On February 17, 1836 the Congregation of the Resurrection was formed.
Today Resurrectionists all over the world celebrate in solidarity with each other this Founders’ Day,
reflecting on the spiritual riches of our Founders and praying that we continue to receive the graces
to proclaim our joy in the Hope of the Resurrection for generations to come!
Our Superior General, the head of the international Congregation of the Resurrection,
Fr. Evandro Miranda Rosa, CR, wrote a reflection for this day.
We would like to share excerpts from this reflection with you:
“[This Founders Day] bears the significance of being coalesced with the Jubilee Year, which we are exhorted to live out as [Pilgrims of Hope]. This uniqueness is indeed remarkable for us, the spiritual heirs of Bogdan Janski, Peter Semenenko and Jerome Kajsiewicz: three ideologically… disillusioned Polish emigres, whose faith was restored and fashioned anew by Christian hope… Indeed, for a long time now, hope – as an intrinsic element of the Paschal Mystery – has been acknowledged, enjoyed, proclaimed and witnessed by all Resurrectionists as a pivotal and encapsulating concept of the Community’s Charism. …
‘Hope is a seed deposited in our souls by the Holy Spirit. Hope moves us to desire good. However, corruption often turns our hearts towards false and delusive goods. Thus, God sends us challenges to strengthen and purify the gift of hope we have received, to move us to cooperate with it, and by our cooperation to transform the gift of hope into the virtue of hope.’
The above excerpt is taken from the “Notes on the Conference of Hope held by Peter Semenenko, CR to the Carmelite Nuns, on August 8, 1879, in Krakow, Poland.” … On the one hand, out of his earnest piety, Fr. Semenenko resolutely acknowledges the divine essence of hope as a gift from the Holy Spirit to the individual. On the other hand, he brilliantly discerns that hope is indeed entrusted to [humanity’s] care… to be evolved into a virtue. …
The mutual trust between Creator and creature lying behind Fr. Semenenko’s theological wisdom offers us insightful grounds to look into the … virtue of hope from the unexpected viewpoint in which the individual is the subject of God’s hope. … The Sacred Scriptures amply illustrate this aspect of hope. For instance, … a hoping God is delineated in the … creation narratives throughout Gen 1 – 9. Gen 1: 27-31 tells us that after God had created [humankind] in His own image, God blesses and entrusts His creation to [humankind] as God sees that all He had created was ‘very good’. Only a few chapters later, in Gen 6: 5-8, God is very disillusioned with the human race, which turned out to be wicked. God understands that evil has taken over [humankind’s] heart (8:21). However, God does not give up on [humanity], instead, through the righteous Noah and all his descendants, God establishes another covenant: God blesses and entrusts anew the world to [humankind]. God hopes that this time [humanity] will get it right and will not ruin the world again. …
If God hopes in us, why should we do otherwise? Fighting against sin and so molding the gift of hope into the virtue of hope is our daily task. … Therefore, on this Founders Day, let us also renew our belief and commitment to be the hope of God. … God will constantly offer us his blessings so that anchored in hope we may – again and again – choose and cherish life.”
~ Fr. Evandro Miranda Rosa, CR