During Mass for the Jubilee of Consecrated Life, the Pope urges the thousands of religious men and women in attendance to ‘be truly poor, meek, hungry for holiness, merciful’, and ‘pure of heart’.
By Françoise Niamien
“Ask”, “seek”, and “knock”: three verbs taken from the day’s Gospel reading (Lk 11:9), on which Pope Leo XIV centered his homily for the Jubilee of Consecrated Life.
Thousands of religious sisters and brothers, monks and contemplatives, members of secular institutes, the Ordo Virginum, hermits, and members of “new institutes” from around the world were in Rome to participate in the Jubilee Pilgrimage dedicated to them, of which the central event was the Mass presided over by the Pope.
The Holy Father said that, through their religious profession, the pilgrims had “committed to being a prophetic sign,” because, as Leo XIV—himself a religious of the Order of Saint Augustine—emphasized, “to live the vows is to abandon oneself like a child in the arms of the Father.”
In the Gospel passage, Christ invites his disciples with these words: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
Through these words, the Holy Father explained, “Jesus invites us to confidently turn to the Father for all our needs.”
For consecrated persons, the Pope added, this is also an invitation to “look back over one’s life, recalling in mind and heart all that the Lord has done over the years to multiply talents, to increase and purify faith, to make charity more generous and freer.”
Pope Leo presides over Mass (@Vatican Media)
“Ask”, “seek”, and “knock”
The Pope made sure to highlight the meaning of each of the three verbs used by Christ. He explained that “to ask” is “to recognize, in poverty, that everything is a gift from the Lord, and to give thanks for everything.” “To seek”, he continued, “is to open oneself, in obedience, to discover each day the path to follow on the way of holiness, according to God’s plans.” And “to knock” means “to ask for and to offer one’s gifts to one’s brothers and sisters with a pure heart, striving to love everyone with respect and selflessness.”
For the consecrated person, the Pope emphasized, “the Lord is everything”—especially “as Creator and source of existence, as love that calls and challenges, as strength that urges and inspires to give.” In his view, this is precisely why the Church entrusts consecrated persons with the mission to be, by stripping themselves of everything, “living witnesses to the primacy of God” in their lives.
“Be witnesses to future goods”
Pope Leo then went on to urge consecrated persons to expand these three actions “toward the eternal horizon that transcends the realities of this world, to orient them toward the eternal Sunday where ‘all humanity will enter into […] God’s rest.’”
In this regard, the Holy Father recalled that the Second Vatican Council entrusted consecrated people with “a specific task”, affirming, in the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, that “consecrated persons are called in a special way to be witnesses of the goods to come.”
