JUNE 1, 2012 –     Feast of Saint Hannibal Mary Di Francia
Renewal of Vows
Perpetual Profession

Introduction

“Praise and thanks every moment…
…to the Most Holy and Most Divine Sacrament…
…who has come and deigned to live among us!”

We are still within our year-round celebration of the 125th Anniversary of the coming of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament to this Pious Work – an occasion that invites us to remember, celebrate and share this gracious preference of Jesus not simply to come, but more generously and perhaps evermore patiently to dwell with us. Jesus chose to live with us – a humble community of consecrated men, who dedicated ourselves to be “worshippers and implorers for the highest and most beautiful mission of meriting and preparing vocations for God’s Kingdom”.

God’s choice of remaining in our midst proves that He favors and desires to be part of our way of life. He believed in us, not so much because we have proven ourselves worthy of such a trust, but for the reason that He knows that with his help, which can only be obtained if we ask for it, [if we pray for it]  we can do his will. Out of this unfathomable confidence, Jesus entrusted to us the fulfillment of His Divine Command to “Pray the Master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest”. The fulfillment of this holy charge, however, has – among others – a twin, inseparable and complementary implication. We are, first of all, obligated by this celestial decree ‘to pray’, and second, but equally significant to that, ‘to be living responses to this prayer’. We can say therefore, that the merit of our prayer is enfleshed in the manner we live our consecration, and the value of our consecrated life is enriched by our prayers.

Moreover, we ought to thank God continuously since our perpetual prayer earned us His generous answer. In fact, amid the countless blessings that we are indebted to God for are the gifts of persons of Bros. Carlo, Menard, Ronie, Kristian, and Charleston who are making profession of their Perpetual Vows today and of the 29 others whose Religious Vows they are renewing.

Jesus’ Life
What better message can we offer our brothers, which, in fact maybe a timely message as well for everyone here present, other than the message we can draw from the Gospel we have just heard.

We have here a very familiar biblical verse which with pride we call our own. This passage that defines our religious inspiration and consecration, recounts something not often explicitly depicted in the scriptures – the emotion of Jesus. “His heart was moved with pity…” St. Matthew related, describing Jesus’ feeling “at the sight of the crowds… because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd”.

Overwhelmed by compassion, Jesus “said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest’”. For us, however, who are his present disciples – with the aid of a more passionate interpretation of the scriptural verse from our own ‘Rogationist scholars’ – we take these words as a commandment divine in nature. Jesus demanded and commanded that we pray. He personally knew what prayer can do for he was a man of prayer himself. He believed that the obedience to this holy mandate will relieve his sheep of their troubles which consequently will mend his anguished heart.

Jesus’ compassion was not based on unconfirmed tale about the troubled and abandoned crowds, neither was this mournful situation merely an illusory description of people. The compassion that moved him was triggered by what He experienced firsthand while going “around to all towns and villages”. He personally tackled what the pitiable crowds live through. He opted to be with, to feel for, and to help the poor by becoming poor himself. He suffered the way they did.

Moreover, his compassion didn’t remain solely an unresponsive sentiment. He evangelized people not solely by pleasant words, but by works of mercy and justice. He confronted what caused his grief by “teaching… proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness”. These actions remind us of what Jesus himself proclaimed at the beginning of His Galilean ministry recounted elsewhere in the bible. He once “unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord’.” This, to a number of scriptural commentators, was Jesus’ vision and mission statement that guided particularly the few final years of his life, when he dispensed to those in need graces of which he considered himself merely as steward.

St. Hannibal’s Life
Now, we know of another figure of remarkable similarity with the person of Jesus. St. Hannibal Mary Di Francia, as it were, projected an image that resembles not just the humanity but the holiness of Jesus. Our saintly Founder fell in love with Jesus, the encounter with whom happened too often while he was at prayer.

He learned to value prayer early in his life and grew up to be a man of prayer. In fact, it was while at prayer that his life-long inspiration was given him. His constant encounter with the divine, alive and life-giving Host whose coming and permanent dwelling in his new-born institute he hastened in his lifetime, confirmed the merit of his special charism of praying, spreading the spirit of prayer and becoming himself a holy response to his very own prayer.

Like Jesus, St. Hannibal had firsthand encounter with the poor, initially only with Zancone, that was of a lasting impact on him. He was instantly “moved with pity”. The compassion Jesus felt for the crowds, “like sheep without a shepherd”, was at once his own. This emotional prelude burst into an unyielding apostolic work for and with the poor while enduring all forms of ordeal that couple a poor yet holy life. He preferred to be poor to be of service to the poor, instead of opting for a more thriving status readily accessible to a Canon like him, not to mention his having a birthright to a noble lifestyle.  Moreover, besieged by what seems to be a crippling destitution in the Avignone Quarters, he labored at peace and with hope to prove poverty inexcusable in the presence of God’s providential aid. Our continued simple existence all these years, gives attestation to our saintly Founder’s disposition as a steward of the graces, bestowed by God through him, for those in need – earning him the paternal title, ‘Father of the orphans and of the poor’.

As Jesus told to his disciples, ‘The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest’”, so did St. Hannibal handed on this Divine Command foremost among the little ones making them the first Rogationists. With this prayerful charism as the central message, he evangelized them empowering them to become his original co-laborers in fulfilling his mission while guided by the vision of making the Rogate universal.

Our Life
After years past a century, we can say that the universal appreciation and acceptance of our charism is a feat presently within our reach. What St. Hannibal simply envisioned in his lifetime to happen, therefore, now unfolds before our very eyes. Nonetheless, this dream-come-true is but a flicker to inflame a finer blaze. We hope still for a brighter future for God’s glory and in the service of those we consecrated ourselves to.

Our Philippine Quasi-Province recently assembled to plan for the years ahead of us. The gathering, launched in an invigorating, almost-divine atmosphere of a spiritual retreat, hauled each of us into our very hearts where we conceal our personal hopes for our religious family. Though constrained by time that made our deliberations seemingly mentally arduous, the candid yet sincere exchanges of ideas facilitated us in unveiling individual aspirations while shaping one vision. The openness of each one during the encounter – an unmistakable attestation of our Divine Superiors’ abiding presence and guidance, stirred us to name and claim a shared mission we all agreed to fulfill.

In this brief homily, I have offered you two models who enfleshed the values we envision ourselves to acquire in the years to come. While we strive in simplicity to re-appropriate the Rule of Life we now publicly profess to abide by, let me take this solemn opportunity to direct your attention on what we envisage ourselves to be. Let us transform ourselves to be men of prayer, agents of the New Evangelization and stewards of God’s graces with a preferential option for the poor.

We can only savor the sweetness of these fruits that we gathered together, if together we partake of it. Let not our personal endeavors, beautiful and noble though they are, blur our obligation to delineate our apostolic works according to the direction of life we have collectively designed to be traversed upon.

As brothers we discerned as one, as brothers let us get our mission done and be what we envision ourselves to be.