World Day for Consecrated Life, February 2

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World Day for Consecrated Life, February 2

Celebrated in parishes Feb. 4-5, 2023

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About World Day for Consecrated Life

In 1997, Pope Saint John Paul II instituted a day for women and men in consecrated life. This global celebration is attached to the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord on February 2nd. This Feast is also known as Candlemas Day; the day on which candles are blessed symbolizing Christ who is the light of the world. So too, those in consecrated life are called to reflect the light of Jesus Christ to all peoples.

The celebration of World Day for Consecrated Life is transferred to the following Sunday in order to highlight the gift of consecrated persons for the whole Church.

There are several ways to celebrate World Day for Consecrated Life. Invite sisters, brothers, and priests to publicly renew their vows at Mass, send cards of support to newer entrants, ask to visit a mother house to meet and pray with sisters, brothers, and priests, invite a vocation director to visit your classroom, Board meeting, or faith group to learn more about consecrated life. Send flowers, make a donation to a religious community, or invite someone to discern their vocation to consecrated life!

Letter from Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life for World Day of Consecrated Life, 2023.

Resources to celebrate World Day for Consecrated Life

Celebrate with Abundant Hope!

Spark a conversation about religious life using the Abundant Hope prayer cards, Abundant Hope handout, and Abundant Hope video series of newer entrants and senior professed members talking about their lived experiences of intergenerational and intercultural vowed communal life. There are 76 videos of sisters, brothers, and priests sharing abundant hope on the NRVC YouTube Channel. On World Day for Consecrated Life, gather together to talk about unwavering hope, invite others to pray for abundant hope, and record your own short videos to post on your social media sites to join this global celebration!

Resources are also available at the USCCB

Homily links from the pontificate of Pope Francis

2022 Papal Homily for the 26th World Day for Consecrated Life

What is our vision of consecrated life? The world often sees it as “a waste”, a relic of the past, something useless. But we, the Christian community, men and women religious, what do we see? Are our eyes turned only inward, yearning for something that no longer exists, or are we capable of a farsighted gaze of faith, one that looks both within and beyond? I am greatly edified when I see older consecrated men and women whose eyes are bright, who continue to smile and in this way to give hope to the young. Let us think of all those times when we encountered such persons, and bless God for this. For their eyes are full of hope and openness to the future.

2021 Papal Homily for the 25th World Day for Consecrated Life

Some people are masters of complaining, doctors of complaining, they are very good at complaining! No, complaining imprisons us: “the world no longer listens to us” – how often do we hear that - or “we have no more vocations, so we have to close the house”, or “these are not easy times” – “ah, don’t tell me!...”. And so the duet of complaints begins. It can happen that even as God patiently tills the soil of history and our own hearts, we show ourselves impatient and want to judge everything immediately: now or never, now, now, now. In this way, we lose that “small” but most beautiful of virtues: hope.

2020 Papal Homily for the 24th World Day for Consecrated Life

Why did you do this? Because you fell in love with Jesus, you saw everything in him, and enraptured by his gaze, you left the rest behind. Religious life is this vision. It means seeing what really matters in life. It means welcoming the Lord’s gift with open arms, as Simeon did. This is what the eyes of consecrated men and women behold: the grace of God poured into their hands. The consecrated person is one who every day looks at himself or herself and says: “Everything is gift, all is grace”.

2019 Papal Homily for the 23rd World Day for Consecrated Life

To follow Jesus is not a decision taken once and for all, it is a daily choice…Otherwise, Jesus becomes only a nice memory of the past. --Pope Francis, 2019

2018 Papal Homily for the 22nd World Day of Consecrated Life

Everything started in an encounter with the Lord. Our journey of consecration was born of an encounter and a call…We have to remember that we can never renew our encounter with the Lord without others; we can never leave others behind, never pass over generations, but must accompany one another daily, keeping the Lord always at the center. --Pope Francis, 2018

2017 Papal Homily for the 21st World Day of Consecrated Life

The mentality of survival makes us reactionaries, fearful, slowly and silently shutting ourselves up in our houses and in our own preconceived notions. It makes us look back, to the glory days – days that are past – and rather than rekindling the prophetic creativity born of our founders’ dreams, it looks for shortcuts in order to evade the challenges knocking on our doors today…The temptation of survival makes us forget grace; it turns us into professionals of the sacred but not fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters of that hope to which we are called to bear prophetic witness. --Pope Francis, 2017

2016 Papal Homily for 20th World Day of Consecrated Life

Consecrated men and women are called first and foremost to be men and women of encounter. Indeed, the vocation does not originate from a plan we have designed “on the drawing board”, but from a grace of the Lord which touches us, through a life-changing encounter. --Pope Francis, 2016

2015 Papal Homily for 19th World Day of Consecrated Life

For us, as consecrated persons, this path takes the form of the rule, marked by the charism of the founder. For all of us, the essential rule remains the Gospel, yet the Holy Spirit, in his infinite creativity, also gives it expression in the various rules of the consecrated life which are born of the sequela Christi, and thus from this journey of abasing oneself by serving. --Pope Francis, 2015

2014 Papal Homily for 18th World Day of Consecrated Life

And in the consecrated life we live the encounter between the young and the old, between observation and prophecy. Let’s not see these as two opposing realities! Let us rather allow the Holy Spirit to animate both of them, and a sign of this is joy: the joy of observing, of walking within a rule of life; the joy of being led by the Spirit, never unyielding, never closed, always open to the voice of God that speaks, that opens, that leads us and invites us to go towards the horizon. --Pope Francis, 2014