ARCHDIOCESE OF PHILADELPHIA

Dear Religious Jubilarians,

What a joy it is to celebrate the Eucharist with you, your family and community members and friends, on this Sunday morning as you and other Religious throughout the Archdiocese recall significant anniversaries of your religious consecration in the Church: 25, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75 and 80 years! Blessed be God!

The community of the Church is with you in solidarity and communion. It is represented by Bishop Maginnis, Bishop Cistone, and a number of your Superiors General, Provincial Superiors and Delegates, together with Monsignor Palmieri, Vicar for Consecrated Life, other Vicars, and other priests, Religious and lay faithful—all of whom join willingly in joyful celebration for the years you have lived in faithful consecration to Jesus Christ, serving the mission of His Church.

Indeed, on this occasion I wish to thank you in the name of Jesus and His Church for the gift of your consecrated lives and for your partnership in the Gospel.

This day is above all a day of solemn thanksgiving to God for the gift of consecrated life in His Church and for having given you a share in it for many years.

This is also the occasion for the Church herself, whom you love, to encourage you and to challenge you to ever greater heights of consecrated love and spiritual service. Spiritually present with us are all those Religious who are not able to be here physically, including the contemplative Religious, to all of whom we send our affectionate greeting in Christ Jesus.

In the providence of God this is also the opportunity for the Church to proclaim once again with all the Popes and with Vatican II the great value of consecrated life. We must never forget that Vatican II tells us that religious consecration "belongs inseparably to the life and holiness of the Church" (Lumen Gentium, 44).

Consecrated life in the Church is a wonderful gift of God, but—like all expressions of Christian life—it is lived by fragile human beings who has been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and sanctified by the Spirit of God. And so, dear Religious, the Church gathers also to pray for you—that you may be faithful to the end.

In the Gospel this morning Jesus speaks clearly, telling us that discipleship has a great cost. It involves renunciation, the Cross, and giving precedence and priority to the love of Jesus over all other loves. If this is true for all Christians, how greatly then does this principle apply to consecrated life. For many years you have made great efforts to live faithfully this invitation of the Lord Jesus, and, for this reason, the Church today exults in joy.

For the benefit of us all, let us call to mind the meaning of the consecrated life that we are celebrating.

The call of Jesus to His first Apostles was something unique in the life of the Church. And yet there are two elements in this call that are supremely important for all consecrated life and mission. We must emphasize these two elements repeatedly. Jesus called the Apostles to be with Him and then to be sent forth (cf. Mark 3:14). Intimacy with Christ is essential to consecration. It must precede and accompany all evangelizing activity and human services.

Not only did Jesus call His Apostles, but He prayed to His Father to consecrate them in the truth (cf. John 17:17). After telling us this in the Gospel of Saint John, Jesus also tells us that He consecrates Himself for His Apostles so that they may be consecrated in truth. Here we see that Jesus is the supreme Consecrated One, the supreme Missionary of the Father for the sake of the kingdom of God.

An attraction to consecrated life in the Church is indeed an attraction to the supreme Consecrated One and to His way of life—to the way Christ lives in the communion of His Father and the Holy Spirit, in the way that the Apostles were companions of Jesus.

Like the Apostles, dear consecrated Jubilarians, your call has been to be with Jesus and to share His mission, which He has entrusted in its entirety to the Church.

Your fidelity to His grace, your prayer, your love, your union with God in Jesus—this has been the secret of your success and of the fruitfulness of all your work. This is why Pope John Paul II could speak so beautifully about the contribution of Religious to the Church in the United States. These are his words: "The religious life in the United States has indeed been a great gift of God to the Church and to your country. From the early colonial days, by the grace of God, the evangelizing zeal of outstanding men and women religious, encouraged and sustained by the persevering efforts of the Bishops, have helped the Church to bring the fruits of the Redemption to your land. Religious were among your pioneers. They blazed a trail in Catholic education at all levels, helping to create a magnificent educational system from elementary school to university. They brought into being health care facilities remarkable both for their numbers and quality. They made a valuable contribution to the provision of social services. Working towards the establishment of justice, love and peace, they helped to build a social order rooted in the Gospel, striving to bring generation after generation to the maturity of Christ. Their witness to the primacy of Christ’s love has been expressed through lives of prayer and dedicated service to others. Contemplative religious have contributed immensely to the vitality of the ecclesial community. At every stage in its growth, the Church in your nation, marked by a conspicuous fidelity to the See of Peter, has been deeply indebted to its religious: priests, sisters, brothers. The religious of America have also been a gift to the universal Church, for they have given generously to the Church in other countries; they have helped throughout the world to evangelize the poor and to spread Christ’s Gospel of peace" (Letter to the Bishops of the United States, April 3, 1983).

The story of Philadelphia is no exception. The Church in our Archdiocese owes so much to Religious—to all the men and women who from the beginning have worked so hard to build God’s kingdom here in the Delaware Valley.

In summarizing the dignity of Religious, Pope John Paul II stated: "that Religious are persons individually called by God and consecrated by God through the mediation of his Church. The value of their activity is great, but the value of who they are is greater still" (Ad Limina Address of September 19, 1983).

Hence, dear Jubilarians, you have been called to serve in a particular way the holiness of God’s people. You are called like Mary to be a sign of the holiness of Christ’s Church. Today, once again, you are challenged to be worthy of the consecration that Christ and His Church offer to you, the privilege of belonging entirely to God.

We all see, then, why this day is so special for our Jubilarians. It is a day of thanksgiving and joy, a day of faith, and, above all, a day of renewed love for Jesus Christ and His Church. Amen.