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Choosing Anew the King, Full of Joy, Gratitude and Hope, Silver Jubilee Mass of Thanksgiving for the Consecration of Adrienne Rolwes, November 29, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Holy Infant Church, Ballwin, Missouri
Silver Jubilee Mass of Thanksgiving for the Consecration of Adrienne Rolwes
November 29, 2025
Phil 3:8-14, Ps 63, Jn 15:9-17
To watch a livestream of the Mass, please click here and go to 11/29/25 at 1:50 pm.
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.29.25_Adrienne_Rolwes_25th_Anniversary_Mass_1.mp3
The following text guided the homily:
Two days ago our country celebrated Thanksgiving and we Catholics, like the former leper who returned to thank Jesus for his miraculous healing, pondered how it is right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give God thanks. That man’s gratitude opened him to receive an even greater present that a miraculous bodily cure from Hansen’s Disease: the healing of his soul and the unsurpassable gift of salvation by faith.
Today we come to Adrienne’s home parish of Holy Infant in Ballwin to thank God with her for all the gifts with which he has blessed her: the gifts of life, of her large, loving family and so many friends, of her baptism, of his sealing her with the fire of the Holy Spirit; of so many times when he’s nourished her with his own Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity and healed her of her sins by his Divine Mercy; the gifts of so many graces in prayer, of her vocation to sanctity within his Mystical Body the Church, of her spiritual family of Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi, of his conforming her to his own poverty, chastity, obedience, of yoking her to himself in the light and sweet burden of the Cross; the gifts of his intense and unwavering fidelity to her and the grace of her persevering fidelity to him. We do so with faith that whenever we thank him, we, like the healed leper, open ourselves to even greater gifts, and we pray for the abundance of those gifts for Adrienne, for the Church and Regnum Christi, and for all of us.
We come here likewise to thank God for Adrienne and for all the ways that he, through her love for him and her love for us, has blessed us, has reminded us of him, has helped us learn how to relate to him, to pray to him, to follow him, to serve him, to speak of him, to love him and to spread love of him.
We come here also to thank you, Adrienne, for the ways you have corresponded to God’s graces and for the innumerable ways, big and small, you have sought to love us with the love with which Christ has filled you.
There are many Christians, not to mention priests, religious and consecrated men and women, who love only a little or by halves, who seek to follow God at a comfortable distance, who live life content just to pass, barely, on the bell curve of human behavior. Not you! You heard God’s word calling you to love him with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love your neighbor, and you have tried to do so with all you are and have. You’ve poured yourself with all the gifts God has given you into your vocation and already produced so much fruit, both visible and known only to God. Through teaching, preaching retreats, and giving spiritual direction, you’ve formed so many young women to desire God and holiness, to come to know what he is asking of them in life and to ask for the courage to respond wholeheartedly. Through community life and friendship, you have helped them persevere and remained firmly set on the rock who is Christ, even amid storms. Several of your friends have recently told me how grateful they are for your strengthening them in their own vocations through the way you use your very sharp and fast mind, vast reading, extraordinary ability to listen, incisive and commentaries, feminine and maternal intuition, and capacity to get to know people deeply and read them; through your sense of humor and occasional silliness, your patience, practicality, organizational ability and strategic intelligence, your loyalty and freedom; through your faith and trust that God can do anything, your love for God and hunger for holiness, your courage in the face of physical sufferings, and your childlike joy.
And so, first and foremost, we give thanks. We thank the Lord for all that he, the Almighty, has done for you, as we’ll sing later this Mass, echoing Our Lady’s Magnificat. We also sincerely thank you for showing us all how to receive well whatever God gives, how to respond to him with gratitude and grit, how to prioritize him and how to seek, humbly, prayerfully, and generously, to share him and his love with others.
The second overarching theme that frames our joy today is Regnum Christi, literally “The kingdom of Christ.” You consecrated yourself to Jesus a quarter of a century ago on November 26, 2000, which in the liturgical calendar of the Great Jubilee was the Solemnity of the Christ the King. We celebrated that Solemnity for the 100th time this past Sunday. Pope Pius XI in 1925 established this new, annual liturgical observance — in the midst of so much political and social confusion due to the ravages of World War I, the rise of Bolsevik communism in Russia and anti-clericalist secularism in Mexico, and other forces — to help Catholics better serve as agents of the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ, which was his papal motto. Upon establishing the Solemnity, Pope Pius said he was praying for three benefits. The first was freedom for the Church to fulfill the task given to her by Christ. The second was that rulers would recognize that they, too, are answerable to God for all their decisions. The final was that the faithful would “gain much strength and courage, enabling them to form their lives after the true Christian ideal,” allow Jesus to reign in their minds, wills, hearts, and bodies, and thereby draw others into Christ’s kingdom, so that together in this world they might become Christ’s good and faithful servants and inherit the kingdom prepared for them since the foundation of the world.
