2015 - Year of Consecrated Life

Pope Francis Has Declared 2015 the Year of Consecrated Life

"They (the consecrated) are men and woman who can awaken the world. Consecrated life is prophecy. God asks us to fly the nest and to be sent to the frontiers of the world, avoiding the temptation to 'domesticate' them. This is the most concrete way of imitating the Lord."

 - Pope Francis

Catholic Herald UK

Francis announces year of consecrated life in 2015

by Staff Reporter

posted Friday, 29 Nov 2013

Pope Francis thanked the religious for their 'testimony' (AP)

Pope praises 'spirit of faith' of religious orders

Pope Francis has announced that 2015 will be a year dedicated to the promotion of consecrated life.
He made the announcement today in an address to the heads of men’s religious orders, who were taking part in the 82nd general assembly of the Union of Superiors General in Rome.
During the three-hour meeting the Pope held an impromptu question-and-answer session.

He later thanked the religious, saying: “Thank you, for what you do and for your spirit of faith and your quest for service. Thanks for your testimony, and also for the humiliations you have to endure.”

Wake up the World! - Quotes from Pope Francis Catholic News Service

• Today’s religious men and women need to be prophetic, “capable of waking up the world,” of showing they are a special breed who “have something to say” to the world today.
• “The church must be attractive. Wake up the world! Be witnesses of a different way of doing things, acting, living! (Show) it’s possible to live differently in this world.”
• They need to live and behave in a truly different way, recognizing one’s weakness and sins, but acting with “generosity, detachment, sacrifice, forgetting oneself in order to take care of others.”
• “It’s necessary to spend time in real contact with the poor. For me this is really important: it’s necessary to know from experience what’s real, to dedicate time going to the periphery to truly know the situation and the life of the people.”
• Without firsthand experience with people’s lives, “then one runs the risk of being abstract ideologues or fundamentalists, and this is not healthy.”

•  Year of Consecrated Life FB

Thank you, Sheryl. You are already a living example of a consecrated life. I hope to share in this life with you intimately - a consecrated life together. God Bless you.