Another year unfolds before our eyes. What does it hold in store for us? It can be disheartening when we look at the global pictures that come across our screens regularly. Rarely is the ‘good news’ celebrated! Perhaps it’s important to reflect on what attracts us to the darker side of life. Indeed, it alerts us to the fragility of life, its finitude nature and the unexpected events that can dislodge us from our complacency. Yet this dark side can unleash the potential for goodness. Recall the extraordinary efforts on the front lines of disasters seen over recent weeks – the first responders and emergency workers, the firefighters and those who rescue in cyclone regions along with our police and ambulance personnel. Stories emerge from disasters of extraordinary heroism and courage, where people intuitively rush in to assist and rescue a person’s life.

This month the Church holds up before us the consecrated life as a movement to be celebrated. In many ways the founding mothers and fathers of our religious institutes have had the qualities of first responders. In the words of St Mary of the Cross Mackillop “never see a need without doing something about it”, these pioneers of ours enacted this motto. Looking around at the vast expression of charisms given to the Church and the world, they assure us of an extraordinary outreach by religious women and men to those most in need around us.

In the letter written by the Dicastery to celebrate consecrated life in the Church, entitled ‘Prophecy of presence: consecrated life where dignity is wounded and faith is tested’, the Dicastery reflected on the various places it has visited. They met consecrated persons living amongst complex and sometimes very dangerous situations. We must wonder – what is it that keeps consecrated women and men there? How can they sustain the empathy and resilience to remain in places where hopelessness can reign? They are in the ‘dark places’ of our world impacted by the aberrant power plays, greed and destruction of the common home that is meant to sustain them. ‘Remaining’ requires a deep-seated hope that in being present there is a sharing in the cross of Christ made real in these people’s circumstances. Powerless in the face of oppressive forces and destructive impacts of climate, our consecrated women and men stand side by side denouncing the situations and structures that deny the people they are amongst, their rightful justice and inherent human dignity. Can we call such expressions ‘good news’? While it may not resolve the harm and hurt being experienced, their presence lightens the load by assuring them that someone notices and someone cares and wants to do something about it with them.

As we look across our vast continent here in Australia, it is possible to find such ‘good news’ happening in the day-to-day events of life. Our consecrated religious in isolated communities living amongst Aboriginal peoples and those living in outback regions providing a presence among the people, assuring them that some-one cares. Then there are those who visit in parishes, schools and health-care centres and those involved in accompanying others in spiritual direction and supervision. Some exercising their ministries as pastoral associates, physicians, psychologists and nurses, teachers and administrators. It was St Paul who captured the richness of church in writing of the gifts of the Spirit that spill out and touch the lives of those around them:

There are different kinds of gifts. But it is the same Holy Spirit who gives them. 5 There are different kinds of work to be done but the work is for the same Lord. 6 There are different ways of doing this work. But it is the same God who uses all these ways in all people. 7 The Spirit works in each person in one way or another for the good of all. ( I Corinthians 124-7 New Life Version)

As this new year unfolds before us may each of us find ways to discover the ‘good news’ of being consecrated people wherever we are situated. It may mean waiting patiently in the dark side of life at times, unpleasant as that is, to uncover a goodness that breaks through in the glimpse of hope.

Indeed, the words of hope are offered at the conclusion of the letter from the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated life and Societies of Apostolic Life (DICLSAL):

We entrust each and every one of you to the Lord, that he may make you steadfast in hope and gentle in heart, capable of remaining, of consoling, of beginning anew: and thus to be, in the Church and in the world, a prophecy of presence and a seed of peace.