Please wait while loading...Formula of Commitment for the BHF
Reader: A reading from the Acts of the Apostles 2:36-47
Shepherd: Declare your intention before all the brothers and sisters assembled here. Candidate: Lord my God, with the desire to belong to You more and to live more deeply the consecration of my Baptism, I want to commit myself for one year (or: for the rest of my life) in the Beatitudes of the Holy Family. I ask You to make me a disciple of Jesus, the Lamb without stain who loved me and gave Himself up for me, and to conform myself to Him in His offering of love.
Shepherd: Do you wish to be like Christ, chaste and prayerful?
Candidate: I wish to have no other preoccupation than that which is the most important, to love You my God and to make you loved. I want to live in watchful and joyous expectation of the coming of the Kingdom through unceasing prayer, through praise, adoration, active love of my neighbor, through the spirituality of the Community of the Beatitudes and all the ways it can help me to do so. I commit myself to a life of permanent conversion so as to allow myself to be transformed by the fire of the Holy Spirit and to contribute to the renewal of the Church. Whether married or single, I will be a witness to the value of love and life.
Shepherd: Do you wish to be like Jesus in His poverty?
Candidate: I wish to live in trusting abandonment to Providence, putting all my hope, not in the things of this world which is passing away, but in You alone, following the example of the Virgin Mary and under her motherly protection. I commit myself to sharing my goods by diligently tithing10% of my income.
Shepherd: Do you wish to be like Christ, servile and obedient?
Candidate: According to my capacity, I commit myself to collaborating in the works of mercy and missionary activities of the Church, particularly those of the Community. I will openly submit my charitable, pastoral, and missionary commitments to the Shepherd of the House to which I am affiliated with a view to greater communion and to making these works more fruitful. I am fully aware that for the duration of my commitment, I am exercising these works in the name of the Community.
Shepherd: Do you wish to live in communion with the Community of the Beatitudes?
Candidate: I commit myself to living with the Community of the Beatitudes in a fraternal communion of spirit, prayer and mutual assistance in a common service of the Church. I will live out this communion in particular with the house of (name of the house), to which I will be affiliated, and with all the other members of the Beatitudes of the Holy Family, in the humility and discretion of unworthy servants. I commit myself to undertaking the Church mission which has been entrusted to me, in communion with the Community and in submission to the authorities of the Church. I wish to follow the Lamb wherever He leads me, to have no other will than His own, to carry my cross every day in the footsteps of Jesus, in trust and joyful hope of living the Beatitudes, as revealed to us by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. I unite myself in silent oblation to the Lamb of God, participating already in the definitive victory of the Lion of Judah, praying the words of His own prayer: "May they be One as you and I, Father, are One." I commit myself to living in such a way as the world may say: "See how they love one another."
Shepherd: In turn, the Community commits itself to supporting you in prayer and in helping you undertake your commitment for which it is responsible in relation to the ecclesial authorities.
Prayer(to be said by the Shepherd in the absence of a priest).
Holy Father, in Your loving kindness affirm the will of our brothers and sisters so that the grace of their baptism, strengthened by the new ties of this commitment, may flourish to its fullness. May their life thus give You glory and by their charity in serving others, may the reign of Your Son be extended, He who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, One God forever and ever. Amen.