To understand you, Adrienne, we have to understand, first, the kingdom of God and how you see your life in relation to it. Jesus told so many parables of the Kingdom of God, about how to prepare for it, receive and enter it, about how it grows, about how to work for it. But he gave two small parables of its unsurpassable value. “The Kingdom of heaven,” he said, “is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it” (Mt 13:44-46). The Kingdom Christ gives, he indicates, is worth more than all of the other pearls in our collection, more than all of the other treasures we may have in life. Selling everything else we have for that kingdom is the wisest decision and greatest deal we can ever make. And like the man who discovers the buried treasure, we’re persuaded by its value “out of joy” to trade everything else for it.
You realized this at a young age, in fact at the age of 12, when Regnum Christi introduced you to Christ the King in a way you had never experienced before with such clarity, as a real Person who wanted a true friendship with you. You chose for today’s Gospel Christ the King’s words from the Last Supper that drove home to you what was life’s greatest treasure and most precious jewel. Jesus said to you, “Just as the Father loves me, so I love you. Remain in my love.” Jesus wanted you to grasp that he loved us — he loved you, Adrienne Rolwes — just as much as God the Father loved him. That he wanted you to remain in his love, not to run away from it, not to squirm saying, truthfully, you were unworthy of it, but to abide in his love, and to make his love the defining characteristic of your life. You heard him intimate to you he didn’t want you to relate to him as a slave or a servant, responding to him out of fear or duty, but a friend, approaching him as the best of friends. You saw the significance of the fact that, as a friend, he laid down his life to save yours, and you, as a grateful friend, wanted to give your life back with love to and for him. You heard his “new commandment,” his synthesis of the Christian life, and longed to love as he has loved you first. You learned that the Kingdom of God is indeed a kingdom where love reigns, where the love with which God the Father loves Jesus becomes the love with which Jesus loves us and the love with which we in turn love others. You discovered in that love that he was calling you, saying, as he does in the Gospel, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,” and you knew that that fruit would be the expression of the cooperation between his love and yours. And culminating all of this, you understood that this was the path to true and lasting happiness for which he had created you within the love of your parents Jim and Laura: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete.” Your joy is the fruit of that life of love, of that friendship, of that calling.
Having gotten a taste of the joy of Christ’s kingdom of love, you gradually were helped by God to seize it, like the wise pearl merchant or lucky treasure hunter. That’s one of the reasons why you chose St. Paul’s words to the Christians in Philippi today’s words as your first reading. The apostle testified, with words you wanted to make your own, “I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Once he came to know Jesus Christ, to experience his love, to taste and see his goodness, to understand the value of his kingdom, he treated all the other great experiences and blessings of his life until then as refuse in comparison. That’s why, he said, “I have accepted the loss of all things … that I may gain Christ and be found in him. He wanted “to know him and the power of his resurrection,” even to have a share of “his sufferings by being conformed to his death” so that “somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
You told me, Adrienne, in preparation for this Mass, “With the first reading I want to say that every sacrifice of these last 25 years has been absolutely worth it to me, not because the things I gave up were of little value, but because [Jesus] is everything and nothing compares to the gift of loving Him and being loved by Him, ‘because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.’ He alone is worthy of this kind of sacrifice.” It’s because you came to know Christ as your King, Friend, Good Shepherd, Loving Savior, Way, Truth, Resurrection, Life and Pearl of Great Price, that you were able to become his true disciple. Jesus told us in St. Luke’s Gospel that to be his disciple we must love him more than even mother and father, brothers and sisters, spouse and children, health and well-being, possession and lands, and even his or her own life (Lk 14:26-33). You grasped that and have sought to live that, and you have done so with attractive joy. You told me, “I know I am called to remain in His love, to be led to the heart of the Father through this love of Jesus, and to be the love of Jesus for all those He places in my life. This love is what gives meaning to my life and to all consecrated life.”
Often people are confused about what the Kingdom of Christ means, which is one of the reasons why many don’t seize it even after they hear Jesus’ words. In order to understand the kingdom, Jesus reminded us today in the Alleluia verse, we have to become childlike, to look at him and his kingdom with the wonder and trust of children rather than with the skepticism and cynicism of worldly adults. It’s only “little ones,” he said, who understand the “mysteries of the kingdom,” because he said clearly that his kingdom “does not belong to this world” (Jn 18:36). We can’t understand it in worldly categories, because it’s in, but not of, the world.
