oneself to receive the gift of perseverance requires, besides discernment tried and rooted in prayer, a solid intellectual formation. And it also requires certain human virtues that are at the basis of the entire formation of the consecrated person, and in which we should keep growing, like fidelity to one’s word, which is a good that is highly appreciated in any human society. And in addition, if this word—that of persevering in our vows in the Institute of the Incarnate Word—was given to none other than God, and in a public way, before the Church, and for always, and without restrictions or conditions, constituting what Saint Ignatius calls an “unchangeable choice,”[57] we have to keep it always and at all costs, even if we lose by it “our skin and the rest,” as the Holy Doctor, Saint John of the Cross, said.[58]
Furthermore, we want to add another temptation, which, though it is common to many souls, it perhaps tempts religious priests more because it presents itself as the easiest, and it is the idea that, if they abandon the Institute, they are going to be able to “look after themselves.” Sometimes the promises of the future made by persons outside the Institute, and the possibility to have certain worldly “securities” are quite attractive. It is not the same thing to live by Providence and to receive a check each month in the bank. You feel much better knowing how things are going to go than not knowing, even when this feeling is based on something improbable, and more often, false as well. You feel better going forward with a certain autonomous control than walking along, armed only with trust and hope in God, without having any control over what is going to happen… since we are under the guidance of a superior to whom we profess obedience.
Regarding this, we simply have to say what C. S. Lewis said: “nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”[59] We cannot be so rash as to think that the devil will keep his promises…. This means that we expose ourselves to being terribly deceived and incredibly disappointed if we presume to anticipate what will be. These deceptions and consequent disappointment can come from thousands of things: “How I am going to enjoy having money in my pockets;” “I am no longer going to have to ask permission to do whatever I want;” “How I am going enjoy the advantages that working in this or that diocese or in this or that position will bring me;” “What a joy to be able to live in this or that country;” etc. We have to open our eyes and realize that we are not in control of the contingent future!
So it is also worth remembering what our proper law very clearly points out in order to warn us about this idealism and teach us “to be realistic men. We must eradicate false beliefs that take the wrong road and falsify community life:
– believing and demanding that everything come from others. Against this, we have to discover with gratitude all that we have received and are receiving from others;
– not being ‘consumers,’ but rather builders of community;
– being capable of helping and being helped, of replacing and being replaced;
– orienting the natural first charm that the fraternal and shared life exercises over youth, becoming aware of the sacrifices that living in community requires, but in the certainty that when one loses oneself for one’s brothers, one finds oneself;
– realizing that one who tries to live an independent life, on the margins of the community, has certainly not embarked on the sure path to the perfection of one’s state;
– undeceiving oneself that the “ideal, perfect community” does not yet exist; it will exist in Heaven. Here, we build on human weakness. It is always possible to do better and to walk together towards the community that lives out forgiveness and love. Unity is established at the price of reconciliation. The situation of imperfection in communities should not dishearten us.” [60]
Saint John of the Cross, for his part, writing his Counsels to a Religious on How to Reach Perfection, includes this wise advice that we should keep well in mind. He says, “you should understand that those who are in the monastery are craftsmen placed there by God to mortify you by working and chiseling at you. Some will chisel with words, telling you what you would rather not hear; others by deed, doing against you what you would rather not endure; others by their temperament, being in their person and in their actions a bother and annoyance to you; and others by their thoughts, neither esteeming nor feeling love for you.
“You ought to suffer these mortifications and annoyances with inner patience, being silent for love of God and understanding that you did not enter the religious life for any other reason than for others to work you in this way, and so you become worthy of heaven. If this was not your reason for entering the religious state, you should not have done so, but should have remained in the world to seek your comfort, honor, reputation, and ease.”[61]
The Spiritual Father of our Institute said it clearly: “What must be avoided at all costs is the actual breakdown of the consecrated life, a collapse that is not measured by a decrease in numbers but by a failure to cling steadfastly to the Lord and to one’s personal vocation and mission.”[62]
For this reason, it is highly recommended to those who are superiors to be fervent in genuinely living and transmitting the spirit of the Congregation,[63] instilling the family spirit in the communities, being true spiritual fathers, comforting their subjects in temptations, and helping them in their needs.
