Jubilee of Consecrated Life: Going Out to Generate the Future
Article by Fr. Mario Zanotti – USG Secretary General
From SIR News Agency
The Jubilee profoundly challenges consecrated life, which today is called not to retreat behind its own walls, but to become a living presence in the world. In a time marked by injustice, loneliness, and fragmentation, religious men and women are called to generate dialogue, hope, and fraternity—prophetic signs of a Gospel that takes on flesh.
What does the Jubilee represent for a religious man or woman?
It is a time to re-read one's life, to recognize the signs of God's presence, to rediscover the joy of the call received, and to renew the desire for a life that is ever more human, fully realized in the gift of self for the love of the world.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life" (John 3:16).
This is why consecrated men and women feel deeply involved in the building of a world where peace reigns instead of violence, and where everyone can find their place within the ecosystem to which we all belong and which binds us together in a common destiny.
In a world where massive economic interests crush the lives of entire peoples and generate unspeakable injustices, the destruction of natural resources, and death, we feel called to be promoters of new relationships—of forgiveness, inclusion, welcome, justice, and peace among peoples.
We cannot remain shut away in our structures like citadels or fortresses, trying to preserve an uncontaminated life that is deaf to the cry rising from earth to heaven. This was, after all, the deepest meaning of the Jubilee as celebrated every fifty years in Israel: allowing the cultivated land to rest so it could regain its natural fertility, promoting social harmony and justice through the restoration of land to its original owners, the liberation of slaves, and the healing of the sick through God's forgiveness of their sins.
Jesus, in the synagogue of Nazareth (cf. Luke 4:18–19), omits the verse from the prophet Isaiah that speaks of God's vengeance and proclaims himself as the one through whom the Lord's year of favor is fulfilled (cf. Isaiah 61:1–3).
But today, in this year 2025, what can prevent the fulfillment not of the year of grace, but of the day of vengeance? What will stop humanity—blinded by selfishness and division—from destroying itself?
Now that Christ has ascended to the Father and has given us the Holy Spirit, it is we—believers in him—who have received the call to be his living presence in the world.
Consecrated men and women, in particular, feel they are on the front lines of this "good fight." It is about feeling responsible for our present and the future of all. It means seeking dialogue among peoples, cultures, and religions. Who better than religious communities can serve as a living laboratory of integration among differences, a multicultural family, and a prophetic sign in the face of those who sow hatred toward those from other lands, who speak other languages, or who believe in another God?
Interreligious dialogue is one of the greatest urgencies to which consecrated life is also called. Only in this way can we truly feel like one family, sharing the same human life that we all receive each day from the same Father of all brothers and sisters—to echo Pope Francis' encyclical.
Religious life is a gift received from Christ himself—not a privilege, but a call to more loving service, capable of transforming and converting hearts not with words, but with the example of fraternal life, prayer, work, sharing, respect, forgiveness, and love.
We can no longer remain hidden behind the walls of our convents or in our self-sufficiency, because the world needs the light of faith and the hope that only Christ can give. We, religious men and women, try each day to open our hearts to the Word of God and our lives to his Holy Spirit so that he may come and take flesh daily in our actions. Only then will the world truly see the light of salvation, and the earth will once again be fruitful with life.