2015 The Year of Consecrated Life proclaimed by the Holy Father, Pope Francis I has

three aims: to look to the past with gratitude, to live the present with Passion and
embrace the future with hope. These essentially have to do with history and
recollection. History, because they have to do with the past, present and future and a
recollection because they have to do with the charism and the life of every Institute.
This year is therefore a wonderful opportunity to live our experiences of God from
the perspective of the varieties of gifts given to the Church through our religious
Institutes.

This will call us to:

1. make Sacrifices in the face of Persecution;
2. answer God‘s call wholeheartedly;
3. give up all so that God will give you all;
4. life of personal witnessing;
5. Faithfulness to the Charism of our Institutes;
6. Let us be people of Prayer. We are, therefore, called
first of all to BE Consecrated Persons and then we can
work or act as consecrated persons.

NT: Common Life

Acts 2: 4l-47
So those who received his word [Peter's] were baptized; and there were added
that day about three thousand souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles'
teaching and fellowship [communal life], to the breaking of bread and the
prayers.... [A]ll who believed were together and had all things in common; and
they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had
need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their
homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and
having favour with all the people.
Acts 4:32
Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and one soul, and no
one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had
everything in common.

St. Antony was the key figure of this movement into the desert, the first known and
prominent hermit who sought the cultivation of Christian perfection in solitude. . .
Others rushed to follow his example of asceticism. By 325, the time of the Council of
Nicea, there were over 5,000 solitaries, women as well as men, in the Desert of
Nitria. They were hermits, living alone and coming together only for the celebration
of Mass.

Another kind of religious life, more the kind we know today, arose at about the
same time. St. Pachomius founded the first monasteries, communities of men living
under a common rule of life to achieve their mutual goal, perfection in Christian
charity. They were called Cenobites. The first of these monasteries was located in
Tabenna in Egypt. For centuries thereafter the monastic life meant being a hermit or
cenobite.

Around the year 325 Pachomius was inspired by God to found in or near Tabennesi the first monastery in
which the monks lived together under one roof and lived according to a common Rule, which Pachomius
composed at the time of his first foundation. ... In particular it emphasizes poverty, fasting, common
prayer, collaboration at work, silence, moderation, and discretion in eating, and the institution
of a general chapter.
So many men thronged to the newly established monastery that soon almost one hundred monks had
assembled. Thereupon Pachomius decided to found additional monasteries, seven or eight in all.... Two
women's communities were also founded by the saint on the other bank of the Nile; Pachomius' sister
was the first to enter the new foundation.... By the time of Pachomius' death on May 14, 348, the number
of monks is said to have reached almost seven thousand.

St. Basil, who travelled up the Nile in the middle of the fourth century, recognized
and reported the weaknesses of the monastic life he observed. The cenobitic
system of Pachomius, he said, was too complex and impersonal. Tabenna was a
town, practically an armed camp, a boisterous and undisciplined community of five
thousand ascetics.… Only the orthodox spirituality of some of the monks salvaged a
degree of success from this mass movement to embrace a form of religious life. . .

St. Benedict, in the sixth century, formulated a sound rule of religious life which still
serves as a conventual rule for many communities today. He shifted the emphasis
from physical to spiritual mortification and focused on the end of religious life as
distinct from the means of fulfilling it. His motto, Pray and Work, signified a sound
and simple approach to Christian perfection. Benedict’s monks, with their quiet
simplicity and faithful guardianship of the classical tradition of assiduous study,
mental prayer and the dignity of manual labor, were a steadying influence on the
Church, so violently rocked by the barbarian invasion.

. . . A very significant development occurred in the thirteenth century with the

coming of the friars: the establishment of the mendicant orders, particularly the
Franciscans and the Dominicans. Religious life assumed new forms and functions.
Instead of being confined to the work of worship in single monasteries, the friars
moved from one community house to another and engaged in apostolic work
outside of their convents. They assumed intellectual leadership in the great
universities of Europe. They taught and wrote and preached, the latter function a
former prerogative of bishops. They organized democratic government in their
houses and left the cloister to spread the faith in mission fields. At the same time,
convents of women were founded, and both contemplative nuns and sisters
engaged in active work: catechetics, nursing, visiting the poor and giving maternal
care to orphans. Religious life began to assume the complexity and variety of
structure and function which we know today.
Every order, congregation or society or religious has its particular purpose; each is a
different facet in the jewel of dedicated Christian life. Often they were founded to
offset and oppose some social evil which was hostile and detrimental to the life of
the Church; the Benedictines opposed military might with the power of interior
peace; Franciscans fought worldly indulgence with the power of poverty of spirit;
Dominicans attacked heresy with the power of knowledge; Jesuits led the counter-
offensive after the Reformation with the power of spiritual discipline and
enlightened faith.

