Number 188 - 2025
Sr. Marie Desanges Kahindo Kavene, SM
PRESENTATION
In this Jubilee Year of Hope, among the thousands of pilgrims who crossed the threshold of the Holy Door, consecrated women and men also celebrated their jubilee in October. It was a great feast! Pilgrims among pilgrims, witnesses of the mystery of God-with-us who lives and works in the world, consecrated women and men became messengers of a word of life and hope for the wounded humanity of our time.
As human beings, we all need to learn to love and to allow ourselves to be loved, and God’s love waits only to be welcomed into our hearts. No one is excluded from this merciful love. Following in the footsteps of Jesus, contemplating His Face and His Word—which transform hearts and desires—consecrated women and men commit themselves to bear witness to this love and to become a sacrament of listening, care, and fraternity towards all, especially the weakest, the least, the poor.
Closeness to the poor helps us, in fact, to discover the humanity of God, to remain in harmony with His Kingdom, to keep our gaze fixed on Jesus, who out of love “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness” (Phil 2:7), and on the brothers and sisters we meet along the way. It is a gaze which, as Simone Weil said, is “first of all attentive. The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth” (Simone Weil, Waiting for God, Harper & Row, New York, 1951, p. 115).
To Save the World, God Becomes Human. Is there another way for us?
Fr. Carlos del Valle, SVD
Jesus takes on human nature and the human condition, weakness. He does not become generically human; he becomes a concretely weak man (Phil 2:6-11). In the face of God’s weakness, there are no words, only the passion to love as God does. In Christian life, weakness is good news; it leads us to be together, to need others; it brings us closer to the poor, and it evangelizes us. In mission, do we fear weakness or power? “I have no gold or silver, but I give you what I have...” (Acts 3:1-10). The problem arises when I have gold as support in the mission, and I lack the other.
Living the Mystery of the Incarnation
Poverty Endured and Poverty Chosen: A Theological Approach to the Vow of Poverty in Light of the Experience of the Very Poor
Sr. Marie Desanges Kahindo Kavene, SM
Starting from the experience of people facing extreme poverty, the challenge is to rediscover the prophetic dimension of consecrated life in a world where the desire to control people, their possessions, and their lives seems to prevail over healthy and just relationships. Living the vow of poverty today means choosing to swim against the tide of viewing interpersonal relationships as a means of domination. Although it is freely chosen, religious poverty is nonetheless a place of trial in interpersonal relationships, because it faces the constant risk of laying hold of the other in order to possess them. “Possessing the other is more than dominating them: it is taking the other as an object to be manipulated. The vow of poverty could therefore have a diabolical flip side: since I do not possess material goods, I seek to possess others.”
Listening to the Call of Silence: Toward a Synodal Consecrated Life Aware of Its Origin and Destiny
Fr. Mauro-Giuseppe Lepori, Ocist
We need a silence like the one in which Jesus, in the midst of his Passion and the crowd’s hatred, rediscovered his eternal relationship with the Father—rediscovered his selfawareness as the Son eternally begotten by the Father. We too, by grace, are called to this life: to be sons and daughters eternally begotten by the Father. If we truly lived in this awareness—if we were fully conscious of the redemption, of our baptism—then every moment of our life, even the darkest, the saddest, the most painful—even the moment of our death—would be filled with silence before this mystery in which we are immersed: silence before grace, immersed in grace as in the waters of baptism.
A Way of Bonding: An attempt to reflect on a specific property of Religious Life today
Sr. Dr. Britta Müller-Schauenburg, CJ
Religious life is built on the expectation of creating bonds of community with people who were previously strangers to one another. This connectedness or bonding which is one of the aims of religious life is not identical to the bonding that takes place within families or friendship groups. The very use of the word ‘bonding’ therefore raises questions but is being used here consciously to describe the sense of connectedness which takes place over time among members of religious communities. This reflection on the bonding of religious life will explore it from the juridical, discursive and emotional perspectives as a crucial form of human bonding which develops slowly, not as a response to an event. This bonding means relating to persons, texts, a shape of daily life – which may lead to God.
