Pope Francis received the members of the Supreme Council of the Union of St. Augustine’s Chancellor Union on January 13. The Pope pointed out that a life dedicated to God is to take the Gospel as the criterion of life, to love Christ and His Eucharistic Church; religious groups should not isolate themselves, but live in the present and face the future; encounter, listen and The spirituality of dialogue is the essence of fellowship in the Church.
(Vatican News Network)“The basic principle of monastic life is following Christ as proposed by the Gospel. If you take the Gospel as the principle of life, you will be able to do what St. Paul said: ‘I no longer live my life, but Christ lives in me.’ (Refer to: Galatians 2:20)” This is what Pope Francis reminded when he received the members of the Supreme Council meeting of the St. Augustine Chancellor Union in the Vatican on January 13.
“The Gospel continues to lead us to bring Christ back to the center of our life and mission,” said the Pope. “It brings us back to our ‘first love’. To love Christ is to love his Eucharistic Church. Consecrated life is born in the Church, with The Church grows together and bears fruit with the Church. It is in the Church, as St. Augustine taught us, that we find the whole of Christ.”
The Pope then spoke of the importance of reading the Bible and of the liturgical life, saying: “Seek the Lord in the diligent reading of the Bible, in which the voice of Christ and the Church resounds in the pages of the Bible; seek the Lord in the liturgy, especially in the The Lord is sought in the Eucharist, the climax of the Christian life, which signifies and realizes the unity of the Church in love and harmony. We can breathe life into the world with the leaven of heaven.”
The Pope then emphasized the importance of the Union of St. Augustine’s Chancellors, founded by Pope John XXIII in 1959 to promote communion among religious orders with the same charism. Pope Francis reminded that you “need to be very careful in order to avoid the disease of self-righteousness and to protect the true treasure of communion between different orders. You all know that you are in the same boat and that no one alone or alone To build the future with our own strength, but to know each other in the truth of communion that is always willing to meet, to talk, to listen and to help each other. To practice the spirituality of the encounter: this is the essence of the fellowship of the Church”.
Consecrated life, the Pope continued, “must adapt to real situations”. Members of the Augustinian Chant must adapt themselves to the different local and cultural situations in which they find themselves, always in the spirit of the Gospel and of the charism of the Order.
Finally, the Pope urges the friars of St. Augustine’s order to re-examine their charism and “intensify the communion of life by following the example of the early apostolic community”. May they herald “a life of fullness and ultimate unity in God, always on this journey”.
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