“Conflicts help us to grow and to discern better. […] We exercise our ministry from weakness. […] The most effective, educational and incisive pastoral care is to love.”

A few weeks ago, visiting the editorial office of the Spanish Episcopal Conference [EDICE], I met the director of the magazine ECCLESIA [a weekly news magazine of the General Secretariat and the Episcopal Commission for Social Communication Media of the Spanish Episcopal Conference] and he reminded me of the section that the emeritus bishops have in the magazine, and he invited me to write.

I have read some reflections by our emeritus [bishops] [in Spain] and they seemed excellent to me. They talk about their new pastoral service, their transition to a more peaceful but active life, full of hope and desire to serve.

I had also thought of writing something similar, but with the peculiarity that I have returned to my vocational origins, that is, to resume my consecrated life in the Order of Augustinian Recollects. It is not that I had forgotten it as bishop in Tarazona [Saragossa, Spain], but rather relocated my condition, in a diocese with few religious priests, none of my Order.

In the Vatican Congregation for Consecrated Life

My first retirement was as an official of the Congregation for Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life in March 2011, after more than 35 years. Years that deserve a reminder, because they tried to put into practice the conciliar and post-conciliar documents.

The Pope has invited us, in view of the Jubilee Year 2025, to reread and update the four great constitutions [of Vatican II]: Lumen gentium, on the Church; Dei Verbum, on divine revelation; Sacrosanctum Concilium, on the sacred Liturgy; and Gaudium et spes, on the Church in the modern world.

I began my service on November 3, 1975, under the guidance of Cardinal Eduardo Pironio, then prefect, and recently beatified in his beloved sanctuary of Luján (Argentina). These were years of intense activity.

Religious institutes were pioneers and faithful executors of the directives of the Council and of post-conciliar documents such as the decree Perfectae caritatis and the motu proprio Ecclesiae sanctae. All these texts sought to promote the spiritual renewal of religious institutes and of the very life and discipline of their members.

The Congregation promoted this process of aggiornamento. To this end, all religious Institutes, Societies of apostolic life, secular Institutes and contemplative life were invited to hold their General Chapters to review their Constitutions and to make clearer and more evident their specific charismatic spirituality, their particular apostolic mission in the Church and their own configuration of government.

This review was long in time and profound in its historical, charismatic and juridical study. The motivation was that the evangelical and theological principles proper to consecrated life should be accompanied by the spirituality proposed by its founders and by the healthy traditions, which constituted the patrimony of each Institute; and all of this supported by juridical norms that defined the nature, ends and means of each Institute.

I remember that all of them held their special General Chapters to respond to this conciliar call. They illuminated this work with the four conciliar documents mentioned above, especially Lumen gentium 5 and 6.

Naturally, the elaboration of the Constitutions involved study, revision and approval by the Roman Dicastery. Along the way, the need was felt to accompany this process with studies and reflections that would illuminate and respond to the new signs of the times.

There were numerous meetings with the general and provincial superiors. Every week, in addition, we had meetings with the bishops during their ad limina visits, and almost every year we celebrated the Plenary Sessions of the Dicastery.

As a result of these, documents of enormous importance for consecrated life and the Church emerged, such as, among others, Mutuae Relationes (1978), Religious and Human Promotion (1980), Collaboration between Institutes for Formation (1999) or Walking from Christ: a renewed commitment of consecrated life in the third millennium (2002). In addition to these documents prepared by the dicastery and approved by the Holy Father, there are two special ones, promulgated by St. John Paul II, such as the Code of Canon Law (1983) and Vita Consecrata (1996).

There are times when I have asked myself if they were the result of the situation that consecrated life was facing, or if they helped to enlighten and sensitize religious life itself to these new cultural, social and ecclesial situations. Perhaps both.

I believe that with the doctrine of the Second Vatican Council, the later documents mentioned and studies around them, the theology of consecrated life has been organically developed.

These brief references to life and documents that have a direct relationship with consecrated life are enough to understand the dynamism of those years. Without forgetting the attention and care given to contemplative life in the numerous monasteries around the world that also made their way to renewal.

It is true that, in the midst of this vigorous and dynamic life, we must point out disappointments and abandonments of religious life. They were painful moments, but perhaps they served to clarify this vocation in the new world.

In those years, the work of the Unions of Superiors General (USG and UISG) was also very significant; of CLAR, for Latin America; UCESM, for Europe; and of the national conferences.

They served to unite forces and to face together so many challenges and issues that society and the Church itself were presenting. With the fall of the Berlin wall, these conferences also arose in countries that needed special help, enlightenment and communion in the face of their new and complex social and ecclesial situation. I was more directly involved in closely following the progress of these organizations.