Conciliar and Postconciliar Theology on Consecrated Life and Proposals for the Future
Sr. Ianire Angulo Ordorika, ESSE
It is undeniable that the Second Vatican Council was a notable turning point in Catholic theological reflection. Nonetheless, not all topics came before the conciliar assembly with equal urgency or, above all, with the same depth of theological reflection that had preceded the Council. The way in which the question of Consecrated Life (CL) was dealt with shows that it was not a central concern for the Council Fathers, but rather a subject approached only marginally. What is said about Consecrated Life appears, rather, to be the result of certain important intuitions, but without the opportunity to develop them in depth within the conciliar assembly or to draw out all their implications.
TO SAVE THE WORLD, GOD BECOMES HUMAN. IS THERE
ANOTHER WAY FOR US?
Fr. Carlos del Valle, SVD
Fr.CarlosdelValleisaDivineWordMissionary.Heholdsadoctorate in Moral Theology. He was Director of the magazine ‘Testimonio’ in Chile and Rector of the Pontifical Saint Peter’s College in Rome.
1. “Jesus went about doing good and healing people” (Acts 10:38)
We all know good people, men and women of God. They are a blessing in our milieus; their lives reflect the life of God. One does not leave a good person without taking something of God with them. You look at these people and you want to be better. You learn the Gospel because their lives are a commentary on the Gospel, a letter from God to us. There, Jesus appears in other words that reflect his own, in other lives that touch ours. The important thing is not to be a good religious, but a good person. In consecrated life there are also very pious and very unpleasant people. Religious and selfish people, centered on themselves. There are people like boiling oil: a drop of water falls and there is an explosion.
Pope Francis says that the people of God evangelize themselves (EG 139). Good people are evangelizing us. We need to grow in sensitivity to welcome the Gospel that we discover in people, and not cover it up with our ideas, prejudices, fears, and insensitivity. Jacob says to Esau: “I have seen God in the benevolent and gracious face of my brother” (Gen 33:10). He sees the face of God in his forgiving brother. Your life is the Gospel that people around you read most.
The younger son in the parable finds alive what he could not squander: his father’s goodness. He is saved by having been loved with a love that never failed him. The parable of the Samaritan connects goodness with being sent on mission: “Go and do likewise.” Giving goodness and receiving goodness makes us live happily. In mission, a person who does not live contentedly cannot be a good pastor. To know if one is a good religious, one must look to see if one lives contentedly, because when one is content, one does good, is kind and welcoming.
We see this in a dog that comes up and wags its tail; it is content, it will not bite. When I am sad or angry, I hurt, I respond badly, I bite. Try to live happily and joyfully, rather than perfectly. Happy people are grateful, good, do good, and the God they preach is good. The best news in a religious community is to find happy sisters or brothers. Our mission is to be gaudium et spes for others.
Pantokrator (almighty) appears only in Revelation. To speak of God’s greatness, the Bible says that he is “Holy,” which means totally good. The Gospel shows that God is not for the good, but for those who need him to be good. God’s greatness is not in his power, but in his goodness. But in our liturgy we repeat “Almighty and eternal God.” We emphasize power, not goodness.
Jesus does not allow entry into the Kingdom with power and honor, which imply being more than others. He leaves us service as the characteristic of the disciple, supported by Himself: “I have come to serve” = I am a servant. The strangest definition of Jesus. And his word is linked to his example: “He rose from the table, took off his cloak.” He moves away from places of privilege. When Peter confesses, “You are the Messiah,” Jesus forbids them to tell others. He does not want them to give a false image of Him. They had not yet touched on the most important thing about Jesus: on Thursday He washes feet, and on Friday He goes to the cross.
Goodness is found in humility. We like to live with a humble person. Goodness is humility, not wanting to stand out. This contrasts with the priest or nun who deserves a respect that others are not entitled to. Be so humble that others want to be with you. We love someone if we see gratitude and joy; these are seeds of humility.
We look at a good person and are touched by their humanity. Goodness is humanity. Those who embody kindness are human, because to be human is to show solidarity and tenderness. The incarnation of God is the humanization of God. Hence, the more deeply human, the more divine. For those who do not live the incarnation, the divine is in the religious, and the human in the profane. The mystery of the incarnation does not allow for “sacred and presence of God” or “profane and absence of God.” In the incarnation, God wants to be human, and we want to be spiritual.
Our sin is spiritualism, spirituality that is not incarnate. We are spiritual only if we are human. In my deep humanity, I experience the encounter with God. Pope Francis places the focus on the human: goodness and mercy, because they are the incarnation of the sacred for those who live their faith.
