On Sunday, June 25, the XXXIII General Chapter of the Congregation of the Resurrection concluded. The Chapter Fathers, during the 30th session, adopted the final document entitled "Witnesses of the Resurrection", and then celebrated the Eucharist, presided over by Father Paul Voisin, the Superior General of the Congregation.
On Saturday, June 24, 2017, on the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, Pope Francis received the participants of the 33rd General Chapter in a private audience. Fr. Paul Voisin CR, the Superior General, presented our Community to the Holy Father and expressed words of gratitude:
Dear Holy Father, we, the participants of the XXXIII General Chapter of the Congregation of the Resurrection, are grateful that the Pope found time to meet with us. Your Holiness was present among us during the Chapter as we listened to your teachings, especially your words on "mercy" and "compassion". We are witnesses of the resurrection, spiritual sons of Bogdan Jański. We want to go into the world to proclaim the good news of Jesus' resurrection.
The concluding General Chapter was another opportunity to renew our commitments to religious life, religious vows, prayer, and fraternal life in community. Renewed in Christ, we can go with a message of hope, working towards the resurrection of society in the world.
Holy Father, I trust that every priest in the world has been inspired by your words to smell like the sheep. It seems to me that as Resurrectionists, we have discovered that we must first smell like our brothers. Holy Father, after your election, you came out onto the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica and asked for prayers for you. Today we promise that we will pray for you. In turn, I ask you, Holy Father, to pray for the Resurrectionists worldwide, that we may be faithful to our calling, proclaim hope, and work towards the resurrection of societies.
The Holy Father addressed the participants of the General Chapter with the following words:
Dear Brothers!
I am pleased to welcome you on the occasion of your General Chapter. I thank the Superior General for his kind words and through you, I greet your confreres present in fifteen countries on four continents.
As spiritual sons of Bogdan Jański, the apostle of Polish emigration in France in the 19th century, you were born to testify that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is at the foundation of Christian life, to proclaim the need for personal resurrection, and to support the community in its mission in the service of the Kingdom of God. In close connection with the charism of the Congregation, you have chosen as the theme of this Chapter "Witnesses of the Presence of the Risen One: from the Community to the World". I would like to reflect with you on three expressions.
1. Witnesses of the presence of the Risen Lord
In other words, missionaries, apostles of the Living One. In this regard, I propose to you as an icon Mary Magdalene, the apostle of the apostles, who on Easter morning, having met the risen Jesus herself, proclaims him to the other disciples. She sought Jesus dead, and found Him alive. This is precisely the joyful Good News she brings to others: Christ is alive and has the power to conquer death and give us eternal life.
From this comes our first reflection: nostalgia for the past, which may have been rich in vocations and great works, must not hinder the vision of the life that the Lord is growing around you in these times. Do not succumb to nostalgia, but be people who, moved by faith in the God of history and life, proclaim the coming of the morning even in the darkness of the night (cf. Is 21:11-12). Be contemplative people who, with their eyes fixed on the Lord, can see what others, preoccupied with the cares of this world, do not see; people who can proclaim with the courage that comes from the Spirit that Christ is alive and is Lord.
The second reflection is as follows: Mary Magdalene and the other women go to the tomb (cf. Lk 14:1-8), they are women of "going out": they leave their "nest" and set out on the road, they know how to take risks. The Spirit also calls you, Brothers of the Resurrection, to become people on the move, an institute of "going out", going towards the human peripheries, where the light of the Gospel needs to be brought. The Spirit calls you to seek the face of God where it can be found: not in the tombs – "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" (v. 5) – but where He lives: in the community and in the mission.
2. From the community to the world
Let the Risen One, like the disciples of Emmaus, accompany you both individually and communally, especially on the roads of disappointment and abandonment (cf. Lk 24:11ff). This encounter will make you, full of joy and without delay, start running again to the community, and from it to the whole world, proclaiming that "The Lord has truly risen!" (v. 34).
All who believe in the Risen One have the courage to "go out" and proclaim the Good News of the resurrection, taking the risk of witness, just as the Apostles did. So many people are waiting for this joyful news! We have no right not to bring it to them. If the Resurrection of Christ is our greatest certainty and our most precious treasure, how can we not run to proclaim it to others?
One of the concrete ways of showing the Resurrection is fraternal life in community. It is about accepting the brothers whom the Lord has given us. Not those we would like to choose ourselves, but those He has given us. Since Christ has risen, we must not, as the apostle Paul says, regard others from a merely human point of view (cf. 2 Cor 5:16). We look at them and accept them as a gift from the Lord. This other is a gift that must not be manipulated or despised; a gift that must be received with respect, because in him, especially when he is weak and fragile, Christ himself comes to meet us.
I encourage you to be creators of evangelical communities, not just their "consumers"; let fraternal life in community be your first way of evangelization. Let the communities be open to mission and avoid making themselves the most important point of reference, as this leads to death. Do not let the problems, which will always be there, consume you; rather, strive to cultivate the "mystique of encounter" and seek together with the brothers whom the Lord has given you, enlightened by the "relationship of love that exists between the three Divine Persons" – the ways and methods to move forward (cf. Apostolic Letter Witnesses of Joy, November 21, 2014, I,2). May your witness of fraternal life in community not be lacking in a society that wants to homogenize and flatten everything, where injustice divides and conflicts, in a wounded and aggressive world.
3. Prophets of joy and Easter hope
The Risen Lord gave his disciples two kinds of consolation: inner joy and the light of the paschal mystery. May the joy that comes from recognizing the presence of the Risen Jesus draw you to His person and His will, and thus lead you to mission. On the other hand, the light of the paschal mystery renews hope, "reliable hope", as Pope Benedict XVI said (Spe salvi, 2). Risen to help others rise, free to bring freedom to others, reborn to new life to awaken new life in all we meet on our paths. This is the vocation and mission of the Brothers of the Resurrection.
"Why do you seek the living among the dead?" (Lk 24:5). May these words continually resonate in your hearts. They will help you endure moments of sadness and open you to horizons of joy and hope. They will allow you to remove the stones from the tombs and give you the strength to proclaim the Good News in a contemporary culture so often marked by death. If we have the courage to enter our personal and communal tombs, we will see how Jesus is able to raise us from them. And this will make us rediscover the joy, happiness, and enthusiasm of the first moments of our consecration.
Dear brothers, I conclude by reminding you of what I have said so many times to consecrated persons, especially during the Year of Consecrated Life: the past must be remembered with gratitude, the present lived with passion, and the future embraced with hope. Grateful memory of the past, not archaeology, because the charism is always a source of living water, not a bottle of distilled water. Passion to keep always alive and young the first love, which is Jesus. Hope, because we know that Jesus is with us and guides our steps as He guided the steps of our founders.
Mary, who in a special way lived and continues to live the mystery of the Resurrection of her Son, may she watch over your journey as a mother. May my blessing also accompany you. And please, do not forget to pray for me. Thank you!
