(ZENIT News / Vatican City, 05.12.2024).- On Thursday morning, December 5, Pope Francis received in audience – in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace –, the participants in the Meeting promoted by the Congregation of the Canonesses of the Holy Spirit in Sassia.
Here is an English translation of the Pontiff’s address, in which he reflected on an aspect of the vote of poverty.
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Excellency, Dear Sisters, Dear Brothers:
I welcome you in Peter’s House. I also greet the Director General of Rome’s “Santo Spirito in Sassia” Hospital, and the members of the General Administration to propose to all present and future Brothers — and Sisters – of the Order, an exciting life project. And what is the project? “To be dedicated primarily to the care and service of the poor.”
It is a project aligned with the reform that Innocent III stimulated in the religious life, and which was later crystalized in the new Mendicant Orders. An interest of the Pontiff that the Holy Spirit was able to guide, listening to several Saints such as Blessed Guido and Saint John of Mata, with whom he agreed at the dawn of his pontificate, being the driving forces of this project.
It is interesting how God’s plan macerates in the heart’s kitchen – and Nuns and Sisters know a lot about this –, and notes of taste and colour begin impregnating the rules of life, to then spread their perfume to the whole Church. And, among these notes, permit me to highlight three: communion, sine propio [without anything of one’s own, ndr] and service.
In your Rule the vow of poverty is expressed in a particular way: to live without anything of one’s own. This expression does not mean simply a forced sober and detached life, as the vow is defined today, but to understand that we are guests in God’s House, the House of the Trinity that welcomes us, sharing it with the poor that we are called to serve. In fact, in professing explicitly the three evangelical counsels, the first men religious talked of poverty as communion, assuming the example of the primitive Church in which “all who believed were together and had all things in common” (Acts 2:44).
Hence, fraternal life goes beyond sharing spaces, tasks, services; fraternal life is about making a donation of ourselves to God in our brother, a donation without reservations. Without anything of one’s own, left in the safe room of worldly securities, hidden in the cell, in the pocket or, worse yet, in the heart, because only from this freedom, without anything of one’s own, can we begin a project in which we advance together and of which we are an eschatological sign, the journey to where the Lord calls us, the journey to Heaven.
Which is a journey to God, driven by the Holy Spirit, which makes us followers of Jesus. And, when we speak of Jesus, let’s not forget that He did not come to be served, but to serve. That is our model. Our holiness will be in the measure in which we are able to make ourselves small and servants of all (cf. Matthew 23:10-11).
May Mary, favourite Daughter of the Father, Mother of God the Son and Spouse of the Holy Spirit, sustain you in this path to make your hearts and your Communities temples of the Trinity. May God bless you. Thank you very much.
