"Refiner's fire and fullers' alkali"
World Day for Consecrated Life,
Cobh
2 February 2025
My friends,
If offered time to refresh your memory of the outstanding women and men religious you were deeply influenced and inspired by – a few would stand out. All the while in these communities there were countless others whose life of generous and humble service went on, often unnoticed and taken for granted. Many religious men and women today feel a strong sense of hurt due to the ingratitude and criticism from a significant minority.
No one denies the harsh treatment that some were subjected to by some. Great efforts have been made to acknowledge the hurt caused and seek healing and new hope. We pray that work will continue.
In October 2023 Pope Francis appointed Sr. Simona Brambilla – a Consolata Missionary, a Secretary of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. This is the first woman to be appointed to this position. She trained as a nurse before entering the Consolata Missionaries. She worked on the missions in Mozambique, and she holds a doctorate from the Institute of Religious Psychology at the Gregorian University, Rome. In a wide-ranging recent interview that she gave – she offers some thoughts and reflections that all of us can find uplifting and encouraging.
Speaking at a conference of religious from all over the world, she speaks of consecrated life a pluriform, polychromatic and polyphonic – which she adds circulates in the world, runs through its deep veins, inhabits its wounds, fractures, deaths but also its births and resurrections.
From that conference, religious from all over the world returned home with a ‘mandate’ to be a sign of peace, reconciliation and hope, a hope that is rooted in the living rock of the love of God. By which she means “the humble, tenacious, loving and often very small and fragile presence of men and women animated by the Gospel in contexts of fracture, of crisis, of conflict, of extreme geographical and existential situations. These are experiences of extraordinary beauty, the beauty of the Gospel: meek and powerful, humble and bold, gentle and rocky.”
While she is visionary and hopeful, she is also realistic as she acknowledges the decreasing numbers and the fear, perplexity and nostalgia it generates.
The decrease in strength, the increase in average age, the economic crisis, the loss of a prestigious and powerful image, the rethinking of mission sometimes confusion about the identity and meaning of Consecrated Life constitute critical and blessed occasions to deepen the meaning of vocation and mission, to return not to the past but to the origins to the very humble and fiery centre of our vocation.
This experience of fragility is salutary to us. It helps to heal us from claims of self-sufficiency and rediscover the beauty of walking together, of needing each other.
This feast day of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple concentrates our prayer and reflection on the declaration of Simeon and Anna that this child would be a Light for revelation of to the Gentiles. It is to the radiation of that light that all in consecrated life give of themselves in word, deed and silence. Taking vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to give their all – makes their giving radical and incredible to many. Through their fidelity they subject their lives to the Refiner’s fire and fullers’ alkali of God’s love – that through the refinement of their gifts and the purity of their intention Gods love is made manifest in the Church and to the world.
For such witness to the love of God we are truly thankful.