Because, “it should be added that, independently of the different stages of life, any period can present critical situations due to external factors—such as a change of place or assignment, difficulties in work or lack of success in the apostolate, misunderstandings and feelings of alienation—or resulting from more directly personal factors such as physical or mental illness, spiritual aridity, deaths, difficulties in interpersonal relations, strong temptations, crises of faith or identity, or feelings of uselessness. When fidelity becomes more difficult, the individual must be offered the support of greater trust and deeper love, at both the personal and community levels. At such times, the sensitive closeness of the Superior is most essential.”[64]
There are also those who argue that their lack of perseverance is due to the fact that they “were left alone.” For this, though we do not deny nor want to downplay the importance of accompaniment of brothers in religion, especially by superiors, it is also true that “solitude cannot exist when He [God] fills the heart and life.”[65] We should also remember what the Mystical Doctor of Fontiveros wrote to Doña Juana de Pedraza when she complained about her “grief, afflictions, and loneliness.”[66] “They are all comparable to knocks and rappings at the door of your soul so that it might love more, for they cause more prayer and spiritual sighs to God that He might fulfill the soul’s petition. […] God watches over the affairs of those who truly love Him without their worrying about them.”[67]
3. Courage!
We are not unaware of the real difficulties that come the way of all the members of the Institute in their efforts to configures themselves with Christ, to be consistent, to remain faithful through the years and in the midst of the most discouraging circumstances—social and ecclesiastically speaking. All this is certainly a true trial and does not cease to be painful, but it should not lead us to discouragement. Have we forgotten the “providential view of life”[68] that should characterize us? It is one of the non-negotiable elements included in our charism.
We should know how to accept these trials, and if we said before that we have to be men of discernment and realistic men, we now add that we must be supernatural men, accepting God’s plans for each of us, for the Institute, for the Church, and for the world, with faith and abandonment to Providence.
Thus, we are not talking about unrealistic optimism, any more than the pessimism that is in contradiction to Providence, but rather about a healthy Christian realism that accepts the reality of one’s own situation, that of the Institute, and of society, in order to strive to give the most that one can of oneself, in order to elevate it in the name of Christ, with industry and patience.
We have to realize that “lack of perseverance is something that has always happened and will always happen in the Church.” Saint John Paul II already said so three decades ago: “It is not the first time in the course of history, that religious life has encountered serious difficulties. On several occasions, it has passed through similar crises, and sometimes even more difficult ones, and it has always come out of them more generous and more alive, after having deepened and appreciated its own nature.”[69] And for this reason, we should not let ourselves get discouraged by categorical declarations that only obscure the beauty of consecrated life, discouraging not only those who have embraced the consecrated life, but also potential candidates. “Abandonments,” lack of vocations, and the aging of the members of many religious congregations and in many dioceses of the world are serious challenges for each Institute and for the Church as a whole. This is without a doubt. Nevertheless, these are not new phenomena in the long experience of the Church. History teaches us that, by ways that are generally unpredictable, the radical “novelty” of the message of the cross is able to inspire many to renounce everything for the Kingdom of God in order to possess the pearl of great price.[70]
Without a doubt, we admit that there is no magic formula for persevering in the vocation, because it is definitely a grace from heaven that has to be begged for in season and out of season.[71] We all need God’s grace in order to want and do good perseveringly. But we also have to make up our minds and provide the means (these are so important that they seem to say to us that “the one who wants to, perseveres,” that is, the one who uses them):
– Be assiduous in prayer and diligent in caring for the interior life, which includes “daily going deeper into the crucified and crucifying love of the Incarnate Word. Only He can keep the gift of the vocation alive in us. Only He can, through His Spirit, overcome the weaknesses we experience time and time again.”[72] We have to persevere constantly in the practice and in the spirit of the vows, as well as in faithfulness in the celebration of the liturgy.