25 years ago next Month, just 17 days after you were consecrated, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, described in a homily to the catechists of the world what the kingdom is. He said, “The Kingdom of God is God. The Kingdom of God means: God exists. God is alive. God is present and acts in the world, in our, in my, life. God is not a faraway ‘ultimate cause.’ God is not the ‘great architect’ of deism, who created the machine of the world and is no longer part of it. On the contrary, God is the most present and decisive reality in each and every act of my life, in each and every moment of history.” To live in the Kingdom of God, which is the vocation not just of those in Regnum Christi but of every Christian, is to live with God in the present, to cooperate with his help and choose to make him the most decisive reality in every part of our existence. To make him the King of our mind, of our heart, of our time, of our energies, of our wallet, of everything we are and have.
This is something you have done through your consecration. Consecration means that something or someone has “cut oneself off” (sacer) in order to be “with” (con or cum) or for God. In your consecration, you have separated yourself from so many of the good things of the world to belong to God. While all of us are actually consecrated to God in this way in the Sacrament of Baptism, you have made a more intense form of consecration, to embrace evey more fully Christ in his poverty, in his chastity and in his obedience, because you have found in the poor, chaste and obedient Christ what you know is the truest wealth, truest love and truest freedom. You have espoused yourself to the divine Bridegroom in this way and made him the most present and decisive reality in who you are, how you live, what you choose.
You told me in preparation for this Jubilee Mass, “Though from the outside consecrated life can seem to be a waste, the love I have experienced in my vocation has made me happier than I ever could have imagined. It has given me the joy of which Jesus speaks: ‘that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.’”
That’s why, today, you will renew, once more, this covenantal commitment to him. Just like married couples renew their vows on their major anniversaries as an act of gratitude to God and love for each other, just as priests renew their commitments every year at the Chrism Mass, so today you renew joyfully the profession of your commitment to Christ— your yes, your Amen, your fiat — praying for the grace to be ever more consecrated with him within his consecration to God the Father. Today through this renewal you ask to become ever more fully his so your life can become an even greater commentary on the couplet he taught us to pray: “Thy Kingdom come! Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven!”
So the first word today that frames our prayer with you is thanksgiving. The second is the kingdom of Christ. The third and last, briefly, is hope.
We are celebrating your silver Jubilee within the context of the Jubilee of Hope. That’s so fitting because your whole life, like that of every faithful consecrated and religious, is meant to be a sign of hope. Hope, St. Paul suggested to the Ephesians, is, essentially, to live with God in the world (see Eph 2:14), to proclaim by one’s body language and words that God-with-us, Emmanuel, is still very much with us. The Season of Advent, which begins in just a few hours, prepares us, through pondering Jesus’ first coming in Bethlehem, to run forth to meet him now in all the ways he comes to us — in prayer, in the Sacraments, in his holy Word, in others — and also to be ready like the wise virgins in his Gospel parable (Matt 25:1-14) to sprint out to meet him with lamps lit when he comes at the end of time, or the end of our life, whichever comes first.
St. Paul described that hope in today’s first reading. He humbly wrote about his yearning to conform himself to the risen Christ and the power of his resurrection in day-to-day life, stating, “It is not that I have already taken hold of it or have already attained perfect maturity, but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it, since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ Jesus.” He doubled-down, declaring, “Forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.” Each year, in fact every day, is one year, one day, closer to that prize and goal of God’s upward calling. Every anniversary, every Jubilee, every renewal of vows for a consecrated woman, is a time to recommit oneself to the “pursuit in hope” of what all the spiritual blessings in this life are just a foretaste.
That’s one reason why St. John Paul II said that “the role of consecrated life” is to be “an eschatological sign” (Vita Consecrata 26) Eschaton in Greek means “last” or “final.” In a theological context, it means you’re supposed to be a sign of our “end” of the “fulfillment” of human life. Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount, “Where your treasure is, there also will your heart be” (Mt 6:21) and consecrated and religious are meant to show what every Christian is called to, how to place our heart, our treasure, in God, in his life and love, in a desire to be definitively and totally his. You’re meant to show us not only the path to holiness and lasting happiness, but are also meant to radiate for us a glimpse of the future joy of heaven.
Your whole life is meant to be a living Advent, an anticipation of the life to come. It’s supposed to be a musical crescendo, chanting more loudly and more beautifully what we sang in today’s Psalm, “O God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water. … My soul clings to you. Your right hand holds me fast!” You told me Adrienne that you love Psalm 63 because it expresses “my longing for Heaven, and also the longing for God which we should all have, of which consecrated persons by their vocation should remind the world.”
