Year of Consecrated Life
The Year of Consecrated Life came about when Pope Francis declared that the various forms of religious life would be celebrated throughout the world. The Year began on the First Sunday of Advent, November 30, 2014 and will close on the World Day of Consecrated Life, February 2, 2016. He chose as the aims of this Year the same ones Saint John Paul II proposed to the whole Church at the beginning of the third millennium: “You have not only a glorious history to remember and to recount, but also a great history to be accomplished! Look to the future, where the Spirit is sending you in order to do even greater things.” And so the aims of the year are “to look to the recent past with gratitude, to live the present with passion, and to embrace the future with hope.”
The Pope tells us that “In looking at the past we see how God, in his Spirit, calls certain individuals to follow Christ more closely, to translate the Gospel into a particular way of life, to read the signs of the times with the eyes of faith and to respond creatively to the needs of the Church.” For this past we are most grateful!
As to living the present, he says this. “For the various founders and foundresses, the Gospel was the absolute rule, whereas every other rule was meant merely to be an expression of the Gospel and a means of living the Gospel to the full. For them, the ideal was Christ….” In the present we are passionate about finding “countless new ways of bringing the newness of the Gospel to every culture and every corner of society.”
We embrace the future with hope, not basing our hope “on statistics or accomplishments, but on the One in whom we have put our trust (cf. 2 Tim 1:2), the One for whom ‘nothing is impossible.’” (Lk 1:37) Francis tells us that it is “to that future that we must always look, conscious that the Holy Spirit spurs us on….to still do great things in us.” We choose to embrace the future with hope!
We encourage you to check out what is happening through your Archdiocesan/Diocesan office, parish, school, and other groups in celebration of this year. We will be posting valuable resources here for your use in making this a time to rejoice in the past with gratitude, live the present with passion, and embrace the future with hope.