Search for God should be 'first apostolate', Pope Francis tells Augustinians

Vatican City, Sep 13, 2019 / 10:47 am

Pope Francis told members of a men's religious order Friday that the first goal personally and in their apostolates should be an orientation of their hearts toward God, who is Love.

"Your hearts always reaching out to God. Always! Each member of the community should be oriented, as the first 'holy purpose' of every day, to the search for God," the pope told about 150 members of the Order of Saint Augustine Sept. 13.

"This 'direction' should be declared, confessed, witnessed among you without false modesty," he continued.

"The search for God cannot be obscured by other purposes, although generous and apostolic. Because that is your first apostolate. We are here – you should be able to say among yourselves every day – because we walk towards God. And because God is Love, we walk towards Him in love."

Members of the Order of Saint Augustine, also referred to as Augustinians, live as mendicants directed by the Rule of St. Augustine. The order was gathered in Rome this week for its general chapter.

In the order's audience with Pope Francis, he noted a writing of Fr. Agostino Trapè, now deceased, who was prior general of the Augustinians from 1965 to 1971.

Fr. Trapè wrote that according to the Rule of St. Augustine, "charity is not only the end and means of religious life, but it is also its center: from charity it must proceed and charity must be oriented, with a perennial movement of circular causality, every thought, every affection, every attitude, every action."

Pope Francis advised thinking on a meditation St. Augustine once gave on the Church as "'mater charitas,' a mother who cries for the division of children and calls and calls for unity of charity."

St. Augustine wrote to St. Jerome about the experience of charity in community, the pope noted. St. Augustine said he finds it "very natural to abandon myself entirely to the affection of such people, especially when I am oppressed by the scandals of the world: in their hearts I find rest free of concern, being convinced that there is God in it."

"Dear brothers, this is also the challenge and responsibility for you today," the pope urged, "to live in your communities in such a way as to make the experience of God together and be able to show it alive to the world!"

He explained that this is a big responsibility and asked them to focus on living their community life well, so that they can show God to the outside world "in a clear, courageous way, without compromise or hesitation."

"You Augustinians have been called to bear witness to that warm, living, visible, contagious charity of the Church, through a life of community that clearly shows the presence of the Risen One and his Spirit," he said.

He quoted his 2018 apostolic exhortation on the call to holiness in today's world, Gaudete et exsultate, saying, "Community life ... is made up of many small daily details ... The community that preserves the small details of love, where the members take care of each other and constitute an open and evangelizing space, is the place of the presence of the Risen One who is sanctifying it according to the plan of the Father."