Religious life: Card. Tagle, “we risk not being able to walk with the wounded”

“What is the dominant culture in our religious communities? Are we passing on a culture of encounter to our members? Or the culture of encounter is neither present nor rooted?”. Card. Luis Antonio Tagle, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and President of Caritas Internationalis, asked this to the over 200 male and female religious superiors attending the Joint Assembly of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) and the Union of Superiors General (USG). “Religious life is a state of perfection, but we are not perfect. And we risk not being able to walk with the wounded. Where do we find our seminaries and our formation houses?”, the cardinal asked provocatively. “Do we build them in the mountains, far from the people, for the farther away they are, the holier? Is this a culture of encounter?”. The cardinal went on to recall that “the perfect God with no feelings, who does not change when sad or happy, does not come from the Bible. This is philosophy. God’s perfection lies in compassion, forgiveness and mercy. We must be careful, even in our communities, not to have mental images of divine perfection that are not in harmony with the Bible. If we walk with God, then we always walk with people. And if we walk with people, then we always walk with God. God walks humbly. We know it from Jesus and from so many men and women that God has raised up as models of holiness”.
Valentina Bombelli