To Religious Women (3 March 1983)

On Thursday, 3 March 1983, the Holy Father addressed Religious Women in the Cathedral of Saint Joseph, Costa Rica. “I know that you enthusiastically carry a large part of the burden in so many parish tasks, of evangelization, of teaching, of works of mercy, of ecclesiastical presence and witness among the poorest, most marginalized, those in need; with the ability to make the Church present through an authentically maternal face, sensitivity and affection, wisdom and balance.”

Dear brothers and sisters

1. I respond with deep gratitude and affection to the affectionate welcome you wanted to give me in this metropolitan cathedral of São José, where I know that you, members of the clergy, men and women religious and seminarians are congregated. Therefore, I express to you my deepest appreciation for your state and your activity. I encourage you to continue without hesitation, with joy and optimism, in your fidelity to the Lord. I want to tell you that I ask in prayer for your intentions and needs, and I bless you with all my heart. In a particular way, I commend in prayer the perseverance and good formation of the seminarians, who will be the future ministers of the Church.

As I will speak specifically to the priests in Salvador and to the religious in Guatemala, today I want to address the nuns in particular.

I contemplate you, dear sisters consecrated to Jesus Christ and his Kingdom, in the variety of apostolic commitment of your different Institutes, and in their presence in different countries. Some of you belong to the peoples of Central America, Belisa or Haiti where I am carrying out my apostolic visit; others originate from other nations on the American Continent or arrived from other Continents; but I know that you all feel well placed in these lands that are your spiritual homeland and thus give a dimension of universality to the holy Church.

I am happy to feel that you resonate with the ideals of the Church that lives in these lands, as a characteristic of your presence must be your deep insertion in particular Churches, where you provide precious help in evangelization, in the animation of parish communities and ecclesiastical groups; you are authentic collaborators with your Pastors, who appreciate your work, and with the faithful who, with their love and respect, help you to fully maintain your identity as consecrated women and your commitment to those most in need.

2. My words in this encounter of faith, prayer and spiritual communion with the Successor of Peter, with whom your consecration binds you in affection, obedience and apostolic collaboration, want to bring you a message of joy and hope that confirm your identity and open new directions in your ecclesiastical commitment, reinforced now with my presence among you.

I would like to remind you, as the Church has always done with Christian virgins, since the earliest times of Christianity, your connection to Christ Jesus, your Lord and Husband, whose love and cause you embraced at the same time.

You are disciples, because you followed Him through the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience. You can say with Saint Paul: "For me, to live is Christ" ( Phil . 1:21), because you have personally consecrated yourselves to Him and are called to feel this communion of love to the fullest, until you can say that it is He who lives in you. you and communicates true life to you. You identified with his cause and therefore, leaving everything, like the apostles, you chose to be witnesses to the values ​​and commitments of the Kingdom.

Your contribution is extremely valuable to the Church. I know that you enthusiastically carry a large part of the burden in so many parish tasks, of evangelization, of teaching, of works of mercy, of ecclesiastical presence and witness among the poorest, most marginalized, those in need; with the ability to make the Church present through an authentically maternal face, sensitivity and affection, wisdom and balance. In this dimension you feel the joy of a consecration in which you can also say, paraphrasing the words of Saint Paul: For me, living is being Church .

3. At a time in history when women acquire the place in society that corresponds to them with a promotion that dignifies them, I see with satisfaction your qualified presence as messengers and witnesses of the Gospel. This movement, which is now reaching a form of greater expression in collective pastoral care, has its foundation and its root in the Master's very attitude towards those women who followed Him (cf. Lc . 23, 55), who deserved the their friendship as Martha and Mary of Bethany (cf. Jn . 12, 1-8) and were messengers of his resurrection, like Mary Magdalene (cf. Jn . 20, 18) or invited to recognize him as Messiah, as the Samaritan woman (cf. Jn 4:39).

You are also entrusted by the Church with the service of the Word and catechesis, education in the faith, cultural and human promotion; it asks you for adequate, and therefore increasingly intense, preparation in terms of spirituality and science; and at the same time she recognizes with what enthusiasm and generosity you bring the Gospel to the poor, the simplest, the restless youth of this geographical area.

But the Gospel is life, and you carry in your heart, consecrated to Christ, the instinct of life, of charity — which is the very life of God — which is incarnated in works of assistance, of promotion. The Christians of these lands rightly demand your irreplaceable presence at the sick's bed, at school, in the various forms of evangelical mercy typical of religious creativity. In these places, in these environments, you are the very presence of Christ's love, you are the face of the Church, which shines before men through its love translated into kindness, help, consolation, liberation, hope.

4. Concretely contemplating the situation of your peoples, the concerns that agitate society, the fragile balance of peace, the tasks of promoting justice yet to be accomplished, I cannot fail to repeat to you my confidence in your mission.