In the late 19th century, another significant development occurred when Pope Leo
XII took formal steps towards the recognition of associations of laity consecrated to
God. In his Decree Ecclesia Catholic, he gave norms for the approval of pious
associations whose members remain in the world without wearing any form of
habit to identify their consecration to God by way of the counsels.

In 1947, Pope Pius XII fully recognized these associations, approving them as groups
known as secular institutes.

Today there are more than 200 Secular Institutes in the world with as many as
60,000 members, all of whom profess vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience
without being in a religious congregation.

Soon, other forms of consecrated life would spring up as well, such as Ecclesial
Families of Consecrated Life. They are composed of a single charism, constitution,
and government, but having two main branches. These branches, one of men (lay
and cleric) and one of women, are to some extent self-governing, yet part of a single
structure. The members profess the evangelical counsels by public vow or some
other type of sacred bond. There are also associated single and married members
who share in the charism and goals of the institute; their association is different
from the celibate members and they have their own statutes, separate from the
constitutions of the institute.

Desert Stories

Wisdom in suffering
A certain Abba became very seriously ill and he lost much blood. One of the brethren had some
dried prunes, and because of the severe illness of Abba, he cooked a little food and put the
prunes in it, and brought it to him and entreated him saying, “Father do me an act of grace and
take a little of this stew, for perhaps it will do you good.” Abba lifted up his eyes and looked at
him and said, “In what part of the Scriptures has you found this thing? Truly I have wished that
God would leave me in this illness for the last thirty years, for when I am weak, then am I strong”;
and the Abba although he was grievously sick, would not take even a little of the food, and when
the brother saw this he took it and went back to his cell.
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Obedience
It was said of Abba Silvanus that at Scetis he had a disciple called Mark whose obedience was
great. He was a scribe. The Abba loved him because of his obedience. He had eleven other
disciples who were hurt because he loved him more than them. When they knew this, the elders
were sorry about it and they came one day to him to reproach Abba about it. Taking them with
him, he went to knock at each cell, saying, “Brother so and so, come here; I need you,” but none of
them came immediately. Coming to Mark’s cell, he knocked and said, “Mark.” Hearing the Abba’s
voice, he jumped up immediately and the Abba sent him off to serve and said to the elders,
“Fathers, where are the other brothers?” Then he went into Mark’s cell and picked up his book
and noticed that he had begun to write the letter “omega” [“w”] but when he had heard Abba’s
command, he did not even finish it. Then the elders said, “Truly, Abba, he whom you love, we love
too and God loves him.”

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Vigilance
Abba Macarius used to say to the brethren in Scete, “When mass is ended in the church, flee, my
brothers.” And one of the brethren said to him, “Father, in this solitude where to, can we further
flee?” And he laid his finger upon his mouth saying, “This is what I would have you flee.” And so
he would go into his cell and shut the door and there sit alone.

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Compassion of God
There were two monks who committed a very serious sin when they went to the village to sell
their wares. But they were wise enough not to let the devil trick them into discouragement and so
they came back to the desert and went to the Abba to confess their sins. To ease them into their
conversion, they were asked to go and live on their own for one month on bread and water, to
pray and do penance. When the time was over, Abba himself came over to reunite them with the
disciples. However he was very surprised because one came out grim, downcast, pale while the
other was radiant, buoyant and brisk. “What did you meditate upon?” Abba asked. The sad monk
answered : “I thought constantly on the punishment which I merit and the justice of God”. The
happy monk answered : “Well, I used to remind myself constantly the mercy of God and the love
which Jesus Christ had for the sinner.” Both of them were joyfully accepted back in the
community but Abba remarked on the wisdom of the brother who kept his mind fixed on the
compassion of God.

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Love excuses
Some old men went to Abba Poemen and asked, “If we see brothers sleeping during the synaxis
[common prayer], should we wake them?” Abba Poemen answered, “If I see my brother sleeping,
I will put his head on my knees and let him rest.” Then one old man spoke up, “And how do you
explain yourself before God?” Abba Poemen replied, “I say to God: You have said, “First take the
beam out of your own eye and then you will be able to remove the splinter from the eye of your
brother.”

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Repentance
A brother questioned Abba Poemen, ‘My thoughts trouble me, making me put my sins aside, and
concern myself with my brother’s faults’. Abba so told him the following story about Abba
Dioscorus. ‘In his cell he wept and wept over himself, while his disciple was sitting in another cell.
When the latter came to see him, he asked him, “Father, why are you weeping?” “I am weeping
over my sins,” he answered him. Then his disciple said, “You do not have any sins, Father.” Abba
replied, “Truly, my child, if I were allowed to see my sins, three or four men would not be enough
to weep for them.”