Goodness and mercy are a bond with those in need. Be merciful to others, even when you know their faults. God is present in hearts of mercy. He wants to form in you the heart of his Son: “Have the same sentiments that Christ Jesus had” (Phil 2:5). But what are these sentiments? For the teachers of the Law, the important thing is to give glory to God through the Law, the Sabbath, and worship. For Jesus, it is the life of human beings that is important. John the Baptist washes away sins; Jesus heals the sick. Jesus fixes his first gaze on the suffering of people. His mission is to respond to suffering: “I have come that you may have life” (Jn 10:10). His sentiments: that others should not suffer, that they should have life. People are also concerned about life and pain, and religions are concerned about sin. There is a divorce between human desires (a happy life) and the concerns of religions (sin).
The Gospel emphasizes Jesus’ sensitivity to suffering. The degree of his humanity is reflected in his reaction to the suffering of others. We are human when we make the suffering of others our own. We become more human by being with the weak. Jesus tells us: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36). It replaces: “Be holy as God is holy” (Lev 19:2). In Mt 5:48, “Be perfect.” In Luke, “Be merciful.” “Merciful” means completely good; it is the same as perfect.
It seems that we evangelize when we spread religiosity. We allow ourselves to be evangelized little by humanity, by the goodness of others. We are little evangelized by Jesus’ humanity. We must take seriously the living of his humanity, praying it and discovering it in other human beings. “Ecce homo” is Pilate’s most profound word. But we live more concerned with doctrine and religiosity than with Jesus’ humanity. And God reveals himself in the humanity of Jesus.
In Chile, a simple woman said to me, “Why do I have to listen to that priest who is less human than I am?” This reflects an intuition that the Gospel is a way of human life, the incarnation of relationships that humanize us. The spirituality of Jesus focuses on how we relate to others, how we love others. It seems that with friends it is easier to be a man or woman of God. In fact, what changes our lives are encounters, not ideas. If we change little, it is because we encounter little. Jesus shows three fundamental concerns in the Gospel: health, shared food, and human relationships that make us good, brothers and sisters. For him, there is salvation in shared bread, clothing for the naked, wine and oil for wounds.
A person of faith is not recognized by how they speak about God (as the Pharisees did), but by how they speak about the things of the world from God (Jesus in parables). This is what society expects of us. A Christian life is a life skilled in humanity, in tenderness and sensitivity. It leads us to realize that changing is not becoming someone else; it is a profound experience of oneself. It is becoming more human, growing in sensitivity and tenderness.
John gives the foundation of our humanity: “We have known and believed in the love God has for us” (1 Jn 4:16). In love, we can all believe, believers and non-believers, especially young people. Believing in love is the evangelical platform for harmony in our relationships with young people.
An experience in Santiago, Chile, remains engraved in my memory. As a parish priest, I was in my office, busy and not wanting to be interrupted. A young drug addict and friend came in and asked me for money. I gave him some coins so he would leave me alone. But looking me in the eyes, he said, “Do you want to help me, or do you love me?” He left me speechless. All I could do was give him a hug. I was evangelized by a drug addict who died before his time because he was poor. He made the Gospel resonate deeply within me. Jesus welcomes sinners because he loves them, not because he wants to convert them.
Evangelizing not ideas, but sensibilities, leads to incarnating Christ in our hearts. It leads to living more deeply, nourishing our attention and desires. Believing sensitivity leads us to evangelize our desires so that they become attuned to God’s desires. Discernment is prayer; it draws us into God’s desire. When I pray, God’s desires come to me. When I pray for someone, I nourish good desires toward them. If Jesus draws near in your life, he changes your desires. A religious person is someone who tries to discover God’s desires and make them their own. We can discover them in the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes, the Magnificat, and the hymn in Philippians 2:5-11. The Father wants to make you and me as much like Jesus as possible. May our great desire in mission be to look at life from God’s perspective, to look at others as God looks at them: with joy and mercy. If you achieve this, you are pure of heart.
2. Jesus’ Spirituality: The Joy of Living for Others
It is the incarnate spirituality of the mother or father. “You, follow me”: this is what gives us our identity. We are Jesus’ followers. In the novitiate we cultivate discipleship, and over time we devote ourselves to being teachers. Those who live clericalism (you don’t have to be a cleric to be clerical) find it difficult to feel like disciples. And those who do not live discipleship devote themselves to preaching and teaching.