John Paul II had said in his beautiful 1996 exhortation on the consecrated life, “Immersed in the things of the Lord, the consecrated person remembers [and reminds everyone] that ‘here we have no lasting city’ (Heb 13:14), for ‘our commonwealth is in heaven’ (Phil 3:20), [and that] the ‘one thing necessary’ is to seek God’s ‘Kingdom and his righteousness’ (Mt 6:33), with unceasing prayer for the Lord’s coming” (VC 26). But he added that consecrated persons are more than simply “signs of the Spirit pointing to a new future enlightened by faith and by Christian hope.” He emphasized, “Eschatological expectation becomes mission, so that the Kingdom may become ever more fully established here and now. The prayer, ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’ is accompanied by another, ‘Thy Kingdom come!’ (Mt 6:10). Those who vigilantly await the fulfilment of Christ’s promises are able to bring hope to their brothers and sisters, … a hope founded on God’s promise contained in the revealed word: the history of humanity is moving towards ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ (Rev 21:1), where the Lord ‘will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away’ (Rev 21:4).The consecrated life is at the service of this definitive manifestation of the divine glory, when all flesh will see the salvation of God (cf. Lk 3:6; Is 40:5)” (VC 27).
And so we thank you, Adrienne, for being for us what a consecrated woman is called to be, an eschatological sign pointing toward God, toward his kingdom, toward heaven. We thank you for translating your ardent desire and eschatological expectation into mission, so that the Kingdom of Christ might be established more firmly here on earth, including among and within us here with you.
I personally rejoice that, by God’s providence, on February 16, 2012, you decided to come to a Theology on Tap talk I was giving on Conscience in the Public Square in all places, Providence, Rhode Island, so that a few months later (May 20), he might nudge you to email me asking for spiritual direction. For the second half of your first 25 years of consecrated life, as I’ve sought to help you grow in the meaning and fruitfulness of your vocation, I myself have been so blessed by seeing up close, even from what might be called the inside, your relationship to God — your fidelity to, and love for, Him, and the many ways he has graced you and challenged you — and have been inspired, by the way you have lived out your vocation, to be more wholehearted, committed, generous and faithful to the way I live my own.
As you prepare now to renew out of devotion the public profession of your vows by which you were consecrated to the Lord a quarter of a century ago, we promise to pray for you, as you will soon say, that you “may be faithful to the spirit that God has given to the Society [of Apostolic Life “Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi”], at the service of Christ and his Church, and thus achieve perfect charity.” We pray that the Lord will bless anew your “mission of making the Kingdom of Jesus Christ present” through service, humility, and availability, as you strive to bear witness, in communion with others, to love in word and deed, that Jesus speaks about in the Gospel. With you we ask Jesus, “the son of Mary and spouse of consecrated women” to be your “joy and crown on this earth until he brings us to the eternal wedding feast in his Kingdom.”
May he help you to thirst ever more for him like a desert for water, and eventually quench that thirst with his Living Water, as you continue your pursuit toward the prize of God’s upward calling, as your King and Bridegroom now comes from heaven to earth in the awesome eucharistein, this great Thanksgiving, which is the most fitting way to thank Him for all the ways he has blessed you and, through you, continues to bless us.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading I
Philippians 3:8-14
Brothers and sisters:
I consider everything as a loss
because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things
and I consider them so much rubbish,
that I may gain Christ and be found in him,
not having any righteousness of my own based on the law
but that which comes through faith in Christ,
the righteousness from God,
depending on faith to know him and the power of his resurrection
and the sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death,
if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
It is not that I have already taken hold of it
or have already attained perfect maturity,
but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it,
since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ Jesus.
Brothers and sisters, I for my part
do not consider myself to have taken possession.
Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind
but straining forward to what lies ahead,
I continue my pursuit toward the goal,
the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.
Responsorial Psalm — Ps 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9
R/. My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
O God, you are my God whom I seek;
for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts
like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water. R/.
Thus have I gazed toward you in the sanctuary
to see your power and your glory,
For your kindness is a greater good than life;
my lips shall glorify you. R/.
Thus will I bless you while I live;
lifting up my hands, I will call upon your name.
As with the riches of a banquet shall my soul be satisfied,
and with exultant lips my mouth shall praise you. R/.
You are my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy.
My soul clings fast to you;
your right hand upholds me. R/.
Alleluia (See Matthew 11:25)
Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth;
you have revealed to little ones the mysteries of the Kingdom.
Gospel (Jn 15:9-17)
Jesus said to his disciples:
“As the Father loves me, so I also love you.
Remain in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,
just as I have kept my Father’s commandments
and remain in his love.
“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you
and your joy might be complete.
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command you.
I no longer call you slaves,
because a slave does not know what his master is doing.
I have called you friends,
because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you
and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,
so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.
This I command you: love one another.”
