Word and testimony

Charles de Foucauld wrote: “The Lord sets a very accessible price for our salvation: not to be ashamed of the things of which he was not ashamed: the company of the poor, the marginalized, sinners; not to be ashamed of his teaching, the truth of his religion; not to blush about his spouse, the holy Church; not to be ashamed to adopt his lifestyle; not to blush if we live his commandments and counsels which are in direct contradiction with the ideas of the world…Only one thing ought to shame us: not to love him enough…”

Those who love are called to live their vocation in the Church joyfully and in communion, to be salt of the earth and lamp atop the bushel, also so that the world might see and believe!  The recent document “Starting Afresh from Christ” invites us to contemplate the face of Christ, to give primacy to the Word of God in our life, to internalize it with wisdom and offer it with parrhesia, to reaffirm the centrality of Jesus Christ, Redeemer and Savior, and the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the Church and in history, to support a Christian anthropology that upholds the dignity of the human person – man and woman -  with all his/her rights (life, liberty, health, work, family). In order to realize all this, I think that there is a need today for a conversion that is an ecology of heart, ecology of mind, and ecology of life. Cannot our vows also be lived as an ecological commitment?

Ecology of mind, first of all, that is, intellectual honesty to give situations and things their “right name” (call evil, evil and good, good, fearlessly and uncompromisingly), in order to denounce fearlessly any injustices, rights violations against the powerless, not demonizing or legalizing everything and everyone; ecology of heart to defeat the prostitution of the body and that of the spirit which generates manias of power and grandeur at every level and increases more and more the number of those “without rights”, the excluded; ecology of life to seek the “one thing necessary”, to have the courage to share material and spiritual goods and to counteract the waste of things, nature, language, pain, joy, or love.  Our vows are a fundamental ecological choice. We consecrated men and women contribute to the humanization of culture, committing ourselves to understand anew the gospel counsels as ways of civilization, missionary ways, special possibilities for humanization. In a dehumanized culture, in a culture of waste and pollution, it must be our commitment to make an alternative and counter-current choice, and propose it to the new generations, by living chastity as ecology of the hearty, poverty as ecology of life, and obedience as ecology of the mind.

The courage to announce is a special note of the teaching of John Paul II, strenuous defender of the Gospel and of the dignity of the human person; and it was a special note of his episcopal ministry in Poland during the hard times of conflict between the Regime and the Church.  I will read again from the biography mentioned.  At the end of 1963, Karol learned that he was chosen to be archbishop of Krakow. In some way, those who had promoted that had been the Communist authorities themselves, who had rejected as many as six names proposed by Wyszynski.  And these had been rejected because they were convinced they could find, in that attentive scholar of Marxism, an interlocutor that was more conciliating and malleable than the Cardinal Primate. When relations between the Church and State became extremely difficult, Wojtyła was in the front line on behalf of the people, fearlessly; and the regime discovered they were totally mistaken about him. (cf. p. 163)

Regarding that – on the occasion of the Jubilee of youth – Indro Montelli wrote: “This elderly pope, who has difficulty pronouncing words, even in his language, told the young people things, of which the most modern and updated thing is 2000 years old. But it is precisely this, I believe, that the young people are unconsciously seeking in a world of the ephemeral like the one in which we have brought them up, something that is timeless because it is eternal, and that offers something stable on which to put – and rest – their feet.”