I would like to echo, at this current moment, the words of the Second Vatican Council in its message to women: "You, consecrated virgins, in a world in which selfishness and the search for pleasure want to be law, be the guardians of purity, of disinterest, pity... You to whom life is entrusted at this very serious moment in history, it is up to you to save the peace of the world" ( Message to women , 8.12).

Your mission might seem excessively demanding to you; too big for your possibilities. Because you are close to the people, in many cases you have the education of children, young people and adults in your hands; you must be, by nature and by evangelical mission, sowers of peace and concord, of unity and fraternity; you can disconnect the mechanisms of violence through comprehensive education and the promotion of authentic human values; Your consecrated life must be a challenge to selfishness and oppression, a call to conversion, a factor of reconciliation between men.

5. To be able to properly fulfill this mission, remain firm in your depth of faith, in your love for Christ and in your ecclesiastical conscience. You will thus avoid possible deviations or instrumentalization of the Gospel in the necessary preferential, non-exclusive option in favor of the poor.

Do not let yourselves be fooled by partisan ideologies; Do not succumb to the temptation of options that may demand the price of your own freedom. Trust your Pastors and always be in communion with them. In this communion with the Church, in identification with its guidelines, you will find the safe norm of action. Collaborate, you too, to carry out this discernment of reality about what needs to be illuminated by the light of the Gospel. Always guide, almost by supernatural instinct, the authenticity of your apostolic options with the compass of the Church's meaning, made of sincere communion with her magisterium, of unity with her Pastors.

With this guarantee, embrace the cause of the poor; be present where Christ suffers in needy brothers; reach with your generosity where only the love of Christ knows how to sense that a friendly presence is missing. Be patient and generous in the hope of a better society, spreading the seed of a new humanity that builds and does not destroy, that transforms the negative into positive, as an announcement of resurrection.

The Holy Spirit, who raised the charisma of religious life in the Church and also raised the charisma of each of your Institutes, will give you light and creativity to know how to embody it in new values ​​and unprecedented situations, with the content of the evangelical novelty that it possesses. each charisma animated by the Spirit, when it remains in ecclesiastical communion.

6. As a recommendation for this meeting, I want to leave you with some fidelity that will expand your heart and give you the full joy of an authentic disciple of Jesus, despite the persecution, misunderstanding, and apparent apostolic ineffectiveness of your efforts.

First of all, fidelity to Christ, through loving communion with Him through prayer, for which you must reserve ample and frequent spaces in your life, no matter how much your apostolic needs require. Your prayer must seek the experience of Christ, followed, loved, served.

Fidelity also to the Church. Your consecration unites you in a special way to the Church (cf. Lumen gentium , 44); and in perfect communion with her, with her mission, with her Pastors and with the faithful, you will find the full meaning of your religious life. Continue to be, as consecrated, the honor of the Mother Church.

Carry their pains and pains in your heart and in your life; Be capable of projecting the evangelical face of the Bride of Christ at all times.

Remain united in fidelity to your own charisma. With him, the Church shows the beauty of the different evangelical expressions assumed by your founders and foundresses. In communion with your Institutes, you give particular Churches a universal dimension, the same as your religious families. By living in communion with your sisters, you realize this first communion that ensures the presence of Jesus among you and guarantees the apostolic fruitfulness of a community (cf. Perfectae caritatis , 15).

Also live in communion between the different Institutes, to offer the People of God the example of an evangelical unity that reflects the union of the Mystical Body, in which all charisms are unified by the same Spirit.

Finally, be faithful to your people, to your particular Churches, to their efforts and to their hopes for justice and promotion, so that in you the Church appears fully incarnated in the different nations, in their idiosyncrasies, in their values ​​and customs, within of the concert of the Church, one, holy and catholic.

7. Everything I wished to entrust to you has its appropriate application, respecting their own type of life, to religious women with a contemplative life. They silently live and testify to the value of union with God, of penance, of immolation. With their prayers, they embrace the needs of the poor and take on the concerns of the universal Church and particular communities. They are the tangible manifestation that your people have an authentic contemplative capacity.

Also the consecrated women who live their commitment to animation in the midst of society, according to the characteristics of Secular Institutes, will know how to make their own the recommendations I wanted to give, accentuating their presence in society, particularly in the environments that are specific to their apostolate.

8. Dear religious. I cannot say goodbye to you without showing you in the Virgin Mary the perfect model of these fidelity that I have just asked of you. In her you will find the first disciple and the first consecrated woman. She is a model of contemplation, of proclamation of the Word, of presence among the people. She is the expression of all charisms and the Mother of all consecrated women.

Your people are devotees of Our Lady and see in the preaching of the Gospel the sign of catholicity when she is spoken of; or her absence, if silence is kept about her. By loving the Virgin, talking about Her, you will enter the hearts of your people. But above all, if you know how to reflect it in your life, you will be those qualified messengers of the Gospel that the Church in Central America needs.

May She keep you faithful to the Gospel. I entrust you to Her, so that you can, with your words and your life, say to everyone, alone and always: Jesus Christ is Lord! So be it.

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