The post Choosing Anew the King, Full of Joy, Gratitude and Hope, Silver Jubilee Mass of Thanksgiving for the Consecration of Adrienne Rolwes, November 29, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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By Father Roger Landry
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Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Holy Infant Church, Ballwin, Missouri
Silver Jubilee Mass of Thanksgiving for the Consecration of Adrienne Rolwes
November 29, 2025
Phil 3:8-14, Ps 63, Jn 15:9-17
To watch a livestream of the Mass, please click here and go to 11/29/25 at 1:50 pm.
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.29.25_Adrienne_Rolwes_25th_Anniversary_Mass_1.mp3
The following text guided the homily:
Two days ago our country celebrated Thanksgiving and we Catholics, like the former leper who returned to thank Jesus for his miraculous healing, pondered how it is right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give God thanks. That man’s gratitude opened him to receive an even greater present that a miraculous bodily cure from Hansen’s Disease: the healing of his soul and the unsurpassable gift of salvation by faith.
Today we come to Adrienne’s home parish of Holy Infant in Ballwin to thank God with her for all the gifts with which he has blessed her: the gifts of life, of her large, loving family and so many friends, of her baptism, of his sealing her with the fire of the Holy Spirit; of so many times when he’s nourished her with his own Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity and healed her of her sins by his Divine Mercy; the gifts of so many graces in prayer, of her vocation to sanctity within his Mystical Body the Church, of her spiritual family of Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi, of his conforming her to his own poverty, chastity, obedience, of yoking her to himself in the light and sweet burden of the Cross; the gifts of his intense and unwavering fidelity to her and the grace of her persevering fidelity to him. We do so with faith that whenever we thank him, we, like the healed leper, open ourselves to even greater gifts, and we pray for the abundance of those gifts for Adrienne, for the Church and Regnum Christi, and for all of us.
We come here likewise to thank God for Adrienne and for all the ways that he, through her love for him and her love for us, has blessed us, has reminded us of him, has helped us learn how to relate to him, to pray to him, to follow him, to serve him, to speak of him, to love him and to spread love of him.
We come here also to thank you, Adrienne, for the ways you have corresponded to God’s graces and for the innumerable ways, big and small, you have sought to love us with the love with which Christ has filled you.
There are many Christians, not to mention priests, religious and consecrated men and women, who love only a little or by halves, who seek to follow God at a comfortable distance, who live life content just to pass, barely, on the bell curve of human behavior. Not you! You heard God’s word calling you to love him with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love your neighbor, and you have tried to do so with all you are and have. You’ve poured yourself with all the gifts God has given you into your vocation and already produced so much fruit, both visible and known only to God. Through teaching, preaching retreats, and giving spiritual direction, you’ve formed so many young women to desire God and holiness, to come to know what he is asking of them in life and to ask for the courage to respond wholeheartedly. Through community life and friendship, you have helped them persevere and remained firmly set on the rock who is Christ, even amid storms. Several of your friends have recently told me how grateful they are for your strengthening them in their own vocations through the way you use your very sharp and fast mind, vast reading, extraordinary ability to listen, incisive and commentaries, feminine and maternal intuition, and capacity to get to know people deeply and read them; through your sense of humor and occasional silliness, your patience, practicality, organizational ability and strategic intelligence, your loyalty and freedom; through your faith and trust that God can do anything, your love for God and hunger for holiness, your courage in the face of physical sufferings, and your childlike joy.
And so, first and foremost, we give thanks. We thank the Lord for all that he, the Almighty, has done for you, as we’ll sing later this Mass, echoing Our Lady’s Magnificat. We also sincerely thank you for showing us all how to receive well whatever God gives, how to respond to him with gratitude and grit, how to prioritize him and how to seek, humbly, prayerfully, and generously, to share him and his love with others.
The second overarching theme that frames our joy today is Regnum Christi, literally “The kingdom of Christ.” You consecrated yourself to Jesus a quarter of a century ago on November 26, 2000, which in the liturgical calendar of the Great Jubilee was the Solemnity of the Christ the King. We celebrated that Solemnity for the 100th time this past Sunday. Pope Pius XI in 1925 established this new, annual liturgical observance — in the midst of so much political and social confusion due to the ravages of World War I, the rise of Bolsevik communism in Russia and anti-clericalist secularism in Mexico, and other forces — to help Catholics better serve as agents of the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ, which was his papal motto. Upon establishing the Solemnity, Pope Pius said he was praying for three benefits. The first was freedom for the Church to fulfill the task given to her by Christ. The second was that rulers would recognize that they, too, are answerable to God for all their decisions. The final was that the faithful would “gain much strength and courage, enabling them to form their lives after the true Christian ideal,” allow Jesus to reign in their minds, wills, hearts, and bodies, and thereby draw others into Christ’s kingdom, so that together in this world they might become Christ’s good and faithful servants and inherit the kingdom prepared for them since the foundation of the world.
