Pope Bendict XVI was welcomed Friday by crowds of women religious and lay faithful
at the XVI century complex of San Lorenzo de El Escorial just outside downtown Madrid.
Below is a copy of his discourse to them:
APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS
POPE BENEDICT XVI TO MADRID 26th WORLD YOUTH DAY Meeting with Young
Women Religious, Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial Address of the Holy Father
Friday, 19 August 2011
Dear Young Women Religious, As part of the World
Youth Day which we are celebrating in Madrid, I am delighted to have this opportunity
to meet you who have consecrated your youth to the Lord, and I thank you for the kind
greeting you have given me. I also thank the Archbishop of Madrid, who arranged for
this meeting in the evocative setting of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.
Its famous library preserves important editions of the sacred Scriptures and the monastic
rules of various religious families, yet your own lives of fidelity to the calling
you have received is itself a precious means of preserving the word of the Lord, which
resounds in your various spiritual traditions. Dear Sisters, every charism is
an evangelical word which the Holy Spirit recalls to the Church’s memory (cf. Jn 14:26).
It is not by accident that consecrated life “is born from hearing the word of God
and embracing the Gospel as its rule of life. A life devoted to following Christ
in his chastity, poverty and obedience becomes a living ‘exegesis’ of God’s word…
Every charism and every rule springs from it and seeks to be an expression of it,
thus opening up new pathways of Christian living marked by the radicalism of the Gospel”
(Verbum Domini, 83). This Gospel radicalism means being “rooted and built up in
Christ, and firm in the faith” (cf. Col 2:7). In the consecrated life, this means
going to the very root of the love of Jesus Christ with an undivided heart, putting
nothing ahead of this love (cf. SAINT BENEDICT, Rule, IV, 21) and being completely
devoted to him, the Bridegroom, as were the Saints, like Rose of Lima and Rafael Arnáiz,
the young patrons of this World Youth Day. Your lives must testify to the personal
encounter with Christ which has nourished your consecration, and to all the transforming
power of that encounter. This is all the more important today when “we see a certain
‘eclipse of God’ taking place, a kind of amnesia which, albeit not an outright rejection
of Christianity, is nonetheless a denial of the treasure of our faith, a denial that
could lead to the loss of our deepest identity” (Message for the 2011 World Youth
Day, 1). In a world of relativism and mediocrity, we need that radicalism to which
your consecration, as a way of belonging to the God who is loved above all things,
bears witness. This Gospel radicalism proper to the consecrated life finds expression
in filial communion with the Church, the home of the children of God, built by Christ:
communion with her Pastors who set forth in the Lord’s name the deposit of faith received
from the apostles, the ecclesial Magisterium and the Christian tradition; communion
with your own religious families as you gratefully preserve their authentic spiritual
patrimony while valuing other charisms; and communion with other members of the Church,
such as the laity, who are called to make their own specific calling a testimony to
the one Gospel of the Lord. Finally, Gospel radicalism finds expression in the
mission God has chosen to entrust to us: from the contemplative life, which welcomes
into its cloisters the word of God in eloquent silence and adores his beauty in the
solitude which he alone fills, to the different paths of the apostolic life, in whose
furrows the seed of the Gospel bears fruit in the education of children and young
people, the care of the sick and elderly, the pastoral care of families, commitment
to respect for life, witness to the truth and the proclamation of peace and charity,
mission work and the new evangelization, and so many other sectors of the Church’s
apostolate. Dear Sisters, this is the witness of holiness to which God is calling
you, as you follow Jesus Christ closely and unconditionally in consecration, communion
and mission. The Church needs your youthful fidelity, rooted and built up in Christ.
Thank you for your generous, total and perpetual “yes” to the call of the Loved One.
I pray that the Virgin Mary may sustain and accompany your consecrated youth, with
the lively desire that it will challenge, nourish and illumine all young people. With
these sentiments, I ask God to repay abundantly the generous contribution which consecrated
life has made to this World Youth Day. In his name, and with great gratitude, I give
you my affectionate blessing.