My reflections on Vita Consecrata, the post-synodal Apostolic exhortation of Pope John Paul

II, and the subsequent instruction of the Vatican congregation for institutes of consecrated
life and societies of apostolic life, starting afresh from Christ: a renewed commitment to
consecrated life in the third millennium, will take as their organizing principle The Year of
the Eucharist which we begin this October. The year of the Eucharist is a kairos moment—a
particular moment of grace in our lifetime.
It is significant for the spiritual life of consecrated persons to view our consecration, our
communion, and our mission, the three major dimensions of religious life, in light of the
Eucharist itself, the center of our spirituality. To quote the instruction: the Eucharist, the
memorial of the Lord's sacrifice, the heart of the life of the church and of every community,
fashions from within, the renewed offering of one's existence, the project of community life
and the apostolic mission.
At the consecration within the Eucharistic prayer at mass, the bread and the wine are
changed into the body and blood of Christ. In his encyclical letter on the Eucharist, Ecclesia
de Eucharistia, the Holy Father likens the consecration of Mary to the Eucharistic
consecration. He says: At the Annunciation Mary conceived the Son of God in the physical
reality of his body and blood, thus anticipating within herself what to some degree happens
sacramentally in every believer who receives, under the signs of bread and wine, the Lord's
body and blood. Like Mary's fiat to the angel at the incarnation, so too is our amen at the
reception of the body and blood of the lord. Isn't this a profoundly fruitful way to view our
consecration as religious? For despite the wonderful diversity of charisms that distinguish
the communities of religious women and men of the church, our interior transformation—
like that of the bread and wine becoming the body and blood of Christ—makes all of us the
holy presence of Christ in our consecrated life through the vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience.
As we receive Holy Communion at Mass, we find there too the community and wider
communion to which we are called as women religious. St. Augustine reminds us that we
become what we eat and drink—the very communion that identifies us as Christians in the
world; the very communion that challenges us as women religious in church and society--in
the words of the instruction: to make the church, the home and school of communion -
communion between old and new charisms, communion with the laity, communion with
bishops. Communion of old and new charisms helps congregations and institutes to
rediscover their common gospel roots, while at the same time it instills the courage of
interdependence, and the daring of inventiveness needed to respond to the signs of the
times. Communion with the laity inspires interesting initiatives and new institutional forms
of association as religious share the primacy of the spiritual in terms of prayer and silence
with the laity, and with them, embark on new paths of pastoral service for peace and justice
and in the preferential option of charity for the poor. Communion with the hierarchy, in the
person of the pope and the diocesan bishop, ensures an ecclesial communion of mind and
heart which is clearly witnessed in the world especially in face of the front-line moral
issues which the magisterium must face.
Ite missa est. The mass is ended. Go in peace. This brief dismissal at the end of mass always
has been interpreted to signify the mission in the world of all who have brought their gifts
for consecration, and formed One Bread, One Body in communion. It is here too that
religious find the challenge and strength to bring Christ's Eucharistic love into the
everydays of human life: in the concrete service of charity; in protecting the rights of the
human person; in spreading the gospel of life and of truth; in openness to ecumenical and
inter-faith dialogue; in promoting global justice and peace; in securing ecological progress;
etc., etc. Go forth in peace and take up the demanding task of being a reflection of the light
of Christ...go forth in peace and, like Mary, become a woman of the Eucharist in your whole
life. The Year of the Eucharist, then, presents a wonderful opportunity for all of us women
religious in the Diocese of Scranton to "start afresh" in the consecration, in the communion,
in the mission that is ours at the beginning of this third millennium.

John Paul II in ‘Vita Consecrata’ writes, “Mary is the one who, from the moment of her
Immaculate Conception, most perfectly reflects the divine beauty, ‘All beautiful’ is the
title with which the Church invokes her. ‘The relationship with Mary most holy, which
for every believer stems from his or her union with Christ, is even more pronounced in
the life of the consecrated person…Mary’s presence is of fundamental importance both
for the spiritual life of each consecrated person and for the solidity, unity, and progress
of the whole community.

Mary in fact is the sublime example of perfect consecration, since she belongs
completely to God and is totally devoted to him. Chosen by the Lord, who wished to
accomplish in her the mystery of the Incarnation. She reminds consecrated persons of
the primacy of God’s initiative. At the same time, having given her assent to the Divine
Word, made flesh in her, Mary is the model of the acceptance of grace by human
creatures.”(28)

Vatican II tells us this about Mary, “The blessed Virgin was eternally predestined, in
conjunction with the incarnation of the divine Word, to be the Mother of God. By decree
of divine Providence, she served on earth as the loving mother of the divine Redeemer,
as associate of unique nobility, and the Lord’s humble handmaid. She conceived,
brought forth and nourished Christ. She presented him to the Father in the temple, and
was united with him in suffering as he died on the cross. In an utterly singular way she
cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope and burning charity in the Savior’s work of
restoring supernatural life to souls. For this reason she is a mother to us in the order of
grace.”