Our identity is to be followers, friends, before being workers. Listening to children immunizes us. In catechism, a little boy said to me: “You talk a lot about Jesus. Are you his friend or just his coworker?” We can be involved in God’s things without being in God. This is typical of the sacred official, who behaves like a salaried jewelry salesman, who feels no affection for what he has in his hands or for the owner for whom he works.
Don’t ask who Jesus is. You already know: your model as a man, your strength as God. Ask yourself, “Who is Jesus for me?” Someone I take seriously or someone who just touches my skin. A singer recounts his experience: “When you sing, at first you fall in love with yourself. Then you fall in love with the audience. You will only be a good singer if you manage to fall in love with the song.” The song in your life is Jesus. The follower takes a risk in taking Jesus seriously or not taking him seriously. And following Jesus implies:
- Vocation: feeling called, responding to the call
- Fraternity: living with him and with his own
- Beatitudes: living like him
- Service: living for others.
Can other people see the Gospel in the way we relate to each other? It seems that in relationships there is not much difference between believers and non-believers. In communities there is also revenge, indifference, and denial of the word. This means that the Gospel is weak in our relationships. We do not take Jesus very seriously. It may be that in our ideas, Jesus is the center, but in our life experiences there are other things at the center. We may have clear values and live according to our interests and needs.
Our identity as followers is not in our role or status. Being followers leads us to rediscover the joy of being brothers and sisters, of being a people, without seeking privileges or relying on distinctions. We are not officials of the sacred; we are men and women of God, transmitting God’s life. Lessons in spirituality do not spread the experience of God. We are women and men from God, loving, because to love is to have our lives oriented toward Him. The most important verse in the Bible: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). The follower is a disciple, a friend. If there is no relationship in following, there may be enthusiasm, crazy dedication to work, fanaticism.
A few decades ago, we used to distinguish between conservatives and progressives. It is an ideological distinction that divides and separates, rather than unites and integrates. In the Gospel, the distinction is between those who live centered on themselves and their interests, and those who live centered on the good of others. Think of the mother centered on the life of her child or the shepherd on his flock, as opposed to the wage earner.
The Gospel offers us the mirror of the Samaritan, who stopped; others passed by. He felt moved by the wounded man and responsible for his situation. He changed his plans and interrupted his journey. For him, the life of the other was more important. He showed the best of his heart: a self freed from itself. The priest and the Levite were liturgically correct, precise, like a high-speed train that does not stop. They are self-centered, concerned with the question: What will happen to me if I stop and help the wounded man? The Samaritan thinks of the other, he is concerned: What will happen to him if I don’t stop? A mission centered on ourselves is comfortable, but it pushes young people away. Could this be one of the roots of the vocational drought?
Rivers do not drink their water, trees do not eat their fruit, flowers offer their perfume. It seems that living for others is a rule of nature. It is also our task to give life in service. The emptier of ego I am, the more life of others can dwell in me. If availability is the face of the mother, protection is that of the father, the face of the religious is that of a full-time volunteer.
It is not that some people are selfish and others generous. We are selfish people who live centered on ourselves or selfish people who struggle to get out of ourselves. Spirituality in Jesus is moving from ego to love. It is living so that others may live well, renouncing being the center. It is so comfortable to be at the center. Living full of ego and empty of God, the star shines and the mission disappears. In the Fourth Eucharistic Prayer, we ask: “that we may no longer live for ourselves.” Let us not forget that to serve is the verb Jesus uses to describe the identity of the disciple.
Jesus gives the apostles authority to “cast out demons and heal the sick” (Mt 10:1). He entrusts them with the mission of giving life. He does not send them to sinners to convert them, but to the sick to heal them. Today there is a strong sensitivity to victims; we see it in volunteer work and NGOs. Caring for the suffering is overcoming the obsession with sin. We run the risk of being far from what interests people.
Spirituality often forms us in religious practices rather than in sensitivity to suffering. Hence the danger of turning the Gospel into beautiful words that we store in our brains without letting them touch our lives. Let us pause to consider some examples of how to live the Gospel:
Your missionary life does not sell bread; it is yeast, salt that is lost in giving flavor. Mission is humility, not protagonism. Perhaps we have the humility to serve the poor at table (with a certain protagonism). But do we have enough humility to sit at table with them (in greater equality)?
