For us consecrated people, the challenge is to live the Gospel in daily life
On the eve of World Day of Consecrated Life, we give space for testimonies: consecrated women and men, signs of God’s mercy
By Debora Niero
Also this year, on February 2, 2025, we celebrate World Day of Consecrated Life: a day we celebrate together, to give thanks to the Lord for the gift of our vocation and mission in the Church and in the world.
My name is Debora Niero and, as a Diocesan Pastoral Cooperator of the Diocese of Treviso, consecrated now for ten years, I live with confidence this time of God, grace and joy.
I really like to remember the help of God, the “lover of life,” recalling that in Sacred Scripture, the Lord is presented as a God
who loves life: he desires it and joyfully spreads it in manifold and surprising forms, in the universe he created and sustained in existence. He loves, in a special way, every man and woman, called to share filial dignity and to be sharers in the same divine life.
Let us therefore trust in the special grace of this jubilee year, which brings the divine gift of “new beginnings,” of Hope, of Life in abundance, of Beauty that always surprises.
I consider it nice to remember in this year, as a consecrated woman, a phrase of Mother Teresa of Calcutta who said, “I suffer, but I smile even more.” This was her way of doing things: facing everything with a smile: “I want to be an apostle of joy even in the darkness.” When one understands in what context this faith matured, many things become clear. Mother Teresa in talking about God’s mercy, preferred to use the word “tenderness.”
She used to speak of God’s tender love for us, recalling the image dear to the prophet Hosea, of a very personal love and mercy.
In this icon of God’s tenderness, I believe that, in some way, Mother Teresa prefigured the missionary magisterium of Pope Francis. For he speaks to us of an outgoing Church, on the side of the poor and the most fragile people, attentive, open, close and welcoming.
As a consecrated woman, thanks to my lived experience in mission in Latin America
and pastoral experience with people in the Christian communities where I live and share my days,
I have encountered in the poor and vulnerable people the Face of a God
and it’s unconditional love, radiant presence, hope, beauty.
For us consecrated people, the challenge is to live the Gospel, through a total dedication to Christ.![]()
This awareness must qualify our whole life.
Of course, each person brings with him or her own frailties and weaknesses, with which they must inevitably be confronted in order to verify how much more they still need to grow, aware more and more that our life, lived in the everyday and in the ordinary, is a privileged situation cultivated in an intimate relationship with the Lord of history.
In this jubilee year, I hope that there will be more and more communities where we love each other and experience mercy in terms of listening, patience, docility, acceptance and meekness.
Just as I wish everyone to be able to be hopeful, to always contemplate the goodness of life and the work of God, and to be industrious in making all this grow so that richness of new life is always generated.
Debora Niero
( Diocesan Pastoral Cooperator of the Diocese of Treviso)