Consecrated life meant
to be leaven in the Church

By Archbishop Charles Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.

April 24, 2002

Earlier this week (Sunday, April 21) we celebrated the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. So it's a good time to reflect on the mission and importance of religious life.

The Church calls poverty, chastity and obedience the "evangelical counsels" for a reason. They're a form of missionary witness. Jesus meant the Church to be a leaven in the world, and a light to the nations. Consecrated life is meant to be Christ's leaven in the Church, and a light to her children.

In his 1996 apostolic exhortation, "Vita Consecrata," John Paul II tells us that the special duty of consecrated life "is to remind the baptized of the fundamental values of the Gospel," and to give witness that the world can only be transfigured and offered to God by the spirit of the Beatitudes (VC, 33). For the Sermon on the Mount to be more than just pious idealism, someone needs to live it fully, radically and fruitfully in the clay of daily life. This is the special vocation of consecrated persons.

 

 

Occasionally over the last decade I've read articles by persons who've used the legitimate, prophetic charism of consecrated life to justify exactly the opposite of what consecrated life is meant to be. "Obedience" is articulated as obedience to a religious community's so-called "higher prophetic calling" — which sometimes is interpreted as disobedience to the pastors of the Church and a source of division within Christ's body, rather than a guarantee of communion.

Whenever I encounter arguments like this, I reread these thoughts of a founder: "If we wish to proceed securely in all things, we must hold fast to the following principle: What seems to me white, I will believe black if the hierarchical Church so defines. For I must be convinced that in Christ our Lord, the Bridegroom, and in His spouse, the Church, only one Spirit holds sway, which governs and rules for the salvation of souls. For it is by the same Spirit and Lord who gave the Ten Commandments that our holy mother Church is ruled and governed."

Those words of Ignatius Loyola sound unsettling to the modern ear, especially at a time when people are questioning the purity and judgment of leadership in the Church, sometimes for good reason. But Ignatius lived in an even more turbulent time than our own, and he was certainly no fool about the defects of human nature and the sins of human leadership; or about what the Church needed in order to renew her mission to the world. He understood that consecrated persons, like all believers, have the obligation to speak the truth, because the truth will make us free.

But as St. Paul said, we must "speak the truth in love," and love always involves a denial of the self, a submission of our own ideas, desires and opinions to the needs of others. That's as true in any enduring marriage as it is in a religious community, but as "Vita Consecrata" teaches, "the consecrated life, by its very existence in the Church, seeks to serve the consecration of the lives of all the faithful, clergy and laity alike" (33).

The evangelical counsels are the tools consecrated persons must use to chisel away that shadow of the self which blocks the light of God in their own lives, and in the life of the Church. We find our freedom in obedience, and our mission in service — exactly as Jesus showed us in the example of His own life.

That's why John Paul II calls consecrated life "a more complete expression of the Church's purpose, which is the sanctification of humanity" (VC, 32). That's why he reminds us that "the specific contribution of consecrated persons [to] evangelization is first of all the witness of a life given totally to God and to their brothers and sisters" (VC, 76).

Consecrated persons make a life rooted in the Beatitudes visible and real to the whole Church. That's why they remain so vital to the mission of the entire community of faith — especially in times of confusion; especially today.

Archbishop Chaput is a Capuchin Franciscan.