To understand you, Adrienne, we have to understand, first, the kingdom of God and how you see your life in relation to it. Jesus told so many parables of the Kingdom of God, about how to prepare for it, receive and enter it, about how it grows, about how to work for it. But he gave two small parables of its unsurpassable value. “The Kingdom of heaven,” he said, “is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it” (Mt 13:44-46). The Kingdom Christ gives, he indicates, is worth more than all of the other pearls in our collection, more than all of the other treasures we may have in life. Selling everything else we have for that kingdom is the wisest decision and greatest deal we can ever make. And like the man who discovers the buried treasure, we’re persuaded by its value “out of joy” to trade everything else for it.
You realized this at a young age, in fact at the age of 12, when Regnum Christi introduced you to Christ the King in a way you had never experienced before with such clarity, as a real Person who wanted a true friendship with you. You chose for today’s Gospel Christ the King’s words from the Last Supper that drove home to you what was life’s greatest treasure and most precious jewel. Jesus said to you, “Just as the Father loves me, so I love you. Remain in my love.” Jesus wanted you to grasp that he loved us — he loved you, Adrienne Rolwes — just as much as God the Father loved him. That he wanted you to remain in his love, not to run away from it, not to squirm saying, truthfully, you were unworthy of it, but to abide in his love, and to make his love the defining characteristic of your life. You heard him intimate to you he didn’t want you to relate to him as a slave or a servant, responding to him out of fear or duty, but a friend, approaching him as the best of friends. You saw the significance of the fact that, as a friend, he laid down his life to save yours, and you, as a grateful friend, wanted to give your life back with love to and for him. You heard his “new commandment,” his synthesis of the Christian life, and longed to love as he has loved you first. You learned that the Kingdom of God is indeed a kingdom where love reigns, where the love with which God the Father loves Jesus becomes the love with which Jesus loves us and the love with which we in turn love others. You discovered in that love that he was calling you, saying, as he does in the Gospel, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,” and you knew that that fruit would be the expression of the cooperation between his love and yours. And culminating all of this, you understood that this was the path to true and lasting happiness for which he had created you within the love of your parents Jim and Laura: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete.” Your joy is the fruit of that life of love, of that friendship, of that calling.
Having gotten a taste of the joy of Christ’s kingdom of love, you gradually were helped by God to seize it, like the wise pearl merchant or lucky treasure hunter. That’s one of the reasons why you chose St. Paul’s words to the Christians in Philippi today’s words as your first reading. The apostle testified, with words you wanted to make your own, “I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Once he came to know Jesus Christ, to experience his love, to taste and see his goodness, to understand the value of his kingdom, he treated all the other great experiences and blessings of his life until then as refuse in comparison. That’s why, he said, “I have accepted the loss of all things … that I may gain Christ and be found in him. He wanted “to know him and the power of his resurrection,” even to have a share of “his sufferings by being conformed to his death” so that “somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
You told me, Adrienne, in preparation for this Mass, “With the first reading I want to say that every sacrifice of these last 25 years has been absolutely worth it to me, not because the things I gave up were of little value, but because [Jesus] is everything and nothing compares to the gift of loving Him and being loved by Him, ‘because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.’ He alone is worthy of this kind of sacrifice.” It’s because you came to know Christ as your King, Friend, Good Shepherd, Loving Savior, Way, Truth, Resurrection, Life and Pearl of Great Price, that you were able to become his true disciple. Jesus told us in St. Luke’s Gospel that to be his disciple we must love him more than even mother and father, brothers and sisters, spouse and children, health and well-being, possession and lands, and even his or her own life (Lk 14:26-33). You grasped that and have sought to live that, and you have done so with attractive joy. You told me, “I know I am called to remain in His love, to be led to the heart of the Father through this love of Jesus, and to be the love of Jesus for all those He places in my life. This love is what gives meaning to my life and to all consecrated life.”
Often people are confused about what the Kingdom of Christ means, which is one of the reasons why many don’t seize it even after they hear Jesus’ words. In order to understand the kingdom, Jesus reminded us today in the Alleluia verse, we have to become childlike, to look at him and his kingdom with the wonder and trust of children rather than with the skepticism and cynicism of worldly adults. It’s only “little ones,” he said, who understand the “mysteries of the kingdom,” because he said clearly that his kingdom “does not belong to this world” (Jn 18:36). We can’t understand it in worldly categories, because it’s in, but not of, the world.