– Do penance: corporal and interior. As our proper law very clearly indicates, “We must also greatly appreciate external penance with regard to: eating and drinking, sleeping, ‘inflict[ing] sensitive pain on [the flesh]’[73] by means of cilices,[74] the discipline, etc.”[75] But “especially internal penance—metanoia[76]—the intimate, total change and renewal of the whole man in all his feelings, judgments and tendencies.”[77]
– Deny oneself and give oneself in trusting abandon to the service of God. It would be a grave error to give up in the mission, to lessen one’s dedication, to not trust in God’s help. And so, at this point, we would like to recall those touching words that John Paul II addressed to some religious: “Persevere in love! Persevere in sacramental grace and in the both demanding and marvelous mission of the salvation of souls. May apostolic zeal be your first means of perseverance. The priest must have an ‘eschatological’ view of existence and of history, and must live with this perspective. He must evangelize, save, and sanctify souls: this is the will of God.”[78]
– Be faithful to the patrimony of the Institute. “To love one’s vocation is to love the Church, it is to love one’s institute, and to experience the community as one’s own family.”[79] In this sense, all the holy founders and our proper law itself highly recommend—besides prayer and recollection, or the rejection of the spirit of the world—to cling with firmness and fidelity to the Constitutions and to the spirit of the Congregation, and to care about its interests. “What […] will make you holy?” asked Saint Peter Julian Eymard of some religious while he preached the Spiritual Exercises to them. “The Rule, your religious Rule, the Rule of the Society to which you belong. Your holiness consists in its practice. It is for you the will of God. […] What [God] looks for in you is the perfect religious of such or such an Institute. You must be blended with your Institute that you may be a living incarnation of it. It is not the holy man, it is the holy religious, who will be crowned in you.”[80] Consequently, an element that underlies the care of our vocation is full, conscientious, and fervent adhesion to the discipline of the Institute, which includes the constant observance of community life. To delude oneself with the prospect of a religious life or priesthood that is less austere in its demands of sacrifice and renunciation is already, in some way, to give up. And united to this means is that of purity of thought, by means of ordered study and reading good books, in order to discern and prepare oneself against the ideologies that try to divert us from our goal. “What is important is remaining in ‘divine intimacy’ by meditating on reliable and profound books that inflame the soul in the fire of God’s love and keep it serene and enthusiastic in any situation and circumstance that it meets,”[81] said the Pope.
– Practice of tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Blessed Virgin’s “yes,” pronounced the day of the Incarnation and kept during her whole life, should be an incentive and help for us in our total dedication to God. In our daily Rosary, we should ask Mary for the courage to be with her next to the cross and to accept the dialectic of the cross, which is nothing other than asking for the grace to persevere in this purpose until death. The Virgin is our hope.
Today, we are almost 900 members in the Institute of the Incarnate Word. Let us “celebrate and give thanks together for the mutual gift of the vocation and mission.”[82] Let us rejoice for every vocation with which God blesses our Institute and renew our forces in order to “persevere and ever grow in that vocation God has given us […] for the increased holiness of the Church.”[83]
We then raise our prayer—for one another—to implore “perseverance in good, which, even if it is misunderstood and opposed, always reaches a landing place of light, fruitfulness and peace. This is what St Paul reminded the Galatians: the one who sows for the spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit. Let us not grow tired of doing good, for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we do not give up.”[84]
Let us listen to the words of John Paul II to some religious with the hope that each of us feels them especially directed to him: “Never get discouraged.”[85] “In the current circumstances, do not doubt your vocation. God, who invited you to leave everything for His love, is a faithful God: He will never fail you! […] Remain firm in your vocation, in the certainty that it is the surest way to accomplish God’s will.”[86]
May Mary Most Holy obtain for us the graces we need for our sanctification and for the religious prosperity of the Institute and of our missions. May she help us to be faithful to the divine call and make us understand all the beauty, joy, and strength of a priesthood lived with out reserve in dedication and immolation for the service of God and of souls. Finally, may she help us to say, following her example, ‘yes’ to God’s will, even when it is demanding, even when it is incomprehensible, even when it is painful for us.
We leave you with a prayer that Blessed John Henry Newman composed:
“God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission—I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. Somehow I am necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my place as an Archangel in his—if, indeed, I fail, He can raise another, as He could make the stones children of Abraham. Yet I have a part in this great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling. Therefore, I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life, He may shorten it; He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me—still, He knows what He is about. […] O Emmanuel, O Sapientia, I give myself to Thee. I trust Thee wholly. Thou art wiser than I—more loving to me than I myself. Deign to fulfil Thy high purposes in me whatever they be—work in and through me. I am born to serve Thee, to be Thine, to be Thy instrument. Let me be Thy blind instrument. I ask not to see—I ask not to know—I ask simply to be used.”[87]
[1] Cf. 2 Cor 4:7.
