Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, himself a Religious, has given us the gift of this year to call to mind again, the treasure that the Consecrated Life could hold out for the whole world with its variety of charisms. What we celebrate, therefore, is not merely the women and men who live the Consecrated Life, but something of the life of the Church, an aspect of her life that is more profound in its meaning than the individual who lives the life.
However, even though what we celebrate is not just the Religious Congregations and Institutes of Religious Life or the men and women who are members, we nevertheless have the opportunity of using the year to celebrate and appreciate the witnessing and the evangelical values that are inherent in the presence of the men and women Religious in the world; men and women who are truly committed to the practice of the virtues and values of the Consecrated Life. Many in the world of today are tending more and more towards atheism or at best agnosticism; there is tendency to a secularism that excludes God and all that worship of God in the different religions means.
We live in a world in which Christianity and more particularly Catholicism evokes cynicism, and even a hatred that is difficult to understand. We cannot understand why the faith and the Church that we love so passionately and are willing to live for, create such offence in the mind and heart of some in our world today. It makes one sad that some are just out there and do not much more than wait for an odd slip in a few so that they can pound this faith and institution that is of divine origin. We live in a world in which many have lost the sense of sin and the traditional moral values that lead to salvation and support order and discipline in society.
• Most Rev.(Dr.) Alfred Adewale Martins is the Archbishop of the Metropolitan See of Lagos.