Those who suffer need help. Those who help are in a position of superiority over those who are helped, who feel weaker than those who help them. In a relationship of help, I give something that the other person needs. In a relationship of friendship, I give myself. Giving something does not complicate my life. A relationship of love does not know how far it can go (a mother with her child). Love for the poor leads me to make their life my
own. Those who receive and give affection can touch the root of suffering. It is touched from below, from the needy, by sharing their feelings, as Jesus did. Those who make their pain their own bring relief to those who suffer. This is what God does: he enters into the pain of human beings. This is mercy, as a precious contribution of consecrated life in the history of humanity. A world without compassion is not livable for human beings.
Jesus, “friend of tax collectors.” How can we talk about divorcees and homosexuals without having a divorced or homosexual friend or brother? Friendship with the poor makes us like Jesus. Missionaries must have at least one poor person as a friend in order to live evangelical mercy.
Do we believe in Jesus, or do we believe like Jesus? Do we have faith in Jesus, or do we have the faith of Jesus? If I believe like Jesus, I am the Gospel incarnate. Are we people of religion or of faith? There may be a lot of religion and little faith. We cannot take it for granted that all religious people are believers. Living as a consecrated person in mission is not easy, because it means not simply talking about the Gospel, but embodying it — living it, not just preaching it. That is the only way to help others so that their lives may become Gospel. The messenger has authority only when he identifies with the message. To remain consistent with what we proclaim, the best remedy is contact with children, young people, and simple people.
Surely we religious appear honest, hardworking, organized, austere, available, helpful, and pious, but perhaps without much passion for the Gospel, and even lacking in humanity and enthusiasm. We can live as chosen ones, privileged, closed in on ourselves. And Jesus expects from you and me faith, enthusiasm, and passion, because to live passionately is to be holy. Holiness is not passion extinguished; it is passion converted.
We like to climb; God likes to descend: into a womb, a manger, a cross. In the Gospel there are three cursed verbs: to possess, to climb, to command. Jesus proposes three blessed ones: to share, to descend, to serve. To get closer to Jesus, Bartimaeus throws away his cloak (his security). We have cloaks that give us security, and we cannot throw them away to get closer to him: our exclusive ideas and truths, prestige and prominence, comforts and refuge in status.
3. Faithful and Creative Disciples
What are we being faithful to, the past or what God wants today? Does fidelity to tradition lead us to worship ashes or to be fire? Society today has less need for our works. But do we offer it what it needs most? To be different people, with other values, who do not seek well-being, money, career, fame, security, consumption, power, prestige, or honor. Society needs a voice of the Spirit, pointing to another way of life in people who transmit the energy of the Gospel. People expect us to communicate our experience of God. Society needs healthy religious, men and women of God, passionate about Jesus, women and men of faith, and faith means living the Gospel.
We live in a world that needs to be infected by our identity card: fraternity. We religious are here to be a family of brothers and sisters who listen to the Word of God and put it into practice. But the problem is that we live attached to a worldly spirituality, being more officials of the sacred and less witnesses of Jesus, more teachers and less disciples,
more leaders and less brothers and sisters. If Jesus asks us to “be in the world without being of the world,” that does not mean fleeing from the world; it implies incarnating the Gospel. It means feeling called to transform life according to God’s heart. To do this, we must discover God in humanity, knowing that the world is secular and does not show us God; it is our faith that discovers God in the world. If we contemplate things from God’s perspective with a believer’s sensitivity, everything is a sacrament, and everything reveals God.
Consecrated for the mission, with a well-defined identity and well-nourished motivation, we want to strengthen our identity. We are disciples-brothers and missionaries-witnesses. The gospel that people around us read most is our own life. That is why, when we speak, we must also be more disciples than teachers. There is no mission without disciplesbrothers and missionaries-witnesses. If a missionary is not a witness, he deceives himself. My life is my message; mission is not about talking, but about being the Word. One can go to another country, but if he is not a witness, he is not a missionary. He can go on a temporary safari and leave the mission without ever having arrived. Three elements are essential in the life of a missionary: experience of relationship with Christ, from which a message springs forth, with the language of service.
Mission is what I am and what I do from Jesus and for the good of others. It takes the whole tree to make fruit; to evangelize, it takes all that I am. Hence, we do not have a mission; we are mission, we are from Another and for others. We live with Jesus in our hearts so that he may enter the hearts of others, not just through the church door. If we
do not feel the Gospel as good news, it is because we have made it a moral code. Mary hurries to visit Elizabeth. She is the monstrance in the Corpus Christi procession: Mary with God inside. She is in no hurry, bringing service and joy. That is our mission: to walk with God within us, to be bearers of God, bringing service and joy.
