“Locked in”
We often fall into routine and isolation, losing sight of the presence and renewing teachings of Jesus in our consecrated life.
I invite you to discover together the enthusiasm and divine direction in our ministry, breaking old structures and opening our hearts to the surprising action of God:
1. Locked in: When your priestly life falls into a constant routine, you can begin to close down and lock yourself away. You lose the enthusiasm that getting together with other priests brings, and you even lose the space to share your life with people who truly do you good. This goes beyond isolation, because you are already beginning to be someone who is stuck in his pastoral ideas and even shuts himself off from what your own bishop proposes. I call this “smelly feet syndrome.”
Everyone senses it, except the one who has it. This is something you are not aware of, or do not want to realize, because a defensive wall begins to build up around you. You end up attacking others in any discussion and you end up victimizing yourself throughout the course of that discussion.
2. They didn’t catch anything: You may consider yourself, “God sent” or a real consecrated person, but you may work tirelessly for the things of God without any results.
This can involve two positions:
a) Doing things as they’ve always been done, just because “it has always been done that way.”: At the time it was successful but, I stick to a structure, because at the time it worked and today, maybe it won’t. Many pastoral plans that worked and were a successful in the 90’s or 2000’s, are not successful today, but they are maintained just out of habit. By using these same old plans, “no fish are caught” any longer.
b) By not listening to Jesus: Peter, upon hearing his instructions, reacts and recognizes it. First he listens and then he recognizes. That is why God proposes that you walk through life learning to listen to the Jesus’ new instructions.
That is why he demands that we, the consecrated ones, rediscover His voice so as not to go out fishing without Him.
In all this, the key is that the consecrated person has to know how to listen and know how to break the structure, so that the institutional and the structural do not eat away or condemn the work of God. God’s work is always new and always acts in a new and different way.
3. Share: Jesus eats with them and shares with them. Without Jesus, they are just together, but without Life and without Enthusiasm. That can happen to you and to me: leading a consecrated life, where we only meet to merely fulfill pastoral meetings, channel meetings, counsel priests, etc. Today’s invitation is from the resurrected One, and together with the resurrected One, to live and share together with Him and give life together with Him.
Today I propose that you look at your consecrated life and analyze it from the living and risen Christ’s point of view. If you dare, do something different for yourself and for others, just by listening to Him.
Let us pray for one another.
Something good is on the way.
