Saturday 1st Week of Lent
Jubilee for Religious
St. Agnes Church
March 15, 2025
Jubilee of Hope
Let’s begin with statistics. The Archdiocese of Baltimore is blessed with 27 communities of women and 17 communities of men. This year we honor 40 jubilarians across the Archdiocese – 19 of whom are celebrating 70, 75, or 80 years of profession. Our youngest jubilarians celebrate 25 years and our senior-most jubilarians celebrate 80 years of profession. Altogether you, our jubilarians, represent 1,365 years of ministry in the Church, or to put it another way, more than a millennium and a third. On behalf of the whole People of God in this, the nation’s Premier See, I offer you heartfelt gratitude for the witness of your life and service.
This year’s celebration takes place during the Jubilee of Hope, a year set aside by Pope Francis to celebrate the hope we share in Christ Jesus. You, our jubilarians, and indeed of all the consecrated, are witnesses of hope. For listening to the Word of God and sharing in the Church’s sacramental life, you heard the call to leave all things behind so as to follow Christ unreservedly. In the grace of the Holy Spirit, your hearts were filled with a “hope that does not disappoint”, with a hope that only grows stronger with the passage of years.
A Call to Renewed Hope
Even as the Jubilee of Hope calls all of us a renewal of hope, so too, today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel calls you, in a particular way, to be renewed in hope, indeed, to be those witnesses to hope the world needs. Here we meet the Lord who speaks to our hearts, insisting, again and again, that we widen the horizons of our love: “You have heard it said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be children of your heavenly Father.” The Lord goes on to say that if we love only those who love us in return, we are no better than tax collectors or unbelievers. And Jesus caps it all off by saying, “So be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
What does the Lord mean when he tells us to be “perfect” like his Father? Isn’t he calling on us to love others just as God loves us, and to extend that same love to all those whom we encounter? And how is it that God loves the whole of humanity & each person in particular? The Lord loves them unconditionally, the way the sun illumines the world. His love shines on the good and the bad, the just and the unjust, whether or not they love him in return or believe in him for that matter. That is “the height and depth, breadth and length of God’s love” (Eph 3:18) revealed in Christ, and it is that sort of love that those in consecrated life are to exemplify.
Unless we have the virtue of hope, this Gospel demand may seem illusory. But when, through a life of prayer and contemplation, our hearts are fixed on Christ seated at God’s right hand, we realize that religious consecration offers the freedom to love unconditionally, a love that we especially strive to share with those on the margins of society. By your openness to the gifts the Spirit bestows, you teach all of us that our task as Christians is not to manufacture altruistic love, but rather to radiate from deep within ourselves the love of Christ, a love as brilliant and beautiful as the sun that lights up the whole of creation.
Evangelical Counsels
The evangelical counsels you profess – poverty, chastity, and obedience – are indeed a sign of hope for the whole People of God, including laity of every walk of life and those of us who serve as clergy. For one does not renounce the goods of this world, or the beauty of marital intimacy, or submit to the will of another – unless, believing and hoping, one has found a greater love, a more beautiful love, an all-encompassing love, worth more than everything one has or anything one might want to do. As St. Thérèse of Lisieux said so simply and profoundly, “At last, I have found my vocation: My vocation is love.”
You who are in consecrated life know far better than I that you do not live in a rarified atmosphere. You breathe the same air in solidarity with all humanity. You experience many of the struggles as do the rest of us. Yet, by your prayer and the support you offer one another in community, you continually set your sights on that greater love which all of us are called to share in. You contemplate it, not as an idea or an ideal, but as a way of life.
Fixing your eyes on this greatest of all loves you are able to see human suffering and weakness more clearly than most. Far from insulating yourselves from those realities, you immerse yourselves in them – healing the sick, ministering to the poor, educating the young, serving the elderly, women in crisis, the immigrant, the imprisoned, and much, much more. But you do not serve those in need with a cold bureaucratic manner, as if you were merely conducting a program of social betterment. On the contrary, you strive to be perfect like the heavenly Father by seeing those you serve with the eyes of God, by participating in the vision that God has for each and every life, by sharing with others the love God has for each person without exception.
What This Means to the Rest of Us
As I look at the range of ministries in the Archdiocese that you provide, I can only marvel at your service of the Church and the wider community. What if we added up not only the years of ministry of our jubilarians but indeed tried to monetize the value of their services? It would be enough to retire the national debt! But that’s not the true measure. The real beauty and worth of your ministry is that by your way of life, you are saying to rest of us, “Aim higher, friend, aim higher!” Make it the goal, the project of your life, to love as the heavenly Father loves.
This is what you have done and this is what you are doing as witnesses of hope. And this is what we celebrate most fittingly as we enter into the mystery of Christ’s self-giving love offered on the altar of the Cross. Thank you! And may God bless you and keep you always in his love!