The life of a missionary is like the flame before the tabernacle: it reminds us of Jesus’ presence. Mission offers a way of understanding life from the Gospel. In order to live together, human beings need economics, politics, culture, ethics, and religion. Mission means shaping all of that according to the Gospel. But we must begin with ourselves, being supportive, compassionate, helpful, open to the mystery, human, brothers and sisters. In the Gospel there are several missionary commands: “Make disciples of me” (Mt 28:18ff). “Be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). “Love one another” (Jn 15), “Be Samaritans,” “Go and do likewise” (Lk 10), “You are all brothers” (Mt 23:8).
Living discipleship creates equality between priests and brothers, men and women, clergy and laity. All are brothers. But many clergy show little concern for being disciples. They place their identity in their ministry and forget their baptism. They feel different from others because they identify with their role, status, and priestly dignity. This not only hinders fraternal life but also conceals their own weakness. From this stem the various forms of abuse within the Church. It seems that the most difficult thing in the Church is for its representatives to live the Gospel.
Our mission is to be disciples in order to make disciples. The religious community is a family of disciples who listen to the Word and put it into practice. A community is a school of discipleship. But we run the risk of living a functional rather than a personal following, more in the task than in the relationship. We identify with what we do. When we introduce ourselves to a new group, we usually say, “My name is… and I work at…” I define myself by what I do — often a display of peacock feathers. We come to believe that we are what we do. This only reinforces the tendency to make ourselves the protagonists in the mission.
Living this way, we will be like firefighters who go to put out a fire, and when they arrive, they realize that their tanks are empty. Are we in God’s things or are we in God? Are we functionaries, or are we witnesses? Paul invites us to build our identity in Jesus with the hymn of Phil 2:6-11. Our identity is always inward and downward.
4. Our Life Changes if Jesus Is in It
Consecrated life in mission suffers from evangelical anemia. Hence the irrelevance and lack of vocations. It is not a question of growing in numbers, because that could be a repetition of the same thing. Cancer cells also grow. We suffer from evangelical anemia because little blood reaches the heart, and we fall into mediocrity, satisfied with a light life. In the face of Jesus’ words, we remain as we are. This also happens to very religious people. Without passion and enthusiasm, we remain as we are, stagnant, settled, joyless. We take refuge in religious practices and become consumers of sacred things that give
us security. Hence a light consecrated life in prayer, community, and mission centered on works. We can fall into practical atheism, when what we think and what we do are not incarnations of the Word.
My life changes if Jesus is in it. Change does not mean abandoning something; it means embracing something: the life of God. There is faith in life if there is discipleship, and there is discipleship if there is an encounter with Jesus. Faith is not believing that God exists; even demons believe that. Faith is living the Gospel. It is looking at the world and speaking about the things of the world from God, from the Gospel. We live with the danger of being ideologues rather than witnesses. Most believers have beliefs; they are practitioners. Religious practices give us security, but they do not always help us to live the Gospel.
It is proper to religious to love and pray. What we do in mission must be a reflection of prayer and tenderness. We are human beings passionate about Jesus, human fraternity, and the poor. Everything else is commentary, secondary. In mission, the poor are not the only ones, but they are the first.
The problem for faith is not recognizing that Jesus is the Son of God, it is recognizing that the Son of God is Jesus, man, incarnate, weak, like everyone else. We discover God in the generosity of the giver, and it is difficult to see him in the dignity of the one who asks. It is in weakness that God becomes incarnate. With a believing sensitivity, we can discover God in the dignity of the one who asks and in the generosity of the one who gives. The same God who extends his hand in the dignity of the one who asks, extends it in the generosity of the one who gives.
Bulletin n. 188, 2025 Fr. Carlos del Valle, SVDTo Save the World, God
Perhaps we live by fracturing the Gospel when we separate the so-called spiritual— those in the temple—from those committed to society. This is the disincarnation of the Word. Spirituality is not so much speaking about God as it is speaking from God. Clerical sin begins when one preaches the Gospel without first having prayed it. Are we truly specialists in the experience of God and in sharing that experience with others? If not, we are salt that has lost its flavor, useless in the face of society’s challenges. To be a true specialist in the experience of God, our encounter with Jesus must be like fire and wood: so united that the wood becomes burning flame.
