Last Sunday life was celebrated twice.
The day of life, For the lives that are born, for all operators of good will who spend because they are born, to be Next to mothers, families. Why Of children need the world and our country, increasingly old and desolate.
And the Day of religious life. Things from priests, will be said. Religious life is the vocation of nuns, of non -priest religious, of priests who belong to a religious order, of consecrated. It seems difficult to understand but we look at the experience. These are the faces that we find next to our children, in schools of all levels, in hospitals, in nursing homes, in residences for the elderly, in family homes, The faces of those who host us by opening the doors of the general houses, of the holiday homes, of those who offer us books and newspapers with a Christian point of view.
In the most distant countries they are the faces of missionaries and missionaries who dedicate themselves into dispensaries, leperbrosari, nursery, consultors … an army without sword and, unfortunately, often without shield.
From the latest data the religious (ordered and not) are more or less 170,000, 590,000 religious. To continue with numbers that impress, they owe the existence of about 74,000 nursery schools, 102,000 primaries, 50,000 lower and higher middle schoolbeyond 100,000 health institutes.
There are non -religious consecrated, Without a dress but with a profession of votes or promises. Because forms of consecration that were considered passed, like Hermit, virgins.
There are in all ecclesial movements, associations of faithful, international bodies rooted in the diocese or in various countries with i votes of chastity, poverty and obedience, Because there has always been a great imagination in the Church, men and the Holy Spirit.
Large numbers yet constantly decreasing. An irreversible trend to which we seem to be resigned as if we had lost confidence in those who vocations arouses them, as if this crisis of faith was a natural brought of progress. When you talk about it, even with authoritative figures, they notice the deepest sighs. Yet if from the first apostles onwards the faith has always been transmitted for contagion, for the encounter with credible witnesses, the ball goes to those who are no longer a credible witness.
Flacing the tempora and Mores and cultural conditioning is a reductive justification. Perhaps that in 2000 years of the history of Christianity, they lived easier eras? Materially and a little selfishly we think of the loss of many realities created and supported by religious in the world.
It is true that it is not to do, at risk of voluntarism, that First of all expresses faith, but we know that this without the works is a dead letter. And who will carry on the works, without the heart, the mind, the hands of those who give themselves to religious life? Jesus was presented in the temple. He offered himself to the Church as consecrated.
Praying for vocations to religious life means praying not for the Church in the abstract, which is however kept by the Lord. But pray for us.
(photo above: Istock)
