Professed Knights Convene in Rome for End of the Year on Consecrated Life

 

As Members are aware, the First Class of our Order comprises the Knights of Justice, who profess the vows of obedience, chastity and poverty, as well as the Conventual Chaplains. Each year as many as possible of the “professed Members” gather together in community during the annual pilgrimage to Lourdes.

 

Additionally, about every year and a half the Knights and Chaplains of the First Class are called in convocation to meet with the Grand Commander as religious superior and with the Grand Master. This gathering is a combination of conferences, praying together, as well as communal meals and social times.  This year the meeting was held in Rome as January turned to February, in conjunction with the close of the Year on Consecrated Life.

 

During the conferences we reviewed our vocation as religious who must support ourselves in the world, be available to serve the needs of the Order as asked, and maintain this life while living alone in the secular world. We were reminded of the words of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI when he spoke to us in 2013 that, “if He calls us to the Order, He has a plan”.  We each were then asked to explain what we do in our own regions to serve the needs of the Order, especially how we roll up our sleeves and serve the sick and the poor. During our hands-on service especially, we all must strive to be Christ to the other as well as see Christ in the other person, doing everything in a listening and caring manner. 

 

We also sought to improve the “Fra’-net”, our communication by mail, telephone and the intranet, which is our way of sharing documents as well as news among us. We discussed other ways of spending time together in work and prayer, whether in Lourdes, at our formation center in Rome or even in some shared holiday time, as this is the way a community builds and strengthens.

 

Praying as a community of brothers, even if separated by great distances, is an important way of keeping within our intentions the needs of the Order, its benefactors and Members who are sick and have died. Our highlights of the week were the closing audience with Pope Francis and the closing Mass of the Year of Consecrated Life. As has become his custom more often than not, the pope did away with his prepared speech and spoke extemporaneously for quite some time, exhorting us to be in a permanent “state of mission”; that is, to live in a state of “prophecy, closeness and hope”.  By prophecy, he indicated being able to say the right thing at the moment, after praying for guidance from the Holy Spirit.  By closeness, he indicated a pleasant closeness in love, while remembering especially that we are never to distance ourselves from the needy.  By hope, he indicated a trust in our Lord to hear our prayers.

 

During the conference, Fra’ James-Michael von Stroebel had an unfortunate, but as it turned out, serendipitous, minor accident that made his navigating the long distances of St. Peter’s a real challenge. A wheel chair was needed, with me pushing it. When we entered the great Audience Hall, because of the wheel chair, we were placed with other “malades” in front of the rows of seats. As a result, as Pope Francis left the platform to exit the hall, he stopped to give a warm personal greeting to the “malades”, including Fra’ James-Michael and me as attendant.

 

The next day, February 2, Mass was celebrated in St Peter’s to close the Year of Consecrated Life. As is traditional, the Order was honored to have front row seating among the enormous crowd of over 4,000  religious. The Holy Father reminded us to live with gratitude for our encounter with Jesus, for the vocation to consecrated life and for the Holy Spirit animating the Church through so many different charisms.

 

Celebrating the feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, the Holy Father offered in conclusion that the year of consecrated life flows like a river into the sea, “the sea of mercy, into this immense mystery of love, which is being experienced with the extra ordinary jubilee.”