November 5th, 2021
To all Regnum Christi members
Dear friends in Jesus Christ:
In this jubilee year of ECYD, Christ’s call to be his friends, “I have called you friends,” acquires greater importance for each member of our spiritual family and expresses with greater insistence the burning desire to make Him reign in our hearts, in the hearts of all people and in the whole world. It is a desire that moves us to know and love Jesus Christ more every day and to foster an intimate relationship of friendship with Him (cf. SECYD 7). Christ our King, Thy Kingdom come!
This friendship becomes a call to the mission, because the renewal of the world begins with allowing Christ to transform our own hearts in our daily lives, “it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how” (Mk 4: 26-27). In the same way, one who has Jesus Christ as the King and Lord of their life bears fruit and gives life to those around them, because they have encountered the One who fully gives meaning to their lives, and they can do nothing other than radiate and transmit this light that has illuminated their heart.
The petition we pray in the prayer of ECYD, “till it is you, Christ, who live and work and pray in me” acquires its fullest meaning on the Solemnity of Christ the King, because it expresses the longing of the ECYD member’s heart and that of every member of our spiritual family to make Christ’s Kingdom present. For this reason, we have decided to begin the jubilee year of ECYD on the feast of Christ the King, so as to motivate us to foster and open our hearts to the Kingdom which grows silently, but constantly.
Along this line, the Regnum Christi General Directorate’s area of Life and Mission has published the essay The Pledge of Friendship With Christ and Among Each Other – ECYD: The Regnum Christi Charism Lived by Young People. It seeks to describe how Jesus Christ comes out to meet each young person, reveals the love of his Heart to him or her, gathers them together and forms them as his friends and apostles so that from that experience of friendship with Him they feel called to help others experience Christ as friend and together transform the world according to the Gospel (cf. SRCF 8).
From the beginning of the first teams 50 years ago, many young people have met Christ in ECYD and have decided to let him reign in their hearts. They have opened themselves to the adventure of his friendship and his call to work so that his Kingdom come. Together with all ECYD members, those of yesterday and today, we renew the petition that we find in the prayer of the Pledge of Friendship with Christ:
We are yours, Lord, and yours we want to be. We offer our lives so that all people might know and love you; because we want you to reign in their hearts.
We invite you to read, meditate, and reflect on this essay, both privately and in teams. We ask that the Holy Spirit enlighten our hearts so that this jubilee year that we now begin may be a time of gratitude to God for the gift of ECYD and a fresh breeze that helps us to renew his call to our spiritual family and apostolic body that is Regnum Christi.
We seek this grace through the hands of Mary, Queen of the apostles, that she might show us the way that leads to forging a deep and intimate friendship with her Son.
General Directive College of the Regnum Christi Federation
Novena for the Feast of Christ the King