25 years ago next Month, just 17 days after you were consecrated, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, described in a homily to the catechists of the world what the kingdom is. He said, “The Kingdom of God is God. The Kingdom of God means: God exists. God is alive. God is present and acts in the world, in our, in my, life. God is not a faraway ‘ultimate cause.’ God is not the ‘great architect’ of deism, who created the machine of the world and is no longer part of it. On the contrary, God is the most present and decisive reality in each and every act of my life, in each and every moment of history.” To live in the Kingdom of God, which is the vocation not just of those in Regnum Christi but of every Christian, is to live with God in the present, to cooperate with his help and choose to make him the most decisive reality in every part of our existence. To make him the King of our mind, of our heart, of our time, of our energies, of our wallet, of everything we are and have.
This is something you have done through your consecration. Consecration means that something or someone has “cut oneself off” (sacer) in order to be “with” (con or cum) or for God. In your consecration, you have separated yourself from so many of the good things of the world to belong to God. While all of us are actually consecrated to God in this way in the Sacrament of Baptism, you have made a more intense form of consecration, to embrace evey more fully Christ in his poverty, in his chastity and in his obedience, because you have found in the poor, chaste and obedient Christ what you know is the truest wealth, truest love and truest freedom. You have espoused yourself to the divine Bridegroom in this way and made him the most present and decisive reality in who you are, how you live, what you choose.
You told me in preparation for this Jubilee Mass, “Though from the outside consecrated life can seem to be a waste, the love I have experienced in my vocation has made me happier than I ever could have imagined. It has given me the joy of which Jesus speaks: ‘that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.’”
That’s why, today, you will renew, once more, this covenantal commitment to him. Just like married couples renew their vows on their major anniversaries as an act of gratitude to God and love for each other, just as priests renew their commitments every year at the Chrism Mass, so today you renew joyfully the profession of your commitment to Christ— your yes, your Amen, your fiat — praying for the grace to be ever more consecrated with him within his consecration to God the Father. Today through this renewal you ask to become ever more fully his so your life can become an even greater commentary on the couplet he taught us to pray: “Thy Kingdom come! Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven!”
So the first word today that frames our prayer with you is thanksgiving. The second is the kingdom of Christ. The third and last, briefly, is hope.
We are celebrating your silver Jubilee within the context of the Jubilee of Hope. That’s so fitting because your whole life, like that of every faithful consecrated and religious, is meant to be a sign of hope. Hope, St. Paul suggested to the Ephesians, is, essentially, to live with God in the world (see Eph 2:14), to proclaim by one’s body language and words that God-with-us, Emmanuel, is still very much with us. The Season of Advent, which begins in just a few hours, prepares us, through pondering Jesus’ first coming in Bethlehem, to run forth to meet him now in all the ways he comes to us — in prayer, in the Sacraments, in his holy Word, in others — and also to be ready like the wise virgins in his Gospel parable (Matt 25:1-14) to sprint out to meet him with lamps lit when he comes at the end of time, or the end of our life, whichever comes first.
St. Paul described that hope in today’s first reading. He humbly wrote about his yearning to conform himself to the risen Christ and the power of his resurrection in day-to-day life, stating, “It is not that I have already taken hold of it or have already attained perfect maturity, but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it, since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ Jesus.” He doubled-down, declaring, “Forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.” Each year, in fact every day, is one year, one day, closer to that prize and goal of God’s upward calling. Every anniversary, every Jubilee, every renewal of vows for a consecrated woman, is a time to recommit oneself to the “pursuit in hope” of what all the spiritual blessings in this life are just a foretaste.
That’s one reason why St. John Paul II said that “the role of consecrated life” is to be “an eschatological sign” (Vita Consecrata 26) Eschaton in Greek means “last” or “final.” In a theological context, it means you’re supposed to be a sign of our “end” of the “fulfillment” of human life. Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount, “Where your treasure is, there also will your heart be” (Mt 6:21) and consecrated and religious are meant to show what every Christian is called to, how to place our heart, our treasure, in God, in his life and love, in a desire to be definitively and totally his. You’re meant to show us not only the path to holiness and lasting happiness, but are also meant to radiate for us a glimpse of the future joy of heaven.
Your whole life is meant to be a living Advent, an anticipation of the life to come. It’s supposed to be a musical crescendo, chanting more loudly and more beautifully what we sang in today’s Psalm, “O God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water. … My soul clings to you. Your right hand holds me fast!” You told me Adrienne that you love Psalm 63 because it expresses “my longing for Heaven, and also the longing for God which we should all have, of which consecrated persons by their vocation should remind the world.”
