Look out for the Lord in disguise

By Kaelanne Jordan

mediarelations.camsel@catholictt.org

To recognise the gift of Simeon and Anna, in their capacity to see God amid the ordinariness of the day, is the gift needed today for consecrated life (also known as religious life).

This is the call for all Christians, but religious life must be the witness to the whole Church, said Archbishop Jason Gordon in his homily for World Day of Consecrated Life, celebrated annually on the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, Thursday, February 2.

The work of religious life is not just merely fulfilling a ministry or social work. “It’s not just all the great things being accomplished on a daily basis, it is being exposed every day to see the Lord in which ever disguise He comes,” Archbishop Gordon said.

He drew the example of Simeon and Anna, who, in their closeness to God, had the ability to see what others could not see. “Everyone else would have seen children and parents coming in. What they saw was different. They saw the Lord entering the sanctuary,” the Archbishop explained.

He spoke of the “wonderful characters” and “amazing descriptions” from the “stunning prophesy” of Malachi which speaks of the Lord’s return to the temple.

“I mean nobody gets a description like Anna. You know a woman well on in years, her days of girlhood over…she had been married for seven years before becoming a widow….another wonderful description. She dedicated herself day and night to pray. And that’s the reason or connection with consecrated life,” Archbishop Gordon said.

He emphasised not only did Anna devote her life to God, but she also kept looking out for the Lord. “And many times, I know you feel you’ve toiled and laboured in vain. You doing the same thing day after day, year after year. They ask you to do this and so you doing it, and you do your best, but Anna didn’t just do her best, Anna believed that she was seeing the day when Israel will be revealed.”

Archbishop Gordon commented that Mother Teresa, now St Teresa of Kolkata, spoke of Jesus appearing in the distressed and disguise of the poor. In so many ways, He comes to us on a daily basis, the Archbishop said.

He asserted that the celebration of consecrated life in the “wonderful theme” of Building Community, Inclusivity, and Dialogue, is really the heart of religious life. It is to the religious that faithful look to see how to build community in a time of individualism and fragmentation.

“How do we build and bring people together around a common theme and around a common motivation in our world where everyone wants to be a superstar and an individual working on their own. How do we do that?” the Archbishop questioned.

He underscored if religious life today is pointing somewhere, it is the recognition that we are living in a world where pelagianism is the dominant heresy.

“That’s the heresy that we could pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We can just try hard to find salvation on our own, that somehow, we can do things. That if you have these seven steps, the five this, and this four this….that somehow you’ll find your way to salvation….. There is no salvation without God,” Archbishop Gordon asserted. Unless the Lord builds a house, the labour is in vain.

Archbishop Gordon then invited the religious brothers and sisters to remember what was the impulse that brought them to religious life. “What’s stirring in your soul?”

He reminded it is the same God who called them to become a religious, is the same God who waits on them every single day, inviting them to open wide their hearts to Him.

Archbishop Gordon further beseeched the consecrated to “go deep” into the mystical traditions of the Dominicans, St Teresa, the Carmelites, the Holy Faith Sisters, the Franciscans, and the Holy Spirit to recognise the call of God.

Quoting Carl Renner’s philosophy that a time will come when the Church with either be mystical or not at all, Archbishop Gordon asserted, “and that time has come.”

If faithful do not have a mystical way to offer young people, “they not really interested in our dutiful way.”

To this end, the Archbishop called on the consecrated gathered to recognise the call of their hearts to the mystical way and that they all have treasures beyond measures.

“Let us bring these treasures out for this generation because this generation wants the treasures of the Church,” Archbishop Gordon said.