The Vows of Consecrated Life (Part III)

The vows are first of all a response to God’s calling.  You did not choose me, I chose you: and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit (Jn 15:16). The initiative is from God: “it is an initiative coming wholly from the father (Cf. Jn 15:16), who asks those whom he has chosen to respond with complete and exclusive devotion” (Vita Consecrata, n. 17). The vows are free and radical responses to God’s call to follow in the footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ as enunciated in the Gospels. The religious is both responsive and responsible.

The response demanded from the consecrated person is voluntary, spontaneous, unreserved, and generous. He responds with his whole life for all his life. He generously responds to this call in his own historical context according to promptings of the Holy Spirit and the specific needs of the Church. The different content and context of one’s vocation admits of some divergence and convergence. That is why there is a great variety of responses in the Church namely: monastic life, mendicants, societies of apostolic life and the secular institutes. The multiplicity of different forms of consecrated life is considered as both a gift and activity of the Holy Spirit.


An expression of undivided love

Primarily, the vows constitute a response to the unconditional love of God, an acknowledgement of God’s faithful and unrelenting love, surrender to God’s tremendous and everlasting love. The evangelical counsels are ravishingly lovely. They are intended as a concrete expression of passionate love of God (Cf. Apostolic Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis To All Consecrated People on the Occasion of the Year of Consecrated Life). They are an act of personal love for God who first generously loved us.

 Love is the motive and goal of evangelical counsels, “such love should fill each of you … from the very source of that particular consecration which—on the sacramental basis of holy Baptism--- is the beginning of your new life in Christ and in the Church; it is the beginning of the new creation” (Redemptoris Donum, n. 8). The consecrated persons are naturally lovers- lovers of Christ and the whole humanity.  Having derived their love from the contemplation of Trinitarian love, they “show that the power of God’s love can accomplish great things precisely within the context of human love” (Vita Consecrata, n. 88).


The wonder of amazing grace

The intention to take the vows is inspired and elicited by the promptings of divine grace; the vows are an outward response to the inward grace. Stupendous grace disposes the religious to respond joyfully to his/her religious vocation. Therefore, religious profession is an external manifestation of the inner workings of unmerited grace in the life of the consecrated person. The whole project of consecrated life is a testimony of what the grace of God can achieve in the face of human weakness and imperfections. This divine grace necessarily accompanies the consecrated person in all his endeavours to fulfill the obligations of his vows. The Lord who invites a Christian to embrace the vows also furnishes him with all the necessary graces he needs to live the vows joyfully and convincingly.

In the bogs of doubt, quicksand of fear, and winds of anxiety, the consecrated person realizes his/her need for grace.  Without the grace of God, no consecrated person can fulfill the vows. Without me you can do nothing (Jn 15:5).  Every consecrated person needs the grace of God to weave the fabric of his destiny. Consecrated life is an adventure that requires a willingness to surrender to divine grace.  “Religious, therefore, at pains  to be faithful to what they have professed, should believe our Lord’s words and relying on God’s help, should not presume on their own strength” (Perfectae Caritatis, n. 12).