Ad Honorem Immaculatae Conceptionis Mariae Oblatio

169 Tomasz Nowaczek MIC Consecrated life as a mission in the Church to the World 1 Why consecrated life? The condition of a community of consecrated persons, that is its live- liness, strength, and growth, as well as its stagnation, disease and dying, depends on its heart – a specifically understood center of life: “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be...” (cf. Mt 6: 19-23). As long as its life remains truly religious, a community may look calmly into the future. Yet, wherever the religious way of life suffers degradation – even if a community continues to thrive administratively – stagnation and marks of death will inevitably appear. Therefore, what determines the strength, significance, andmission of consecrated life in the Church and in the world? That which attests to the strength and the value of the life of the religious and their usefulness in the Church is definitely not their numerousness nor even their activities, and most certainly not the structures of their well-or- ganized apostolates. The radically evangelical way of life is the secret of the consecrated persons’ attractiveness to the world and it is what makes them credible in its perception. All the rest follows. Pope Paul VI remarks: “Without this concrete sign there would be a danger that the charity which animates the entire Church would grow cold, that the salvific paradox of the Gospel would be blunted, and that the ‘salt’ of faith would lose its savor in a world undergoing secularization.” 2 St. John Paul II explains: “... the consecrated life, present in the Church from the beginning, can never fail to be one of her essential and character- istic elements, for it expresses her very nature. This is clearly seen from the fact that the profession of the evangelical counsels is intimately connected with the mystery of Christ, and has the duty of making somehow present 1 Based on: Krzysztof Wons, SDS, Rozwój i zamieranie instytutów zakonnych [Development and decline of religious institutes], SALWATOR Publishing House, Kraków 2008). 2 Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelica testificatio (June 29, 1971), 3: AAS 63 (1971), 498.