For some years now the Lord has spoken much to the Shalom Community about celibate vocations and has announced a new time of fruitfulness for this way of life. The 2019 Escuta Magazine, on page 108, reports a prophecy: “men and women dressed in white, like health professionals, treating the wounds of people who were coming from war, wounded, bleeding” – these men and women would be the celibates that Christ has constituted as a remedy for the Community and for all humanity, and this authentic living has a great spiritual force.
This prophecy is certainly touched in our ordinary life and in the mysterious force that exists in the evangelization of the young. Talking about this, I remember a phrase from a Community Spectacle, the Anchieta Musical, which says: “Every wound hides a mission, every limit hides an election!”. This is exactly the dynamic of the Spouse with those He draws to Celibacy for the Kingdom of Heaven.
As the Risen Spouse who bears the marks of the Cross, Jesus presents Himself by saying, “Your wound also hides a mission, your weakness hides a strength, your illness hides a remedy!” This is because the celibate is not called to be perfect, but to be healed. It is by this call that The True Physician, The Bridegroom, wishes to heal, and from this response of love, He wants to make of each celibate also a remedy for the life of the Community, for the life of young people and for the whole Church.
How can one be a doctor without recognizing that one is sick? There again the celibate recognizes that he has wounds, but that these, through the offering to the Spouse, can be glorious. And in the struggles and offerings of each day, he chooses to embrace the cross that makes the wounds living marks of the love that overflows and that heals.
In this troubled and painful time, these wounded men and women stand before us. Young people in particular are a crowd to be healed and consoled by the balm of Christ’s love. And this is exactly what happens in practice: in the life of the celibate, young people find the incarnate love of the Crucified Christ for them, they find true fathers and mothers who, by giving life, serve as a remedy for the world.
It is also important to touch the other way of this mystery: if the celibate is the remedy for the life of the young and the primacy of his giving, the young also become the remedy for the life of the celibate. In that wounded youth, the celibate meets Christ. In the wounds of these young people, the celibate is confronted with his own truth; with the marks that he also bears, and rediscovers the need to always return to the love of the Spouse, to what is essential.
The Shalom Community needs celibates! The world needs celibates! The youth need celibates! May this invitation echo to the ends of the earth!