Rev. Fr. Lawrence CMF the resource person of the day took the stage to decode the topic of the day
“Consecrated life’as experience of the joy of the Gospel and announcing it in our multi- faith
Context”.  The prelude,“The whole universe is mystical and we need to keep in touch with this
connectivity’, triggered enthusiasm and attention.  He said that the religious life could be summated
into 4Cs, Consecration, communion, contemplation and commitment.

He further stated that the 4Cs  are very well incorporated in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.
The bread and wine are consecrated into the body and blood of Jesus, we receive in communion,
contemplate his presence in our hearts and then we go out and live the commitment of serving God
in our neighbour.  The consecration is intrinsic in the fabric of Jewish background as prophets,
priests and kings were consecrated for service.  People of Israel experienced his personal presence 
in the cloud during the day and in the  Fire at night. In the old Testament altar represented the
presence of God and poured blood as symbol of Israel’s blood relationship with Yahweh.  This real
presence was an object of contemplation and various psalms express these sentiments,” I keep my
eyes always on the LORD. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.’ (Ps. 16.8) People of Israel
were joyful for they were consecrated to God.  In the old testament writings joy was  differentiated
“Samah” ordinary joy and ‘Alas” as exuberant joy.  In John 15:11 speaks of exuberant joy , the joy of
Christ. This joy is the outcome of deep contemplation of the ever abiding presence of God which is a
continuous 24 hours process or flow.

He then presented the present scenario of Religious life where there is a sharp decline in the
numbers due to various factors. Every year there is phenomenon of  3000 or more leaving the
religious life due to religious formalism, individualism and subjectivism.  We can re-instate religious
life only when religious can become real contemplatives and mystics.

Fr. Lawrence  took the audience way back to the Desert Fathers of the 4   Century early Christian
th

hermits, ascetics, and monks who lived mainly in the desert of Egypt beginning around the third
century AD. They lived at a transitional period a shift from  Diocletianic Persecution to the freedom
and legalisation of Christian religion by   Diocletian’s successor Constantine. The Church moved away
from the centrality of the cross. Those who wanted to live Christian life   radically   left for the desert
and formed an alternate Christian society, at a time when it was no longer a risk to be a Christian.
The solitude, austerity, and sacrifice of the desert were seen   as an alternative to martyrdom, which
was formerly seen by many Christians as the highest form of sacrifice. They chose a life of extreme
asceticism, renouncing all the pleasures of the senses and anything that made them comfortable to
live core values of Christ. They instead focused their energies on praying, singing psalms, fasting,
giving alms to the needy, and preserving love and harmony with one another while keeping their
thoughts and desires for God alone.    In order to achieve contemplation and mysticism they spelt
out triple goals and method used to achieve goals – Communion with God, Communion with
humans and Communion with the cosmos.

Many of the monks and nuns developed a reputation for holiness and wisdom, with the small
communities following a particularly holy or wise elder, who was their spiritual father (abba) or
mother (amma).  Slowly they developed a mystical tradition the practice of “interior silence and
continual prayer.” ‘Prayer of the heart or Jesus’ prayer” “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God,
have mercy on me a sinner”. Continuous repeating of the prayer first verbally, then mentally and
then in the heart enabled them to reach mysticism. The quote from the desert fathers is a sure
indication of the communion they lived with God.

Mor Aphrem: “I have built a church in my soul, and I have offered up to the Lord the tra-vail of my
body as incense and fragrance.  My spirit became the altar, my will the priest, and like a lamb
without blemish I sacrificed myself.”

Abba Lucius, “I willshow you how, while doing my manual  work, I pray  without interruption. I
sitdown with God, soaking my  reeds and plaiting  my ropes, and  I say “God, havemercy on me,
according  to your great goodness and  according to the multitudeof your mercies,  save me from my
sins.”  ‘ So he  asked them if this were notprayer and they replied it was. Then he said  to them, ‘So 
when I shave spendthe whole  day working and praying, making  thirteen  pieces of money  more
orless,  I put two pieces of  money outside the door and  I pay for my food withthe rest of the
money. He who takes the two pieces of money prays for me when Iam eating and when I  am
sleeping; so   , by the  grace of  God, I fulfil  theprecept to pray without ceasing.’ Abba Lucius in these
words manifest how the monks lived this threefold communion with God, humans and nature living
in natural set up.  They had intimate connection with the surroundings, they called themselves as
the sand on the desert.

He concluded saying, we also should try expanding this consciousness of the communion we have
with the cosmos.   If one truly love God then they will love humans and the cosmos.

What is important is not saying or reciting prayers but prayerfulness that is praying 24 hours, being
in touch with God’s presence, interiorly speaking to him and dialoguing with him.”