Seminar on Vocational Communities, Credible Witnesses

Final Message

To live up to the vocation we have received is the invitation that has challenged us throughout the Seminar “Vocational Communities, credible witnesses”. We take away more questions than answers, but they are motivating questions that put us in a committed search, that make our hearts burn and open us to the action of the Spirit. The Word has been present every day at the center of our Assembly. It has also been manifested to us through different voices: the voice of Nadieska Almeida HC, of Ana María Díaz, a laywoman who works in Youth Ministry, of the members of the Commission of Vocational Culture of the CLAR, of the young people present on Saturday,  of the sisters, brothers, lay men and women in the life groups, and of the voices and faces of the most vulnerable and suffering who attend to Religious Life in Santiago de Chile, with whom we meet with a contemplative gaze. Voices which were entertained, which interwove the s “Vocation Communities, Credible Witnesses to Jesus”: vocation that enchants 2 conversations in the Spirit and brought to light the intuitions of the Divine Ruah among us.

We have heard a strong exhortation to “Leave no one out in the open.” Our communities are called to sustain in time of crisis, to embrace the humanity and vulnerability of the other, instead of pursuing their weakness and exposing it. We are called to tiredness without tension which gives others the possibility to rest. It is about mutual care to build a community based on a relational culture that humanizes us. A community which becomes the place of tenderness.

Why are our religious communities sometimes unattractive to today’s youth? We probably need communities that take more risks for the Kingdom, that go against the tide in a radical way for the Gospel, that do not clip the wings of the new generations, which know how to combine personal charisms with institutional charisms to enrich life, that are able to let go of the old paradigms that prevent each person from being himself and are determined to go to “Jerusalem” with Jesus, assuming all the consequences.

Possibly Religious Life has asked, like the rich young man: what does it need? But the question today is: What is left over? We have too many unsustainable community structures for current times, training schemes which aim more to introduce the trainees into “our mold” and not listen to what they are willing to live; the privileges granted, the burden of a still deeply rooted clericalism, which also permeated Consecrated Life, the suspicious look at the new generations and the current culture, the paralysis caused by fears, lukewarmness, a comfortable life without risks, the infantilism imposed on initial formation, power struggles, competitions and everything that distances us from the vulnerable of the earth.

We need to return to the GOSPEL and touch, like Bartimaeus, the deepest desires of our hearts and that of young people to recover Jesus, the vocation that enchants. The Spirit impels us to expose ourselves to the light of noonday, like the Samaritan Woman, where the shadows recede, and everything is illuminated: the eternal instant of God’s Mercy. Here is the origin of every vocation. We are called to embody God’s compassion in our world in a radical way, for vocation is not about something, but about EVERYTHING. It is an existential experience, a totalizing call. For this reason, all pastoral care must be vocational, it is a question of all stages of life. Each person, according to his or her moment in life, needs to encounter Jesus in a personal way. Are we really fostering experiences of personal encounter with Jesus? Or are we announcing ourselves, our institutions, our founders?

Vocational accompaniment throughout life must generate processes of healing, freedom, evangelization, sisterhood/fraternity and historical commitment. Many young people are wounded and cry out for a close presence that knows how to listen, understand without judgment, contain and reach out to lift. A presence that trusts them and proposes to them a way of living in freedom, authenticity, autonomy and service. This is the essence of youth vocation ministry and accompaniment in initial formation in Religious Life.

Our communities will be credible witnesses when they are imbued with humanity and at the center is Jesus and his Kingdom, where acceptance of vulnerability, diversity, listening, care, evangelical friendship and prophetism prevail. We will be more credible in our diverse world when we open ourselves to walking and working with others, making the synodal journey, weaving inter-congregationality, and, above all, as young people invited us when they spoke to us of their wounds and their deep pains: may every religious, every religious be a bridge of love!

Participants in the Vocational Culture Seminar

 Santiago, Chile, October 10 to 13, 2024