Pope Francis said this about Mary on the feast of All Saints, “Mary, he said, “is the
center of the communion of saints, as the singular guardian of the bond of the universal
Church with Christ…Whoever wants to follow Jesus on the path of the Gospel can find a
secure guide in Mary. She is an attentive and caring mother with whom we can entrust
every desire or difficulty.”

Mary said yes to God and the Holy Spirit. Mary changed the world. Because of Grace,
Mary is all beautiful. So many people who have seen Mary have described her as ‘The
most beautiful woman they have ever seen.” One famous author said, “Beauty will save
the world.”
Mary lived only for God. May we ask Mary to obtain for us the grace to live only for God.
Jesus tells us in the Gospels to seek first the Kingdom of God, and everything else will be
provided. Mary help me live only for God. When we live for God everything else is
provided for us.

Reflection on the Consecrated Life

Maria Rosangela Sala
Superior General of the Sisters of the Immaculate

Manifesting the multiform wisdom of God

Forty years ago, the Second Vatican Council invited Religious Institutes, via the
Document Perfectae Caritatis, to renew themselves in order to reincarnate a more
spiritual consecrated life in the contemporary cultural context, closely linked to the
Gospel and their charism, keeping pace with the Church and at the service of the
world.

Faithful to the directives of the Church, the consecrated life has complied with John
Paul II's desire to involve all the faithful fully in Eucharistic reflection and is grateful
to the Church, which points to the privileged way of the Eucharist, the heart of both
her ecclesial life and consecrated life.

The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple is an eloquent image of the total gift of their
lives made by consecrated persons. It is a proclamation of that gift of self which was
to reveal in the Eucharist the fullness of its radical meaning as a gift that goes to the
extreme, a gift that knows no bounds of space or time.

In the Eucharistic celebration, the gift a Religious makes of his or her entire life is
integrated into Christ's response to the Father's will.

The person called to choose Christ sees in the incorporation into Jesus, brought about
through Baptism and more fully expressed in religious consecration, the unique
meaning of his or her life. This commitment is at the very heart of the growth process
of the consecrated person and finds in the Eucharistic Sacrifice sublime fulfilment:
"He who eats me will live because of me" (Jn 6:57).

The purpose of the total conversion of one's entire life has this as its end: "It is no
longer I who live but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20). A special transformation of
the consecrated person takes place to the extent that one makes room for Christ, who
is present and wants to dwell in his disciples: "Abide in me, and I in you" (Jn 15:4).

In the Eucharist, Christ receives and lives within every consecrated person; hence, all
consecrated persons are aware that they are receiving Christ, alive and true, who dies
and is raised every day for their sake.

The need of this bread for the journey of consecrated persons is proportionate to the
measure of their serious dedication to daily tasks and to the generosity that allows
them to empty themselves of their own desires and take on those Christ proposes.

Spiritual strength in the Eucharist

Furthermore, frequent Communion and Eucharistic adoration enable consecrated

persons to discern God's will for them and accept it responsibly.

Christ's will, mediated by Scripture, and the face of Christ contemplated in the
Blessed Sacrament, are expressed in life through the Eucharist, which provides
consecrated men and women with the spiritual strength they need and enables them
to draw grace from its very source.

Thus, for consecrated persons, a life of grace is brought about which makes them
"partakers in the divine nature" (II Pt 1:4); by practising the virtues of faith, hope and
charity, they become the sacrament, sign and instrument of the mission Christ has
entrusted to his Church: "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you" (Jn 20:21).

On the altar of the world consecrated men and women take upon themselves the
commitment to transform their life so that, in a certain way, it will become an entirely
Eucharistic life.

"Indeed... the mission consists in making Christ present to the world through personal
witness. This is the challenge, this is the primary task of the consecrated life! The
more consecrated persons allow themselves to be conformed to Christ, the more
Christ is made present and active in the world for the salvation of all" (Vita
Consecrata, n. 72).
The account of the washing of the feet shows Christ in the act of serving. The power
of this account is the witness. Jesus is the teacher who accomplishes things, who does
what he says.

"Even today, those who follow Christ on the path of the evangelical counsels intend
to go where Christ went and to do what he did" (ibid., n. 75), without being afraid of
the "hour", since, "although [he was] deeply troubled, Jesus does not flee before his
'hour"' (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, n. 4).