A mediocre life implies partial commitment, individualism, consumerism, and the search for emotional spaces that compensate for loneliness, without hope. Without the Gospel, we end up in hedonism, doing what we like and selling superficialities. Attachment to possessions hardens the heart. Ask yourself, not only what you do with your money, but what your money has done to you. Does it make you more human? The branches are not attentive to the fruit, but to their union with the vine. And if you live a settled life, think that the wounded bird cannot fly, but neither can the bird that clings to a branch.
To be a disciple is to be like an oyster, tasked with seeking God until it becomes a pearl for others. Jesus is passionate about what the Father desires. Without passion for God, life becomes mere routine. We need vitamins, not seasonings: nourishment for the spirit, not just pleasures for the palate. In our way of life, falling in love is a vital vitamin—an antidote to the disease of becoming a civil servant, on mission like Pilate in the Creed.
Moses comes down from Sinai with the stone tablets under his arm. The apostles leave the Upper Room with the Spirit in their hearts. We need the Spirit to evangelize our desires, our sensibilities, not just our ideas. When Jesus comes into your life, he changes your desires. That is why prayer is not a search for a state of mind; it is an act of faith. I do not pray to feel good, but to train my faith, to make it stronger. To pray is to love, to welcome Jesus, so that his desires and tastes may enter into me. Prayer is not for thinking about God or feeling God (emotions), but for nourishing our desire for God. In the practice of lectio divina, we welcome light and strength from the Word, by doing exegesis more on our own lives than on the Word. Otherwise, we will suffer from spiritual anemia, losing our passion for Jesus. And we will be left with the refuge of pietism, which gives peace of mind and feeds the feeling of having fulfilled our duty.
What is important in mission is the life of others, the suffering of others. “I have compassion for the crowd”, says Jesus (Mk 8:2). These are not ideas, they are feelings. We have clear ideas, but we anesthetize our feelings. Ideas do not change lives. The greatness of the Gospel lies in Jesus’ sensitivity. It is not just a matter of evangelizing our ideas, but our sensitivity. A sensitivity evangelized in the disciple leads to responsibility for the lives of others. In the Samaritan, Jesus shows his sensitivity, which leads him to care. He shows his humanity in his sensitivity to the suffering of the person in need. And he embodies tenderness, the best expression of sensitivity. A believing sensitivity leads to a good view of my weaknesses and those of others. The opposite is indifference, hardness of heart, with an aggressive gaze.
Religious people are experts in sensitivity, in attention to the simple who spread the Gospel. If you manage to see the good in others, you are pure of heart. Try to look at
others with joy and mercy. Cultivate that gaze of blessing. Pray that those who live in suffering and poverty may live in blessing.
What is blessing for you? Success, climbing the social ladder, the affection of many, fulfilled desires? That would be a blessing for yourself, far from the Beatitudes. But blessing does not always imply a life without suffering. We owe the best to pain; it leads us to love. A mother can say that the best thing in her life has been the fruit of pain. There is no true love that does not mature on a cross.
Jesus takes on human nature and the human condition, weakness. He does not become generically human; he becomes a concretely weak man (Phil 2:6-11). In the face of God’s weakness, there are no words, only the passion to love as He does. In Christian life, weakness is good news; it leads us to be together, to need others, it brings us closer to the poor, it evangelizes us. In mission, do we fear weakness or power? “I have no gold or silver, but I give you what I have...” (Acts 3:1-10). The problem arises when I do have gold, as support in the mission, and I lack the other.
It is difficult to feel needy. We are more comfortable giving than receiving, more willing to offer help than to ask for it, to teach rather than to learn. Yet, allowing ourselves to be helped requires a higher spiritual maturity than helping. Without weakness, there is no human person—and no God-with-us. God does not simply say to you, “I love you”; he says, “I love you in your weakness.” The place where one can feel most secure is always in God’s mercy. The precious pearl is born of pain, if the oyster is wounded. If it is not wounded, it cannot produce pearls, which are healed wounds. In my mission, I have especially sensed this in many poor women, where the holiness of suffering carries a deeper logic than the holiness of virtue. Bonhoeffer tells us: “We must learn to consider people less for what they do or do not do, and more for what they suffer.”