[2] Francis, To Participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (January 28, 2017).
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k1JngbSTMs
[4] https://www.vaticannews.va/es/iglesia/news/2020-07/presentacion-ediciones-claretianas-documento-de-civcsva.html; cf. also: Msgr. José Rodríguez Carballo, O. F. M., “Sobre la crisis de la vida religiosa: Causas y respuestas [On the crisis of religious life: Causes and responses],” L’Osservatore Romano, October 29, 2013 (Spanish edition): “Our dicastery, in five years (2008-2012), has given 11,805 dispensations: indults to leave their institutes, decrees of demission, secularizations ad experimentum and secularizations in order to be incardinated in a diocese. This is an annual average of 2,361 dispensations. The Congregation for the clergy, in the same period, dispensed 1,188 men from their priestly duties, and 130 from their diaconal duties. These were all religious: this gives an annual average of 367.7. Adding this data with the others, we have what follows: in five years, 13,123 men and women left the religious life, with an annual average of 2,624.6. This means 2.54 for every 1,000 religious. To these should be added all the cases treated by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. According to a rough, but pretty safe, calculation, this means that more than 3,000 religious men and woman have left consecrated life each year. Members of societies of apostolic life that have left their congregation have not been counted, nor those with temporal vows.”
[5] Francis, To Participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (January 28, 2017). The Holy Father seems to have taken this expression from Msgr. José Rodríguez Carballo, O. F. M., “Sobre la crisis de la vida religiosa: Causas y respuestas,” since the author says there, “considering the fact that the hemorrhage continues and does not seem to stop, these desertions are certainly a symptom of a greater crisis in religious and consecrated life, and they question it, at least in the concrete way in which it is lived.”
[6] Cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k1JngbSTMs, min. 12:58-13:37.
[7] Francis, To Participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (January 28, 2017).
[8] Cf. Saint Thomas Aquinas, S. Th., I-II, 109, 10; cf. Vocations Directory, 77.
[9] Constitutions, 254; 257.
[10] Blessed Giuseppe Allamano, This I Want You To Be – Missionary Spirituality and Formation, Ch. 2, 29.
[11] Some 890 members.
[12] 1 Cor 10:12.
[13] At least 72 novices and 20 postulants.
[14] Saint John Paul II, To the seminarians in San Antonio, Texas, USA (September 13, 1987).
[15] Cf. Vocations Directory, note 27, quoting Saint John Bosco.
[16] 1 Jn 4:2.
[17] Cf. 1 Cor 10:4.
[18] 1 Cor 3:11.
[19] Constitutions, 7.
[20] Cf. Mt 7:25.
[21] Saint John Paul II, To Religious in Altötting, (November 11, 1980).
[22] Ps 91:7.
[23] Cf. Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, [318].
[24] Msgr. José Rodríguez Carballo, O. F. M, “Sobre la crisis de la vida religiosa: Causas y respuestas”, L’Osservatore Romano, (October 29, 2013).
[25] Cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYvvGiLprZs
[26] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYvvGiLprZs&t=80s
[27] Francis, To Participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (January 28, 2017).
[28] Cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k1JngbSTMs min. 16:50-16:55. His exact words were: “Consecrated life is in crisis because the Church is in crisis and the society is in crisis.”
[29] Saint John Paul II, Meeting with the ecclesial community in Luxembourg, (May 16, 1985).
[30] Saint John Paul II, To priests, men and women religious, seminarians and laity in Mexico City, (May 12, 1990).
[31] Saint John Paul II, Homily for the World Day for Vocations, May 10, 1981.
[32] Cf. Saint John Paul II, To religious gathered in the Cathedral of Utrecht, Netherlands, (May 12, 1985).
[33] Fr. Benedict Groeschel, The Reform of Renewal, Ch. 9.
