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A Post-2000 Way of Living the Religious Life Rt. Honorable John Gummer is a Member of the British Parliament and a convert from the Anglican Church. He is also the Vice-President of the Path to Rome International Conference series. I am just returning from Avila and the International Conference of the Path to Rome. As befits a reticent Englishman, I have never found it easy to join in the more exuberant manifestations of religion. As one lovely Spanish lady said to me - “You English - you are so calm” and she lowered her hands slowly. “We Spanish, we are all over the place,” and she waved her arms wildly in the air, making her point with great gusto and merry laughter. It was the embarrassment of “hearts on the sleeve” that I feared and cannot cope with. This conference was organised by Miles Jesu, one of the smaller of the new religious movements founded by a Spanish Claretian, Fr. Duran. I had been to previous meetings but as part of a group led by Mgr. Graham Leonard. Now I was to be thrown in alone. So it was with some trepidation that I arrived in Avila, the small town some hour and a half north of Madrid which had produced the great St. Teresa of Jesus. A dreadful journey by one of the worst of airlines – Iberia – destroyed my earlier programme and meant that I was tired and thoroughly out of sorts. I longed just to collapse on the bed and sleep but gently my host, a young man from Miles Jesu, urged me to go to the hour of recollection for the speakers. Unwillingly, but I hope not ungraciously, I agreed, washed, and made my way to the improvised chapel in one of the hotel’s function rooms. Then began the most worthwhile of weekends. Most of the speakers were there and we started with a meditation on the five mysteries which the Pope has just added to the Rosary. Quietly authoritative, a priest member of Miles Jesu took us through, restating the central truths of each of the events with a freshness and directness that struck home with great effect. Then 20 minutes of adoration, followed by the litany of humility that Cardinal Merry del Val used to say every day after Mass. It could not have been a more fitting way of helping the speakers prepare for their part in the Conference. My ill humour and tiredness were gone, dissolved not only by this thoughtfully appropriate introduction but by the warm kindliness of the members of Miles Jesu. This is not the practiced bonhomie of the proprietor of a select hotel. It is a very special warmth that radiates from these consecrated young people. One had a huge awareness of being caught up by them in their fulfilled life of prayer and absolute dedication. The young doctor working among orphans in the Ukraine; the boy from Chicago, half black and half Spanish, who spoke movingly of his conversion; the young man who, with courtesy and an infectious grin, ran the conference of more than 200, without a hitch. We came to share our experiences of coming into the Church with other converts and cradle Catholics: a Spanish former Protestant: the compellingly horrific story told by a former mass abortionist: the lapsed who had returned to the Faith. Add three Cardinals and two Masses and it was a full and fascinating programme. However, I at least, went home confirmed and encouraged most by a dozen or more young people who were living the religious life in a way particularly appropriate for the new millennium. Thank you. |