MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS
TO MR. MAURICIO LÓPEZ OROPEZA,
PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD CHRISTIAN LIFE COMMUNITY*

Dear Brother,

I have received your courteous letter informing me of the forthcoming celebration of your 2018 World Assembly, which coincides with the 50th anniversary of your journey as Christian Life Community. For this reason, you wish to pray and reflect together so that the Lord may grant you to experience your charism more profoundly and thus, by deepening the charism received, you may continue to be a gift for the Church and for the world.

However, recognition of the gift and the grace that the Lord has given you over these years must lead you, firstly, to make a humble act of thanksgiving, because Jesus has gazed at you over and above your qualities and virtues. At the same time, this entails a call to responsibility, to empty yourselves and go forth to encounter others, in order to nourish them with the only bread capable of satisfying the human heart: the love of Christ. May the “gnostic illusion” not mislead you.

At the centre of your Ignatian spirituality is this desire to be contemplatives in action. Contemplation and action, the two dimensions together: because we can only enter God’s heart through the wounds of Christ, and we know that Christ is wounded in the hungry, the uneducated, the discarded, the elderly, the sick, the imprisoned, in all vulnerable human flesh.

Leading a Christian way of life, one of intense spiritual growth and work for the Kingdom, means allowing oneself to be shaped by Jesus’ love, having his same sentiments (cf. Phil 2:5), asking oneself continuously: What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What ought I do for Christ? (cf. Spiritual Exercises, 53).

I thank you for your dedication and love for the Church and your brothers and sisters, and I encourage you to continue making Christ present in your environment, giving apostolic meaning to all that you do.

And, please, do not stop praying for me. May Jesus bless you and may the Blessed Virgin protect you.

Francis