Discernment: The role of sacrificial love

Discernment: I came across the following statement about discernment of one’s vocation and believe it is worth sharing. It was written in August of 2013 by Mother Katherine Caldwell, TOR, in an article entitled “There Is No Greater Love: The Close Bond between Martyrdom and Religious Life”. She writes:  

In discerning a vocation, it is, of course, not a matter of discerning

 if one is called to embrace the Cross. All Christians are called to

 follow Christ and to embrace the Cross—all are called to love as

 Christ has loved. The question is this: What way of giving yourself

 in loving sacrifice best matches the person who God made you to

be? Those called to religious life are specially consecrated to Christ

 by laying down their life through embracing the evangelical counsels

 of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Religious renounce family life,

personal possessions, and following one’s own will for the sake of

Christ and His Church. This radical way of letting go of the world and

those things that the world deems most important is for the greater

 good of giving oneself totally in loving and serving Christ and His

Church. Like the martyr, the religious who gives up the goods of this

life bears witness to the supreme love of Christ and directs all Christians

to gaze toward heaven, our true home, where the greatest Lover

desires us to be with Him forever.

The question that most touches me is: What way of giving yourself in loving sacrifice best matches the person who God made you to be?  In other words, each vocation in life—marriage, religious life, priesthood, or the single life—all involve sacrifice. What you, as a discerner, need to come to is your answer to that question.

VITA CONSECRATA: CONSECRATED LIFE

VITA CONSECRATA: CONSECRATED LIFE

In a few weeks we, the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother, will be celebrating many of our Sisters'  jubilees, similar to anniversaries when we speak of married men and women. In religious life, we call “anniversaries” “jubilees.”  This year the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother will be celebrating the jubilees of 20 Sisters, one of whom is celebrating 75 years of religious life, ten 60 years, eight 50 years and one 25 years.  What, you may ask, is it like to have given one’s life to the Lord for 75, 60, 50, and 25 years and having no children, no grandchildren  and having given up the joys of being a devoted wife, experiencing the gift of having a devoted husband and adoring children and grandchildren?  This is a woman religious speaking, of course.  Some husbands, children and grandchildren are not adoring or devoted while others are. Married life is not a bed of roses; it too comes with thorns!

So what are we celebrating? God’s faithfulness. The many times we have come through the turbulence of life and experienced Jesus sleeping in our boats and, at our invitation, calmed the churning waters. We are celebrating the times that Jesus walked through the “wheat fields” of our lives and quenched our hunger with “grains of wheat,” that others felt we had no right to glean.  We are celebrating the many times we sat at Jesus’ feet, as did Mary Magdala, listening to His every word, enjoying an intimacy that no one can take from us, and, “yes” being at the foot of the cross of other’s people’s lives, as Mary stood beneath the cross of Jesus. We have done so when we sat at the bedside of the sick and dying, caressed the handicapped, mentally or physically challenged, or bullied child in our schools; welcomed the drug or alcohol-addicted individual in our treatment centers.  We are celebrating the times we went to "empty tombs," looking for Jesus and when "the gardeners" of life whispered our names and we recognized Jesus and "yes," were sent out by Him to proclaim the resurrection.   We are celebrating the many children God sent us as gifts of His love, examples of courage, pillars of hope. The 75, 60, 50, and 25 years of consecrated life have been an awesome experience of a faithful, loving, caring, forgiving God, to whom we have given everything of ourselves and our lives. The joy of that giving has no bounds here or in eternity. That is why "jubilee" celebrations are so, so special.