Year of the consecrated life

Purify my heart, let me be as gold and precious silver.
Purify my heart, let me be as gold, pure gold.

Refiner's fire, my heart's one desire is to be holy, set apart for You, Lord.
I choose to be holy, set apart for You, my Master, ready to do Your will.

Purify my heart, cleanse me from within and make me holy.
Purify my heart, cleanse me from my sin, deep within. 
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IvXA0yRDwY)

Upon reflection on the consecrated life, the theme chosen by the Church for this year, it came to my mind this song that was sang so often by a group of young Christian singers whom I used to attend to when I lived in Canada.  The lyrics of this song touches the essence of how a consecrated life should be lived; what it means to be consecrated and the process to follow for all those who enter the Religious Life.

Set apart for You, Lord - The Jews set apart for the Lord the offerings of the first fruits of the harvest and every male firstlings among the livestock. Everything that opened the womb was set apart for the Lord as an act of thanksgiving; every firstborn son was offered to the Lord and presented at the Temple to be redeemed in exchange for a sacrificial offering, which for the wealthy was an ox, for the less affluent a lamb or kid and for the poor, as it was in the case of Jesus, a pair of turtledoves or pigeons.

"To Consecrate" an object means to remove it from ordinary use and to set it aside and reserve it for a particular and exclusive purpose. When a chalice or another object is consecrated, it is reserved or kept for a sacred use, in the case of the chalice, the Eucharistic celebration.

It is in this sense how we should interpret the "fuga mundi" (flight from the world) of the religious in the Middle Ages. It was not a matter of escaping from the world so as not to be "contaminated" by it, but to be called to a Mission, to depart from the ordinary way of life and to live in a challenging way.

Inside a forest we cannot see the forest, we only see trees; in order to see the forest we need to go out of it.  The consecrated separates himself from the world in order to understand it better, and contribute to it in a particular way; so he departs from the world and does not live an ordinary life in order to dedicate himself to the world in an extraordinary way.  He withdraws from his own little world to give of himself to the entire world.  He puts aside his cozy and comfortable life, to be mindful of the lives of others especially of those in need..

Purify my heart, let me be as gold, pure gold - I entered the Consolata Missionaries when I was ten years old, my main reason for joining was my search for adventure; to know the world, and in particular Africa.  For this reason I strongly refused to enter the seminary of the diocese in the beginning. Once in the seminary, however,  I found out that each of my colleagues had also their own peculiar reasons to be there; I remember what drew one of my classmates was the thought that he would be playing soccer every day. 

With the passing of time and the formation we received, these childish reasons were refined and purified.  It was this that our founder, Blessed Joseph Allamano, had in mind when he counselled the first missionaries to "do goodness in a good way". Jesus denounced the hypocrites and the Pharisees not because they did not comply with the law of fasting, praying and practicing charity but because they did the right thing for the wrong reason.

Hypocrisy is a constant threat to the religious; therefore there is a need for a continuous purification of our purposes. The heart is what drives everything in our body; it is the center of motion, emotions and motivations and for this reason, we need a heart that is pure, cleansed of all false intentions.  Purified and cleansed internally of all our sins, as the song says because the evil is within us not outside of us.

Refiner's fire, my heart's one desire is to be holy - The objective of being pure as gold is achieved by fire; not the kind of fire that devours and destroys but the kind that refines.  It is the fire that purges all impurities and appraises the gold; the stronger the fire the purer the gold.

Saint Francis of Assisi would roll over naked in the snow to overcome temptations of impurity and some other saints would self-flagellate.  It is not necessary to go in search of unnatural ways to atone for our sins since life itself presents us with enough situations where we can atone naturally, by simply carrying our cross every day (Lk.9:23). For example, when I was in Ethiopia there came a time when I did not eat for 5 days and another for 7 days; I consider this much easier than to eat what is strictly necessary for day to day without giving in to gluttony when I am at table.

The only aspiration of the religious is to be holy as God is holy (Lev.19:2); this is the objective of the continuous purification of motives and intentions, a purification carried out by the fire of the Holy Spirit.  If we are docile to the Spirit, like the clay is in the hands of the potter, His fire will purify our thoughts, our intentions, our motivations, even the subconscious impulses of instinct.

Holiness is found when sin is scrutinized. When we work hard in our life to look for defects, sins and imperfections then we are on the road to holiness. In this regard, St. Francis of Assisi who was already regarded as holy by all who knew him, used to say of himself that he was a great sinner.

Ready to do Your will - Our founder used to say "First the saints then the missionaries"; to be holy refers to our essence, what we are called to be, our vocation; to be missionaries refer to our existence, what we are called to do, our way of living and serving in the world.

It is only after we purify our essence, our being, that our existence, how we live and act in the world, is pure.  We are only truly ready to do God's will when we are holy; when our whole being surrenders to the will of God. This is only possible when we deny ourselves (Lk. 9:23) so that we can say, like St Paul, "it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me"(Gal. 2:20). It is only when Christ lives in us that we are truly Christian, and empowered to continue in the here and now the work that Jesus began in Israel some 2,000 years ago.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC