3. You are the salt of the earth… the light of the world (Matt. 5, 13-14)
Let us now turn to what is perhaps the most complex aspect of the visibility of consecrated life. I refer to the apostolic mission. I need hardly refer to the fact that being sent on a mission is present in a special way in a vocation to the consecrated life. The post-synodal exhortation reminds us of this: "like Jesus, the beloved Son ‘whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world’ (Jn. 10,36), those whom God calls to follow Him are also consecrated and sent into the world to imitate his example and to continue his mission" (VC 72).

No doubt the words and the means to preach the good news of Jesus have always existed; however, true and effective preaching is not achieved by words and meditations recited by heart, but through life-witness, through flesh and blood witnesses who live prophetically the gospel of Jesus. In other words, our lives and our words must be consistent; and yet visibility does not only affect the person, it must also be clear in our apostolic works and in the religious institutions that are the means of evangelization.

We must recognize that for several years now a large number of these elements of evangelization have been undergoing important changes and have even reached crisis point. The needs of the mission cover the whole world, but its urgency has not been completely felt until recent years. This is particularly so in our own countries; not only have many of our means of evangelization disappeared, frequently too we are perplexed and confused about how to present Jesus in a culture that claims to disregard God. More, in some of us this conglomeration of factors seems to have weakened, or even stifled, our enthusiasm and apostolic zeal for telling about Jesus. As our human resources diminish and our brothers and sisters grow older, the situation worsens, reaching the threshold of total extinction of our available energies. The situation is not the same everywhere, but the trend seems to affect everyone.

Individualism also does much damage to this aspect of the mission’s visibility. Any pastoral work undertaken outside the corporate context and not linked to the mission of the body of the Congregation ceases to show the transparency of the mission, which is first and foremost a radical ‘posting’ from God, a thorough-going response by the person called to put her/himself at the generous service of God and her/his neighbor.

The mission is not always lived as what it really is: a demonstration of our availability to God in whole-hearted generosity and complete lack of self-interest. It is certain that the mission should take the shape of tasks, i.e. activities and concrete initiatives, but it must not become confused or identified with them. The particular task of the mission creates professional men and women religious, or a clerical bureaucracy; they may have a great sense of responsibility, be competent and concerned to transmit the values of constancy, solidarity, concern for those who have least, but they may not have the transparency that comes with the dimension of giving oneself up to the transcendent, to the Absolute of God who motivates the mission.

We can ask ourselves what desires, what attractions are awakened in the young people who observe us going about those tasks to which religious are dedicated in the first world? Do they find the motivation for our lives, the reasons why and the sense of our vocation to follow Jesus in a fundamental way? It is strange that in our colleges or pastoral centers we often invite our missionaries from America or Africa or a religious who works in the suburbs of a huge city to explain what a religious is or what qualities s/he has. We may be saying, without intending to, that our lifestyle and our mission here and now have no contagious effect, that they are without the ability to stimulate attraction or desire.

The shortage of human resources mentioned earlier also poses a serious problem to the visibility of consecrated life in our apostolic works. Often men and women religious are in the minority, and quite often young people after several years, for example, in a college, have had no relationship with any religious. The apostolic mission is continued because laymen, with their sense of responsibility as Christians, have become fully involved, but the problem of visibility as a means of vocational promotion clearly remains unsolved.

To this difficulty are added the questions which certain sectors of the Church, and even of the consecrated life, put to certain types of institution, actually criticizing or questioning their ability to transmit the evangelical values and to be witnesses to the poverty and simplicity that we profess. The question arises as to whether the structures and resources needed by these institutions prevent evangelical witness from spreading and being present. This question is often applied to the visibility of the mission of the consecrated life. To what are we called: to be "the light of the world" that illuminates without hiding under a bushel or "the salt of the earth" that dissolves unobtrusively to add flavor and prevent things going bad?

In general, the institutions alluded to are to be found in the cultural sector, and no one doubts the dramatic situation affecting cultural evangelization today. Pope Paul VI went so far as to state that "the rupture between the Gospels and [today’s] culture is without doubt the drama of our age" (EN 20). For the Gospel to be heard and for it to succeed in penetrating [today’s] culture, there must be a long process of rapprochement and, through contributions and cultural presence, penetration of social and educational institutions, means of communication, etc. It is a hard labor of silent witness, which often has no visibility, but it is a path that must be taken in order to tell about Jesus.

I think that the consecrated life should continue to follow this difficult path of cultural evangelization, this "long road" as Paul called it in the Areopagus of Athens; Jesus Himself invites us to be the "salt of the earth" and the "leaven which makes the dough rise..." (Lk. 13,21) but He never does so in the form of an alternative or contrast to the light that illuminates the world without hiding or the declaration of the Word from the rooftops. Today there is probably a failure in talking about Jesus explicitly, and what our countries also need most is that the Word should be proclaimed "from the rooftops".

We need to identify the opportunities and the concrete needs of different cultural environments, but we must at the same time ask ourselves sincerely the question I suggested earlier: whether we have lost our apostolic enthusiasm and the urgency of the evangelical declaration of Jesus, or whether we have chosen the "long road" not through missionary conviction but as the solution to a personal problem of our professional occupation.

In fact, from the vocational point of view, it must be recognized that to commit themselves, young people want to know to what, for what and for whom we are called in this family or religious congregation. It is important for vocational promotion that our missionary commitment be visible and transparent; and they will be more easily touched and ‘spoken to’ if this is generous and enthusiastic. It is difficult to commit one’s whole life to choices one hardly knows, that are hard to put into practice and in the midst of internal quarrels and divisions. A well conceived apostolic program, visible and enthusiastically shared by a province or a congregation will always be an opportunity for those who are sensitive to the call of the Lord to feel themselves ‘spoken to’.