Spirituality: David Fleming, S.J.

The Jesus who is at the center of our personal vocation and who is the center of consecrated life calls for a love relationship. We cannot relate to this Jesus as an abstract concept such as Wisdom, biblically authentic as its personification is. We cannot identify this Jesus with good actions which we perform in our religious mission: Jesus is more than some category of virtue enhancing human behavior. True, Jesus identifies with each person we serve or who serves us, but Jesus has his own identity and his own way of loving and of being loved. Jesus in our lives calls forth from us and from our religious congregation the awed response of love he called forth from Thomas: “My Lord and my God.” The mission of our congregation is not identified with making this world a better place to live; our mission as consecrated people is so related to the Jesus of the Gospels that together we make present the actions of Christ. Because of the goodness of a real relationship with Jesus, both as individuals and as congregations, we experience that Jesus is the center of our consecrated life, the center of our life-in-mission.