[34] Saint John of the Cross, The Letters, Letter 11, To Doña Juana de Pedraza, January 28, 1589.
[35] Jn 15:9.
[36] Jn 15:5.
[37] Cf. Phil 2:5.
[38] Cf. Mk 10:21.
[39] Francis, To Participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (January 28, 2017).
[40] Blessed Paolo Manna, Apostolic Virtues, Ch. II, 7.
[41] Saint John of the Cross, The Letters, Letter 20, To a discalced Carmelite nun suffering from scruples, shortly before Pentecost, 1590.
[42] Saint Teresa of Jesus, Conceptions of the Love of God, Ch. III, 6.
[43] Directory of Vocations, 39.
[44] Cf. Fr. C. Buela, IVE, You are Priests Forever, Part I, Ch. 4.
[45] Cf. Directory of Spirituality, 103.
[46] Cf. Saint Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross, Ch. 21.
[47] Saint John Paul II, To the Priests of the Île de France gathered in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, France (May 30, 1980).
[48] Directory of Fraternal Life, 48.
[49] Cf. Saint John Paul II, To women religious in the Cathedral of Treviso (June 16, 1985).
[50] Directory of Consecrated Life, 326.
[51] Directory of Spirituality, 168.
[52] Saint John Paul II, Message to the General Chapter of the Order of Friars Minor (May 8, 1985).
[53] Francis, To Participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (January 28, 2017).
[54] Constitutions, 268.
[55] Cf. Constitutions, 123.
[56] Saint John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book 2, Ch. 29, 10.
[57] Spiritual Exercises, 171. In n. 172, he adds: “With regard to an unchangeable choice, once it has been made, for instance, by marriage or the priesthood, etc., since it cannot be undone, no further choice is possible.”
[58] Saint John of the Cross, Maxims and Spiritual Sentences, 68, 4.; quoted in Constitutions, 68.
[59] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Macmillan, p. 59.
[60] Directory of Fraternal Life, 37.
[61] Saint John of the Cross, Counsels to a Religious on How to Reach Perfection, 3.
[62] Vita Consecrata, 63.
[63] Cf. Constitutions, 358.
[64] Cf. Vita Consecrata, 70.
[65] Saint John Paul II, Apostolic Letter for the Fifth Centenary of the Evangelization of the New World (June 29, 1990), 16.
[66] Saint John of the Cross, The Letters, Letter 11, To Doña Juana de Pedraza, in Granada Segovia, January 28, 1589.
[67] Ibidem.
[68] Notes of the V General Chapter, 11.
[69] Meeting with the women Religious in the Abbey of “Madonna del Monte” in Cesena, Italy (May 9, 1986).
[70] Cf. Mt 13:44-45.
[71] 2 Tm 4:2.
[72] Cf. Saint John Paul II, Mass for Religious in the Gnadenkapelle, Altötting, Germany (November 18, 1980).
[73] Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, [85].
[74] Cf. Lv 16:31.
[75] Directory of Spirituality, 102.
[76] Cf. Mk 1:15.
[77] Directory of Spirituality, 99.
[78] Saint John Paul II, To newly ordained priests of St. Leonardo Murialdo (March 24, 1980).
[79] Directory of Consecrated Life, 45; op. cit. Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Fraternal Life in Community. Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor, 37.
[80] Saint Peter Julian Eymard, The Divine Eucharist, Fourth Series, Retreat Preached to the Members of the Congregation of the Brothers of St. Vincent de Paul, pp. 146-147.
[81] Saint John Paul II, To newly ordained priests of St. Leonardo Murialdo, (March 24, 1980).
[82] Directory of Fraternal Life, 68.
[83] Lumen Gentium, 47. Quoted in the Directory of Consecrated Life, 32.
[84] Benedict XVI, General Audience (August 17, 2005); op. cit. Gal 6:8-9.
[85] Saint John Paul II, To the participants in the General Chapter of the Order of Discalced Carmelites (April 22, 1991).
[86] Saint John Paul II, Meeting with the women Religious in the Abbey of “Madonna del Monte” in Cesena, Italia, (May 9, 1986).
[87] Meditations on Christian Doctrine, I; quoted by Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR, Arise from Darkness, pp. 160-161.
