ARCHDIOCESE OF PHILADELPHIA

Dear Jubilarians,

Welcome to the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. Your relatives and friends and the faithful of the Church of Philadelphia are all observing your important anniversaries of consecrated life and service: 25, 50, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80 years. Blessed be God! How beautiful to think of all those years you have spent in a particular vocation of prayer, union with God and service to His people! What a gift you have received from God! What a gift you have shared with the Church of God!

But why have you come here today? Our responsorial psalm tells you why, for you are responding to its invitation. You are here, as the psalm puts it, to sing joyfully to the Lord for so many years of consecrated love. You have come to acclaim the rock of your salvation. God has been your salvation and has made you the instrument of salvation for so many others. But the God of your salvation has become your Brother and your Friend in Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord. And Mary, the Mother of Jesus, has been for you—during all these years—your life, your sweetness and your hope.

Why then have you come? You have come into God’s presence with thanksgiving, joyfully singing psalms to Him. In particular you have come in order to accept the challenge of the psalm to bow down in worship. Your life is one of adoration, in union with Jesus, the Church’s great High Priest. Hence you have come here to kneel before the Lord who made us, who is our God and loves us as the people He shepherds, the flock He guides, His holy Church.

Dear Religious—Sisters, Brothers, Priests—you have come here to rededicate yourselves to Jesus Christ with the fervor of your youth and with the generosity that you have lived with joy for many years. You have come here in order to consecrate yourselves anew, and to be consecrated anew by the Church, to the great Gospel commandments of love—love for God and love for neighbor. And in this consecration to God’s love you find the fulfillment of the law and the culmination of your vocation.

The greatest dimension, however, of this celebration, dear friends, is that the promise of Jesus is realized in this event in which we all share. Jesus speaks to us today in the Gospel saying: "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Here and now this solemn promise of Jesus is reality, for in the power of the Holy Spirit He fulfills His word.

We are all then together with Jesus, and His presence gives immense meaning and power to our gathering today. Not only are we gathered as brothers and sisters in faith with the charisms of many congregations and our God-given diversity, but we are also united in the Communion of the Saints.

Here also we find union with those who have gone before us in faith: our beloved parents, all those who encouraged our vocation, those outstanding religious—forever alive in our memory — who formed us, accompanied us, urged us on to perseverance and never to lose hope, and who supported us with love and prayer. Their presence with us in the Communion of Saints today, together with our Blessed Mother Mary and all the Saints, the patrons and patronesses of our lives, means so much to us.

All this happens today as we sing joyfully to the Lord, as we acclaim the rock of our salvation, as we come into His presence with thanksgiving, as we bow down in worship, as we kneel before the Lord who made us and shepherds us because He loves us.

As you, dear Religious, bless the Lord in joy and thanksgiving, you realize how the Church and so many of her faithful people are indebted to you for the gift of your consecrated love. But you also know that the full measure of your reward can only be found in the gift that Jesus Christ makes to you of Himself.

To Him, to Jesus Christ, the Son of the Eternal Father, the Word made flesh, the Son of the Virgin Mary, the center of your life, the origin of your vocation and your everlasting hope, be glory and honor with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.