Ad Honorem Immaculatae Conceptionis Mariae Oblatio

71 In his exhortation Vita consecrata , St. John Paul II further broadened the principle “God’s initiative – man’s response,” by demonstrating the rea- sons and motives for man’s radical response: This is the meaning of the call to the consecrated life: it is an initiative coming wholly from the Father (cf. Jn 15:16), who asks those whom he has chosen to respond with complete and exclusive devotion (cf. EE, 5). The experience of this gracious love of God is so deep and so powerful that the person called senses the need to respond by unconditionally dedicating his or her life to God, consecrating to him all things present and future, and placing them in his hands. This is why, with Saint Thomas, we come to understand the identity of the consecrated person, beginning with his or her complete self-offering, as being comparable to a genuine holocaust , (cf. SummaTheologiae , I-II, q. 186), (VC, 17). In the course of the 1994 Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops devoted to the “Consecrated life and its mission in the Church and in the world,” questions arose about the relationship of this non-sac- ramental consecration to the Sacramental Baptismal consecration, as well as to consecration in the Sacrament of Holy Orders . The Synod Fathers asked St. John Paul II to explain this point in a clear manner in an ordinary post-synodal exhortation. The Pope very clearly described the relationship between religious con- secration and other sacramental consecrations. It is worthwhile quoting here extensive excerpts from his teaching. In his exhortation Redemptionis donum (No. 7) of 1984, he wrote: Religious profession “is deeply rooted in baptismal consecration and is a fuller expression of it” (PC 5). In this way religious profession, in its constitutive content, becomes a new consecration: the conse- cration and giving of the human person to God, loved above all else. The commitment undertaken by means of the vows to practice the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience, according to the determinations proper to each religious family as laid down in the constitutions, is the expression of a total consecration to God and, at the same time, the means that leads to its achievement. This is also the source of the manner proper to consecrated persons of be- aring witness and of exercising the apostolate. And yet it is necessary