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Tribute to a congregation of great educators
At the beginning of this celebration, I would like to inject a brief personal note. I was one of the hundreds of thousands of Quebecers who were educated by your community. I have come here with a deep sense of gratitude. You were my first teachers at school: Sisters Marie-Lazare and Marie-Anne-Florence of blessed memory. I must say that the seeds of my own vocation were already sown then. In the Bible and the gospels, God gives us the seed to be nourished with intelligence, faith and courage. And aren’t these the same values and charisms of your great community? You are not just the witnesses or the players in the best of our past history. You are also the seed of the future in a society that, alas! all too often cannot see past the present. You are not the two of spades, but the ace of hearts. And so we thank God for what you have been, what you are now and what you will always be for us, your spiritual sons and daughters. Homily The closing of this summer camp is another seed that falls into the ground and dies. A seed of gospel fellowship. A seed of the inner life. Jesus withdrew to the mountain, and you to the secret garden of your community’s own mystery. A spiritual time away from the world, between two times of presence and cultural and apostolic tasks in this world. I would like to meditate with you for a moment on the two sides of this mountain. Have you noticed that there are no finished products in the Gospel? We are always being given new seeds! Once again, I’d like to inject a personal note that I hope will invite you to reflect on your own journey. The clergy, my spiritual family, is in the process of dying. My parish is also shrinking each year with the departure of elderly practising Catholics. Apparently, I am celebrating weddings and baptisms that do not lead anywhere. In addition, I am being asked to leave the diocesan headquarters where I have worked for 50 years, for new and understandable arrangements which I accept. And yet, I am living out my vocation more intensely than ever, and with great joy. I see my tasks, my ministries and my meetings as seeds that fall along the path, to use Jesus’ expression. He made even his failures into seeds of eternity. In the vast Roman empire of his time, Jesus was almost nothing. And it seemed that his sudden death would bring his mission to an abrupt end. He explained to the disciples on the road to Emmaus that they would also have to take that route. So do we, you and I both. Did he not say the same thing to his disciples on the mount of the transfiguration, similar to your mountain camp? We must leave this place, he said to Peter, who wanted to put up tents. We have to go back down to the city to live out death and resurrection, while never forgetting the unspeakable light of the great love that awaits us, as St. John of the Cross put it so well. But this Easter gospel is inextricably linked to the gospel of the seed as a permanent dynamic. Sow your seed, he tells us, and leave the rest to me. A little seed consisting of little words, little actions, little prayers, little things that he transforms into seeds of eternity, the other side of the hill. What is the connection, then, between the two sides of our vocation to spread the gospel? The poet-philosopher Bachelard once said that it is not in full light but on the edge of the shadows that a ray of light, refracted, reveals its secrets. At the beginning of the gospel of Luke, the angel says to Mary: “The power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow…” This is the mystical source of the vocation of Jesus and Mary, and also our own. More specifically, it is at the heart of your vocation as consecrated women, called to a mysterious fruitfulness in a world that is itself composed of darkness and light. In our deepest humanity, in the paths of our vocations, in the revelation of God, everything is a mixture of darkness and light. On the one hand, God has called us; on the other, it is our decision to become a religious or priest. Vocation is a mysterious call from God and a completely free decision on our part. This is a great mystery, with many paradoxes: virginity and fruitfulness; in the world but not of it; in the shadow of his wings, and in the service of the light of the world. Something that has always fascinated me about your community is the unique way you translate not only the paradoxes of the Gospel, but also those of the religious vocation. Yes, this unique way of combining the most concrete and the most spiritual tasks, the most secular and the most religious. Is this not one of the biggest challenges we face today? You have never ceased to be both a symbol and a concrete sign of the blending of the humble tasks of the shadow and the prophetic ones of the light. We see the seed of all this in your foundress. This touch that is both secular and religious, this realism of bread and this depth of soul, from one end of life to the other, in Rachel, Madeleine, Antoinette, Yvette, Alice and in all of you. There are some things that do not die, that transcend death with the seeds of resurrection at the time he wishes, and in the form of light he desires. Our vocations are in a time of shadow. You know its hidden secret, like the hidden treasure of the Kingdom in this world. The Spirit works in darkness, like the yeast hidden in the bread. Jesus came into the world by night. The Risen One emerged from the shadow of death. The salt of the earth can act only when it loses itself in earthly food. In your community, there are religious seculars and secular religious, Martha-Maries and Mary-Marthas. This is your unique, indefinable identity, and at the same time one of the most fundamental aspects of the gospel. Your community is both humble and great, like Jesus of Nazareth becoming Christ the Lord, like Mary of the manger and of the sublime Magnificat, like the modest apostles and the great St. Paul. This is what I have come to celebrate in you. But I am here only as an echo of Jesus of Nazareth, who must love you dearly because you have espoused his gospel so completely, salt of the earth, shadow of God hidden in secular life, light of the world, companion on all human journeys. From the perspective of your 40 to 50 years of religious life, stubborn hope and initiative, you remind us that, from the point of view of faith and the gospel, life is a long and difficult, but exciting, journey made up of darkness and light, death and resurrection, struggles for bread and moral strength. In short, a tremendous adventure leading to our final meeting with God. Like Jesus, to begin with, we took on roles that we felt were very important. We had the feeling that we were doing miracles. Then came the dark times, marked by our limitations and our trials, times that we were led to take a long hard look at ourselves and our vocation, in the middle of the desert of darkness, solitude and abandonment. A condition for meeting the hidden God and the closeness of being overshadowed by him, opening us up to the impossible, as the angel said to the Virgin Mary. A condition for new fruitfulness, for the unexpected and unhoped-for resurrections of which even the Son of Man does not know the hour or the place, or the means. Our Church, your community, we his disciples, we are all living in this darkness. Let us remind ourselves that it is the forerunner of a new Easter, a new Pentecost. The veil of the temple is torn to let the light of the Risen One into the world, in new and unknown ways. This is our wager of faith and hope. Nothing, absolutely nothing can separate us from this promise that has already been fulfilled in the Risen One, the first-born of a new heaven and a new earth, who draws us into his light. A light that is always present in the shadow of the mystery of our individual vocations, our most cherished plans. Jesus knew the failure of his plans. It is from the Other than the light of a different plan came. But his Resurrection did not erase the marks he left on the earth. He tells us: I need your 40 or 50 years of faithful service to make seeds of resurrection. And I still need you to continue to make your marks and sow your seeds of faith and humanity. If you are still there, it is because I still need you, he is telling you this morning. We still need you too. More for what you are than what you do. I hesitate to speak in these terms because, in your community, you have never separated the light of being from the path of doing, like the God of Jesus for one, and like the perennial flowers that even when they are transplanted several times constantly find a new vitality. Like these almost immortal plants, I hope that you will continue to blossom in grace, in prayer and in the beauty of your souls. The beauty of the living God that never grows old and gives us eternal youth, in the morning of the world as at the dawning of the Resurrection, as the Kingdom of God is still at work among us until the decisive meeting. Dear Sisters, you are so beautifully among those beings of grace through whom God never stops loving us, we your intellectual and spiritual sons and daughters. And for the rest, |
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photo : Université de Montréal |
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September 2006 |
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