45 REFLECTIONS The essence of Christianity, or even more so of the religious life – also in our Congregation – is not an idea, one or another philosophical or worldview trend, nor is it any social system. Limiting its value to just one of the areas of influence known to the human conceptual apparatus would be not only intellectual ignorance but above all, spiritual annihilation because it is rather about “discovering the true God who wants to put every man in the true light and make him permanently happy.”1. Pope Benedict XVI very precisely stated that “Being Christian is (…) the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” (DC 1). Just like at the beginning of being a Christian, there is that encounter, at the beginning of our vocation to the consecrated life there is a special kind of intense call of a loving God who “(...) encounters us and invites us to be part of a great undertaking”2, as Pope Francis wrote in his Message for the 2019 World Day of Vocations. Consecrated, therefore, relying on God The decree of the Second Vatican Council, Perfectae caritatis (No. 1), cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraph 918 says that “from the very beginning of the Church, there were men and women who set out to follow Christ with greater liberty, and to imitate him more closely, by practicing the evangelical counsels. They led lives dedicated to God, each in his own way.” Earlier, in paragraph 915 the Catechism clearly states that all the baptized are invited to practice the evangelical counsels but “the profession of these counsels, within a permanent state of life recognized by the Church, (that) characterizes the life consecrated to God”.3. This life, as far as men are concerned is a concrete challenge, and, as such, is part of the biology of the male way of functioning and understanding the world and all its components. The very understanding of a challenge constitutes, in modern language, the “attractiveness” of a religious vocation to the Congregation of the Marian Fathers. After all, e.g. denying oneself, enduring the hardships of building a community together with, 1 K. Pek, Światło i radość wiary, „Pastores” 62(1) 2014, p. 127. 2 Message of His Holiness Pope Francis for the 2019 World Day of Vocations, Vatican, 31 January 2019, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/vocations/documents/ papa-francesco_20190131_56-messaggio-giornata-mondiale-vocazioni.html 3 CCC, 915.
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