Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - Every year, on 21 November in Italy believers are urged to celebrate the Day Pro Orantibus, to recall those men and women who still today choose to live for God alone at the margins of humanity, in the stability, silent listening and solitude inhabited by the Holy Spirit. These monks and nuns learn day by day to live the Gospel being in continual profound relationship with brothers and sisters all over the world.
They live in God…
Contemplatives, called to live for God, experience the proximity of the Totally Other and the unveiling of their condition as creatures loved by Him. Recognising in God the Lord of life, they bear witness to a profound desire to give themselves unconditionally to Him.
Being with the Lord they are educated to wonder, free self giving and gratitude. He leads them to the threshold of the Mystery to learn to art of prayer and love. Prayer is the time of love lived in profound relationship with God who imprints the sentiments of his Son on the lives of His creatures. Contemplative religious breath, contemplate, love and die in God. Allowing their steps to be marked by the Word they seek God and are sought by Him, as every day they learn to imprint on their face the traits of the face of Christ. Living continually in God eyes, they learn the art of endless love (cfr. Jn 13,1) and as they contemplate the source of life, God who is love (1 Jn 4,8), they experience and announce in daily life that humanity was created for life.
Awareness that they are loved by Him leads them into a “relationship of profound and mutual “abiding” which offers a certain foretaste of heaven on earth” (cfr. Mane nobiscum Domine n. 19). As they give themselves totally to God choosing radical poverty, the bear witness that He is Holy, He is Love, He is close to mankind: they announce with their life that God is the Lord of history. The arrange their time remaining in His love (cfr Jn 15,9): they live the Gospel, possessing nothing and in unity of heart and mind, they “waste” life solely on love, as Jesus did, so that others may believe in the Father’s love for humanity.
…and in the hearts of brothers and sisters
Nuns and Monks of enclosed orders, by immerging themselves in God and letting themselves be loved by Him reach the roots of human existence, the threshold of the Mystery, the paths of the living: following the example of Jesus on the cross, they make a radical gift of their life so that all men and women may know the love of God.
They communicate the profundity of life through words drowned in contemplation, in silence, in God, precisely in present day society which feeds on words and virtual relations. They render visible in stability that they belong to a group of persons who, in communion the gift of the Spirit, accept one another in diversity, whereas the individual of the global village experiences the absence of a stable dwelling place at all levels.
They become for the world a place of welcome, forgiveness, reconciliation, people willing to “sacrifice some of their own peace and happiness, that others may have peace and be happy” (T. Merton).
Listening to God who lives in every person, they open paths of reconciliation with our separated Christian brothers and sisters and with believers of other faiths. The assume the face of peace, serenity, tenderness, sentiments which flow from a fundamental relationship with Jesus Christ.
With the heart in a state of hope they opt to be in the margins, to be part of the world of the excluded. Theirs is not a “fuga mundi”, in fact they believe that “everything created by God is good” (1 Tim 4,4): they shoulder the worries and aspirations of men and women of our day and choosing to possess nothing, they live according to the economy of gift, in the presence of God.
Day by day they become poor with the poor. With their live they affirm the absolute value of the poor and the sacred and inviolable human dignity of every human being even the disfigured. Moment by moment they render visible the guardianship of God “whose heart is moved for His creatures” (cfr. Hos 11,8).
They perceive traces of God in the beauty of their existence, in the lives of others, in creation, in history. Demonstrate love for life, especially today with the widespread culture of death; they assume their corporeity as “temple of God” (1Cor 3,16), through the breath of the Spirit.
They live like Mary, woman of the Eucharist, Here I am Lord (Lk 1,38) charged with significance being visible handing self to God and others.
Aware of the journey of faith common to all Christians, nuns and monks offer in synergy their existence as signs of hope for the good of all humanity.
Silent presence amidst men and women of our day, they are in the Church for the world, to bear witness that still today the Lord continues to weave with humanity a story of faithful love. Diana Papa, Abbess, Poor Clare Sisters (Otranto) (Agenzia Fides 20/11/2006 - Righe 61, parole 838)
