|
Page 3 of 4
Homily by Kin Tanabe rscj
It cannot be a mere coincidence that your profession falls on the Sunday when the whole Church is listening to the call of God in the Scripture readings. In our lives God calls us at various moments and in a variety of ways. However, just like the boy Samuel, we sometimes fail to recognize that it is God who is calling us. He needed Eli’s help to respond to God. In the Gospel, we see John the Baptist standing as a sign pointing his disciples towards to Jesus. Each of you has heard God’s call in your life. In order to recognize and respond to this call, you too have received the help of many people; your parents and family members, teachers, friends, your Sisters in the Society, and many others. “Come and see” Jesus invited you. Accepting this invitation you entered into the years of preparation - a time to come and see where Jesus was, a time to spend time together. The initiative was God’s. Your own decision to follow Jesus within the Society of the Sacred Heart, with the help and grace you have received, has now brought you here to make the final, definitive gift of your entire self through perpetual vows. The whole family of the Society throughout the world rejoices today. We welcome you, joining hands together for the life of the educative mission entrusted to us by the Church, for the sake of the people.
As you know God’s call is not just for the beginning of the journey. God calls us continuously and we have to learn to listen, to be attentive. “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening” is the constant attitude of our life. Madeline Sophie insists that our life of mission be based essentially on prayer and interior life. In your retreat you experienced that the deeper you went into your own depth, the clearer you saw your own reality. There you encountered God. There you could see and touch the unconditional love of the Heart of Jesus. There you could also look at the reality of the world truthfully through the compassionate gaze of Jesus. Contemplation is, according to its etymological meaning, to look at any object in truth, as it truly is. We normally think we are seeing things as they are. However, very often we are looking at them through the lens of our own judgments, prejudices or with an attitude of control. Therefore, we fail to see reality. If we desire to look at anything in its truth, we have to learn to be silent, attentive to what the other speaks to us. We are called to be contemplatives in the midst of the world and this is the attitude required of us. Today’s world really needs this “look of truth”. Too often people, things, or situations are presented in distorted forms which cause domination, manipulation and violence.
As the professed members of the Society of the Sacred Heart, you will be helping other people to grow into the truth of themselves. Like Eli or John the Baptist, you are called to be mediators of God’s action for others people. For that, you need to live a life of discernment. This is an austere life which requires of you a constant vigilance. You must be aware of the inner reality of yourselves. What influences are trying to move you? Our Constitutions say that “we live attuned to the Spirit, and together we seek to have a contemplative outlook on all reality.”(Const. #48) With this attitude of contemplation and discernment, you will be sent into the world. In the face of this world you may feel frightened but you are not alone. God loves this frightening world so much that “the Word was made flesh and lived among us.”(Jn.1, 14a) and “in (this) God we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17, 28)
|
