Pope Francis encourages religious at the vocational ministry and consecrated life conference at the Vatican
Just recently many religious and consecrated persons from all over the world gathered at the Vatican. The event was the December 1 – 3 vocational ministry and consecrated life conference. The attendees came at the request of what is informally known as the Congregation for Religious.
The conference was called “The Vocational Ministry and Consecrated Life: Prospects and Hopes.” I’d like to share with you in the video below some of the content and key points explained by Pope Francis.
First of all he talks about parents and their responsibility to be the first animators of their children. He says that we must pull children from a kind of selfishness which occurs even in the best of families.
He talks about cementing the vocational proposal. Of course the vocational proposal is finding your vocation – whether it’s married life, single life, or religious/consecrated life. But the emphasis in this conference is the vocational proposal to consecrated life.
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Here he says that “vocational ministry finds its most appropriate ‘humus’ in youth pastoral ministry.” Thus, he’s talking about the fertile soil that we find in youth.
And he mentions certain challenges, and says that we must “trust in the young and trust in the Lord.”
He mentioned that there are many young people today who belong to the selfie generation. He has some criticism here but he says consecrated people have an important role to stay awake so as to awaken young people.
Pope Francis said we can help them focus on Him. The Pope said that it’s very often young people who expect from us (the religious) an explicit proclamation of the Gospel.
One of my favorite quotes of the address is,
“We must overcome the easy temptation that leads us to think that in some environments it is no longer possible to generate vocations. For God ‘nothing is impossible’ (Lk 1: 37). Each segment of history is God’s time, even ours, because His Spirit blows where He wants, as He wants and when He wants (cf Jn 3: 8). Any station can be a ‘kairos’ to gather the harvest (Jn 4: 35-38).”
He said that the total gift of oneself to the cause of the Gospel is something beautiful that can give meaning to one’s whole life.
Here’s another quote that I like:
“The young person wants to see the model to follow, Jesus Christ, ‘narrated’ in the concrete life of a consecrated person.”
(Photo courtesy of the Sisters of St. Joseph the Worker, Walton, KY.)
You might also want to read, “We need to challenge youth with vocations, Ann Arbor Dominicans say.”