John Paul II had said in his beautiful 1996 exhortation on the consecrated life, “Immersed in the things of the Lord, the consecrated person remembers [and reminds everyone] that ‘here we have no lasting city’ (Heb 13:14), for ‘our commonwealth is in heaven’ (Phil 3:20), [and that] the ‘one thing necessary’ is to seek God’s ‘Kingdom and his righteousness’ (Mt 6:33), with unceasing prayer for the Lord’s coming” (VC 26). But he added that consecrated persons are more than simply “signs of the Spirit pointing to a new future enlightened by faith and by Christian hope.” He emphasized, “Eschatological expectation becomes mission, so that the Kingdom may become ever more fully established here and now. The prayer, ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’ is accompanied by another, ‘Thy Kingdom come!’ (Mt 6:10). Those who vigilantly await the fulfilment of Christ’s promises are able to bring hope to their brothers and sisters, … a hope founded on God’s promise contained in the revealed word: the history of humanity is moving towards ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ (Rev 21:1), where the Lord ‘will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away’ (Rev 21:4).The consecrated life is at the service of this definitive manifestation of the divine glory, when all flesh will see the salvation of God (cf. Lk 3:6; Is 40:5)” (VC 27).
And so we thank you, Adrienne, for being for us what a consecrated woman is called to be, an eschatological sign pointing toward God, toward his kingdom, toward heaven. We thank you for translating your ardent desire and eschatological expectation into mission, so that the Kingdom of Christ might be established more firmly here on earth, including among and within us here with you.
I personally rejoice that, by God’s providence, on February 16, 2012, you decided to come to a Theology on Tap talk I was giving on Conscience in the Public Square in all places, Providence, Rhode Island, so that a few months later (May 20), he might nudge you to email me asking for spiritual direction. For the second half of your first 25 years of consecrated life, as I’ve sought to help you grow in the meaning and fruitfulness of your vocation, I myself have been so blessed by seeing up close, even from what might be called the inside, your relationship to God — your fidelity to, and love for, Him, and the many ways he has graced you and challenged you — and have been inspired, by the way you have lived out your vocation, to be more wholehearted, committed, generous and faithful to the way I live my own.
As you prepare now to renew out of devotion the public profession of your vows by which you were consecrated to the Lord a quarter of a century ago, we promise to pray for you, as you will soon say, that you “may be faithful to the spirit that God has given to the Society [of Apostolic Life “Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi”], at the service of Christ and his Church, and thus achieve perfect charity.” We pray that the Lord will bless anew your “mission of making the Kingdom of Jesus Christ present” through service, humility, and availability, as you strive to bear witness, in communion with others, to love in word and deed, that Jesus speaks about in the Gospel. With you we ask Jesus, “the son of Mary and spouse of consecrated women” to be your “joy and crown on this earth until he brings us to the eternal wedding feast in his Kingdom.”
May he help you to thirst ever more for him like a desert for water, and eventually quench that thirst with his Living Water, as you continue your pursuit toward the prize of God’s upward calling, as your King and Bridegroom now comes from heaven to earth in the awesome eucharistein, this great Thanksgiving, which is the most fitting way to thank Him for all the ways he has blessed you and, through you, continues to bless us.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading I
Philippians 3:8-14
Brothers and sisters:
I consider everything as a loss
because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things
and I consider them so much rubbish,
that I may gain Christ and be found in him,
not having any righteousness of my own based on the law
but that which comes through faith in Christ,
the righteousness from God,
depending on faith to know him and the power of his resurrection
and the sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death,
if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
It is not that I have already taken hold of it
or have already attained perfect maturity,
but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it,
since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ Jesus.
Brothers and sisters, I for my part
do not consider myself to have taken possession.
Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind
but straining forward to what lies ahead,
I continue my pursuit toward the goal,
the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.
Responsorial Psalm — Ps 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9
R/. My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
O God, you are my God whom I seek;
for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts
like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water. R/.
Thus have I gazed toward you in the sanctuary
to see your power and your glory,
For your kindness is a greater good than life;
my lips shall glorify you. R/.
Thus will I bless you while I live;
lifting up my hands, I will call upon your name.
As with the riches of a banquet shall my soul be satisfied,
and with exultant lips my mouth shall praise you. R/.
You are my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy.
My soul clings fast to you;
your right hand upholds me. R/.
Alleluia (See Matthew 11:25)
Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth;
you have revealed to little ones the mysteries of the Kingdom.
Gospel (Jn 15:9-17)
Jesus said to his disciples:
“As the Father loves me, so I also love you.
Remain in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,
just as I have kept my Father’s commandments
and remain in his love.
“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you
and your joy might be complete.
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command you.
I no longer call you slaves,
because a slave does not know what his master is doing.
I have called you friends,
because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you
and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,
so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.
This I command you: love one another.”
The post Choosing Anew the King, Full of Joy, Gratitude and Hope, Silver Jubilee Mass of Thanksgiving for the Consecration of Adrienne Rolwes, November 29, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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