Although there were also moments of tension and difficulties, there is no doubt that they gave life and impetus to consecrated life and, in general, to the life of the Church. Conflicts can also help to grow and to better discern certain social and ecclesial situations.

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Bishop called to evangelize

My second retirement occurred when the Holy Father named my successor for the beloved Diocese of Tarazona. I think that both retirements [as a member of the Vatican Congregation and as bishop of a Spanish Diocese] have a profound meaning for my religious, priestly and episcopal life.

These years of service have helped me to know and love the Church more deeply. Love for the Church encourages and broadens the capacity to understand it. The Church is holy, but made by sinners. Let us love and accept the Church with joy, just as it is.

We are also the Church. St. Augustine recalled that the Church is the Body of Christ and repeated to his faithful, paraphrasing St. Paul and linking the mystery of the Church with the Eucharist: “You are the Body of Christ” (1 Cor 12:27; Sermon 272).

The greatness of the priestly and episcopal ministry, the responsibility it entails, and the challenges and tasks it must face bring to light the disproportion between the mission entrusted to us and the weight of our own limitations, poverty and weaknesses.

Because we have often heard and thought that God does not call the capable, the most prepared, but rather that He capacitates and enables those He calls. That is why St. Augustine said: “Give what you command and command what you want” (Confessions 10:40). This forces us to be more grateful to God, because He has not only called us, but He has also prepared us to carry out our commitments and obligations.

During these fifty years, I have always found many competent, available and close people at my side, willing to help me, to make my duties and commitments easier for me.

We exercise this ministry from weakness. Weakness of our own flesh, because we are clay vessels that can break at any moment; and weakness of God in the world, who has not wanted to act with creative omnipotence, but with the strength of his love, a love that serves, that respects, a love that remains silent and allows itself to be killed in order to overcome the incredulity and pride of men.

The Church of Jesus Christ has always been weak and despicable in the eyes of the world. It should not surprise us that the figures of the priest and the bishop do not have as much social relevance as years ago; nevertheless, the greatness of the priestly vocation remains the same.

But this weakness is stronger than all the powers of the world, the madness of the cross, because it is the madness of love; the weakness of the crucified, because it has the strength of the love of God, is stronger than the strength of all the empires of the world, because, as St. Augustine says, paraphrasing the Latin poet Virgil, “love conquers all” (Sermon 145, 4). In these moments of difficulty, God wants us to recover the clarity and strength of our origins.

God’s action in the history of the people of Israel tells us: “I did not choose you because you are great; on the contrary, you are the smallest of peoples; I chose you because I love you…” God has fallen in love with each one of us and has chosen us (Dt 7:7-8). The deepest and most gratifying human experience is love: feeling loved and loving. “You have seduced me and I have let myself be seduced” (Jer 20:7-11). Yes, we are privileged, we are chosen.

Let us open ourselves again to the Gospel, let us refresh our lives and let us see the great gift that we have received and that we can offer for the good of our brothers and sisters. The most effective, most educational, most incisive evangelizing pastoral care is to love our parishioners, as a father loves his children.

Our pastoral methodology should be to invite, to exhort rather than to impose; to convince rather than to demand. Our evangelization is more effective with example, more with the testimony of life than with words.

We reach the hearts of people through love. As Benedict XVI would say: “The Church does not grow through proselytism. It grows through attraction.” What attracts is testimony. Saint Francis of Assisi asked his friars: “Always preach the Gospel and, if necessary, also with words.” St. Augustine invited his monks to proclaim Christ and become a sign of the kingdom of God not by their habit or by the cut of their hair, but by their joy, by their attitude and their inner recollection. (Commentary on Psalm 147, 8)

Our pastoral work must be ordered and organized to create convictions, more than precepts, not from authority, but from conviction. The Church is a mother who cannot reject a son, no matter how sinful he may be. The sacraments are a source of grace, of acceptance, of mercy, of forgiveness, of communion.

Today, more than great evangelizing techniques and methods, what matters most are the motivations and the foundations. We all have to know how to recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit, who always goes before us, preparing the heart to accept the message of salvation:

«One night, the Lord said to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid. Keep proclaiming the message and do not be silent, for I am with you and no one will harm you, for many in this city are of my people” (Acts 18:9).

And from this attitude of trust in the action of God we will be able to discover those aspirations and values that will be meeting points to announce the Gospel, showing how it illuminates and transforms our lives.

Brothers, friends, if the ideals are high, the path is difficult, the terrain perhaps less mined, the misunderstandings are many, but we can do everything with Him who gives us strength (Phil 4:13).

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