There is a thermometer that gives us the temperature of the vitality of the Church and that, for decades, has been giving alarming data: the number of vocations to the consecrated life. There are other thermometers that should alert us, of course, such as the number of marriages or priestly vocations, but I would like to highlight the number of vocations to the consecrated life. consecrated lifewhich seems to me to be particularly significant.
And it seems significant to me not only because of the fact that the responses to the call to consecration have decreased, but also because this decrease is not generally appreciated by the ecclesial community as a great loss. Because we perceive the lack of priestly vocations as a lack and, in general, we Christians rejoice when we hear that a young man has decided to enter the seminary. But there is not the same sensitivity towards the consecrated life.
The life of the Church, we think without thinking, can continue without consecrated persons. And in this utilitarian mentality that permeates everything, we end up with the conclusion that what matters is that the laity take an active role in the life of the Church and that in this way they will do what the religious can no longer do for lack of vocations. But this is not the correct point of view at all.
Before anyone throws a stone at me, I will say that I am a radical advocate of the need for the baptized to take their baptismal consecration seriously and to radically assume their mission in the Church and in the world. Beginning with what is most specific to them, which is the transformation of this world so that it may be as God has dreamed it to be.
But if there is a living laity, with a profound experience of God, there will undoubtedly arise men and women who, with evangelical radicalism, feel the call of Jesus to leave everything and to follow him by living as he lived. That is why a low number of vocations and a lack of esteem for consecrated life, it is necessary to recognize it, points to an ecclesial community with a low spiritual life.
Perhaps because of the comfort and a certain worldliness in which we Christians also live. Perhaps because of the fear of commitment - and even more so if it is for life - that has settled in our society and especially among young people. And, undoubtedly, because we live in a materialistic and immanentist world, which has stopped looking towards heaven, towards eternity. Thus, the consecrated lifewhose ultimate essence is to point the way to heaven, to bring to time the taste of eternity, becomes meaningless.
J.R.R. Tokien, in narrating the fall of Númenor in the Silmarillion, tells us how Eru, the Creator of all that exists, faced with the desire of men to reach the imperishable lands to achieve immortality by force, turned the earth, which until then was flat, into a sphere. Thus no one, no matter how far westward he wanted to sail, could ever reach the abode of the Valar, the imperishable land. The earth thus became a circle of eternal return, from which one can only exit through death. Only the elves, immortal, if they so wish, tired of this eternal becoming of the years and ages, can embark and find the right path to reach the imperishable lands.
We live in a world that looks at itself, without looking at transcendence. And, I fear, some of this has rubbed off on many of us Christians.
That is why it is so important that there are men and women who help us to look eternity in the face. People who, with their feet firmly planted on this earth, helping their brothers and sisters, have their hearts already set on heaven and show us what the goal of our life is.