"On the night when he was betrayed" (I Cor 11:23): few words, indeed, in order to
indicate the humanly inexplicable context of the gift.

The Eucharist is a sacrifice in the strict sense, a gift of Christ's love and obedience to
the very end of his life.

"The sacrificial nature of the Eucharistic Mystery cannot therefore be understood as

something separate, independent of the Cross or only indirectly referring to the
sacrifice of Calvary" (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, n. 12). Consecrated persons who have
made the "sequela Christi" their life's meaning are also closely bound to the Cross.

In fact, there is no consecrated life without the Cross; and it is absurd for people to
wear a cross around their necks or pinned to their habits unless they effectively,
unreservedly and generously build up the Body of Christ in accordance with God's
plan and after the example of Jesus, who did not refuse his hour: the hour of the
Cross and of his glorification.
The sacrificial value of the Eucharist, "in which the sacrifice of the Cross is
perpetuated and the sacred banquet of communion with the Lord's body and blood"
(Ecclesia de Eucharistia, n. 12), is present in every community that offers it, and in
Eucharistic communion, "the yearning for fraternal unity deeply rooted in the human
heart" is fulfilled (ibid., n. 24).

Participation in the Eucharistic banquet raises the fraternal communion of the

consecrated person above any communion lived on a merely convivial level. "The
bread which we break, is it not a participation in the Body of Christ? Because there is
one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1
Cor 10:16-17).

The creative power of unity that flows from the Eucharist creates community, while
it consolidates and increases the love of those who have consecrated their lives to
God and find themselves in a real family, gathered in the name of the Lord.

Gifts of God for others

Fraternal communion "is a God-enlightened space in which to experience the hidden

presence of the Risen Lord.... This comes about through the mutual love of all the
members of the community, a love nourished by the Word and by the Eucharist"
(Vita Consecrata, n. 42).

"By its very nature the Eucharist is at the centre of the consecrated life, both for
individuals and for communities" (ibid., n. 95), making possible those fraternal
relations by which Religious carry one another's burdens with mutual esteem
(cf. Perfectae Caritatis, n. 15).

The grace and strength provided by the Eucharistic sacrifice work, on the one hand,
within the individual, nourishing his or her personal holiness; on the other hand, they
place the person in a specific community, nourished by Christ's Body.

Thus, Jesus nourishes the holiness of individuals and groups with his divine holiness.
Because of the particular choice made by consecrated persons, this is vital to fraternal
life.
In fact, fraternal life is not sustained by human bonds but responds to a call in which
it is Christ who offers himself as the one meaning of life. This is what makes the
fraternal life of consecrated persons different from many other forms of community
experience and, at the same time, guarantees it.

In fraternal life not only do Religious experience being a gift to God, but they also
experience being a gift to God for others, which attests to the truth of the gift of self
(cf. ibid., n. 6).

Every Institute witnesses in its own particular way to the Gospel message and the
Eucharistic reality upon which it lives. This specific aspect of witness, called
"charism", is fostered by fraternal life, penetrates it and is a source of boundless
energy for apostolic work.

The living source of the Spirit

By service and dynamic unity to their community, Religious sacrifice themselves,

inwardly cultivating the paschal meaning of their gift of self and witnessing to the
eschatological aspect of their consecration. The Eucharist then becomes "the daily
viaticum and source of the spiritual life for the individual and for the Institute" (Vita
Consecrata, n. 95).

This living source of the Spirit which nourishes consecrated life guarantees the
ability to see and welcome the Lord.

Simeon and Anna at the Presentation can be considered figures symbolic of long and
serious fidelity to serving God, whose sincerity enables them to recognize a child as
the Lord and to welcome him as such.

Active expectation and the encounter with Jesus fill the life of these two venerable
believers, who can be viewed as the ultimate image of the consecrated person in his
or her final encounter with the Lord. At that moment, the bread of the journey, the
Eucharist, will cease to be such and will become full and eternal communion. The
final Amen will conclude our life so that, like that of Mary, it may become
completely a "Magnificat" (cf. Ecclesia de Eucharistia, n. 58).

The Church, ever attentive to the signs of the times, continues to propose anew the
centrality of Christ and of his Paschal Mystery as the principal means of responding
to today's needs.

Consecrated life also feels called to do this, thus enabling the Church not merely to
be "equipped for every good work and to be prepared for the work of the ministry
unto the building-up of the Body of Christ, but also to appear adorned with the
manifold gifts of her children, like a bride adorned for her husband, and to manifest
in herself the multiform wisdom of God" (Perfectae Caritatis, n. 1).