Bishop Paul Bui van Doc, Bishop of May Tho, Vietnam concelebrated the occasion. PHOTO: Robert Hiini
Over two weeks, Archdiocese of Perth Communications and Media Manager James Parker writes about Archbishop Timothy Costelloe’s keynote address entitled ‘Religious Life Today – A Gospel Path which calls to us’ which he delivered to religious men and women from across the Archdiocese of Perth.
“If and how are we open to being challenged by the Gospel?” asked Pope Francis in his Apostolic Letter to all consecrated people at the start of the Year of Consecrated Life.
Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB rose to respond to this question as he delivered a keynote address last week entitled ‘Religious Life Today – A Gospel Path which calls to us’ at Loreto Primary School in Nedlands.
The Archbishop began by reflecting on “how faithful or otherwise the Church has been” to the Second Vatican Council in the intervening fifty years.
He recalled the dramatic changes to the liturgy and priests’ responses to “having permission to celebrate the Mass in English”, as well as women religious in particular believing it was “more appropriate… to wear secular dress”.
“I can’t help thinking,” said the Archbishop, “that it will be a sign of maturity for the Church when the legitimacy of the different decisions made by individual religious congregations in this matter of dress is recognised and respected and we cease judging each other on the basis of what we wear.”
Archbishop Costelloe alluded to St John Paul II’s choice of the Transfiguration upon which the Polish Pontiff based his 1994 Apostolic Exhortation on Religious Life, quoting him as writing: “the vocation to the consecrated life is, despite its renunciations and trials, and indeed because of them, a path of light over which the Redeemer keeps constant watch: “Rise and have no fear.”
Underpinned with a constant tone of encouragement, Archbishop Costelloe challenged religious to “return to our origins and to the charism of our founders… to the original divine inspiration which gave rise to our congregations in the first place”.
“This is not an easy task,” he pointed out, but went on to state that “it is a task in which the whole Church must constantly engage”.
“If Religious are to wake anyone else up we must first wake up each other so that we can then wake up the community of the Lord’s disciples, of which we, and the bishops, and the clergy, and the laity are all equally a part.”
The Archbishop explained that this venture would mean “acting boldly, imaginatively, innovatively and courageously… doing this within the community of disciples, the Church”. It would mean “being called to go to the margins, the peripheries… as disciples of Jesus, and members of his Church”.
Archbishop Costelloe then spoke of a “three-fold fidelity in theology which must become a three-fold fidelity in life”: fidelity to what God has done through sending his Son, which requires constant renewal in the image of the Jesus of the Gospels; fidelity to the ways in which, over the centuries, the Holy Spirit has led the Church into an ever deeper appreciation of the riches to be found in the mystery of Christ; and fidelity “to the present reality in which we find ourselves”.
The Archbishop went on to say that this would include, “our need to find new and effective ways to share the Good News of the Lord with the people of our own time. And this is the task of every baptised person, not just religious”.
“What really lies at the heart of the founder’s dream for us?” he posed, inviting religious to ask not only “what should we be doing?” but more fundamentally “what are we called to be?”
Reflecting on the heart of the motivation of different founders, Archbishop Costelloe then shared that “the call to fidelity to our founders is ultimately for us a call to a radical and uncompromising fidelity to Jesus”, stating that “it is this which will wake up the world as Pope Francis is calling us to do”.
After proposing that individual religious reflect on their own unique and particular dimension within their community and the whole people of God, the Archbishop suggested that religious “be faithful” to “the story of our journey as a religious family in the Church.”
“In spite of human weakness, the story of our congregations will be primarily,” he said, “a story of great fidelity to the Lord.
“The call to renewal is not a call to bypass our history and simply go back to our origins: rather it is a call to read the remarkable story of our Spirit-guided history in the light of our origins”, identifying “under the guidance of God’s Spirit the future to which God is leading us.”
Speaking of the present day realities within religious life, the Archbishop remarked that “we have to understand the nature of the world, the society and the Church in which we live today.
“We religious have to understand the “language” of the world in which we live if we are to have any hope of sharing with them the gospel they so desperately need to hear.
“The “languages” of today’s society, and there are many of them, are complex.
“As Christians we are not called to embody or embrace all these things uncritically, but nor are we called to dismiss them out of hand. Rather we are called to discern, in the light of the gospel, what is of value.
“It is really a question of inculturation… a prophetic task,” which “calls us to radical fidelity and humility. It must truly be the Gospel culture and not a distorted version of it, which we present to others.”
To achieve all this, Archbishop Costelloe said, “we will not be a challenge to our own culture if we are not a challenge to each other. We will not be a sign of the gospel of life to the world around us if we are not a sign of gospel life to each other. We will not be able to purify and perfect our society, as John Paul puts it, if we are not a purifying and perfecting influence on each other”.
As he ended the first half of his address, the Archbishop reminded those present that “we are being asked to be as open and attentive as we can to the power and wisdom of God’s Spirit… to make a new beginning – to set out on a new journey.
““Arise and have no fear,” the Lord is saying to us.”