Be inspired by ordinary people’s holiness, Tagle tells priests, nuns

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, the Manila Archbishop, on Wednesday urged priests and nuns to strive to be consistently holy and to draw inspiration from Christ.

“We admit that we have to be inspired by the dynamism of holiness that many unsung heroes of the faith manifest to us,” Tagle said in a speech during the 5th Philippine Conference on New Evangelization (PCNE) at University of Santo Tomas in Manila.

“Let’s admit that holiness of life we see among simple mothers and fathers, the simple janitors, the simple cleaner in the canteen, the laundrywoman who suffers in order to send her child to school,” he added.

‘Moved with compassion’

The PCNE, introduced by Tagle in 2013, is an annual event that aims to rekindle faith.

With the theme “Moved with Compassion: Feed the Multitude,” this year’s PCNE aims to celebrate the Year of the Clergy and Consecrated Persons as declared by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.

Around 2,000 priests and nuns attended Wednesday’s start of the five-day event.

Tagle said one should strive to be holy from the moment of baptism and not only during their ordination.

From baptism

“We do not strive to be holy just because we are ordained. We do not strive to be holy because we are nuns or brothers. We strive to be holy because we are baptized. We should strive to be holy from the moment we were baptized,” he said.

The cardinal said Jesus veered away from the practice of Jewish priesthood of his time, where “holiness is by separating the clean from the unclean.”

“Jesus was all around in the marketplace of life. He was not confined there in the temple … God comes in the human face, and Jesus the priest is truly divine, truly human, in existential solidarity with sinners,” he said. —Tina G. Santos

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