Ad Honorem Immaculatae Conceptionis Mariae Oblatio

87 of a lamb without blemish or spot,’ (1 P 1:18) writes St. Peter and St. Paul states: ‘You were bought with a price, (1 Cor 6:20).’” The call to the way of the evangelical counsels springs from the interior enco- unter with the love of Christ, which is a redeeming love. Christ calls precisely through this love of His. 3 Allow me to quote three more excerpts from this exhortation: Your vocation, dear brothers and sisters, has led you to religious pro- fession, whereby you have been consecrated to God through the mi- nistry of the Church, and have been at the same time incorporated into your religious family. Hence, the Church thinks of you, above all, as persons who are ‘consecrated’: consecrated to God in Jesus Christ as His exclusive possession. [...] Religious profession creates a new bond between the person and the One and Triune God, in Jesus Christ. This bond develops on the foundation of the original bond that is contained in the Sacrament of Baptism (7). May the knowledge of belonging to God Himself in Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world and Spouse of the Church, seal your he- arts, (39) all your thoughts, words and deeds, with the sign of the biblical spouse (8). Religious profession places in the heart of each one of you, dear brothers and sisters, the love of the Father: that love which is in the heart of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world. It is love which em- braces the world and everything in it that comes from the Father, and which at the same time tends to overcome in the world everything that ‘does not come from the Father’ (9). We may say that at the center of the mystery of consecration, Redemp- tionis donum shows the God-Man and the person whom the Father con- secrates and whom this divine call reaches through Jesus’ gaze, full of re- demptive love, standing before each other face to face. It is the simultaneous fulfillment of Christ’s two statements from Chapter 6 of the Gospel of John: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day” (Jn 6:44, NAB) or “no one can come to me 3 Apostolic Exhortation, Redemptionis Donum of His Holiness Pope St. John Paul II to Men and Women Religious on Their Consecration in the Light of the Mystery of the Redemption, March 25, 1984, 3.